Mad Dog Meltdown

I know this isn't going to make a lot of sense to you regular readers who don't have Sirius but stick with me for a minute. It was a compelling story anyway. Usually on the way to work I listen to Mike and Mike on ESPN radio however due to a tremendous amount of commercials I've started switching to other channels in the morning to see what else is out there. It is Sirius after all and there are over one hundred channels to pick from.

You would think it would be set on the NFL channel all the time, sometimes you would be right too! But I'm just browsing around in the mornings now and seeing what is on. So I come across Mad Dog Radio yesterday morning. The morning host is railing against his boss, Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, a former New York sports radio legend apparently. I knew he had jumped to satellite radio and they made him a manager of some sort and power to program his this whole channel.

First he is very New York, I find him hard to listen to. He cares about who pitched in the fourth inning of the 1952 World Series and all kinds of minutia like that. He is gold on baseball history but to me, I don't care. My main sport I follow is football. Everyone who knows me knows that. Stick with me, it will make sense in a few. Russo wants his hosts to know and care about golden age movies, to know things like the entire Gone With The Wind cast, to be able to break down a game that happened over fifty years ago, and he gets angry if you don't.

So as I'm listening yesterday morning the morning host plays a clip from the previous afternoon during Mad Dog's show. Russo ripped his entire staff that he hired...for five hours then fired his update man and friend for over twenty five years! He ripped every host, producer, and assorted staff. Keep in mind he is the man in charge of the channel and hired every individual that works on that channel.

As I'm listening it becomes apparent that Mad Dog got some bad numbers about how his channel ranks. His internet numbers are way down he has a "greatest baseball team of all time" tournament on his site. People go and vote on who they believe is the greatest team of all time. Now that could get me off on a baseball rant and about how it just isn't as relevant as it used to be anymore, NFL is king, and a few other sports that beat baseball on a regular basis in my viewing hours but this is about the drama, baseball isn't the subject.

The morning host was angry. He ripped into Russo for the length of his show! Then the next show came on, The B Team and THEY ripped Russo for four hours! Then finally Russo's show came on and he responded. He not only didn't back off of his comments but enforced them! Callers called in and defended the hosts and pretty much told him how unprofessional he was!

The general mood was Russo was an idiot who cared about things that just aren't relevant in today's radio listening environment. Seems that one day last week Mad Dog went stroke by stroke with commentary over his golf game, now if that isn't compelling radio I don't know what is! A trucker called in and told him he wanted to drive off of a cliff, that's how bad it was.

I was able to form the opinion that if this was the first time I was going to listen to Mad Dog's show it would likely be the last. Mad Dog seems stuck in the past and unable to become up to date on anything that is relevant in today's world, not only that but he doesn't even care to give his listening audience outside of statistical baseball fanatics anything to listen to.

If you would top that with his unprofessional attitude towards his people, who he should be defending and not throwing under the bus and firing at will then you have a channel that I am kind of hoping fails and is replaced with sports talk that I want to listen to.

Hire Dan Patrick, let him program the channel! Now THAT would be entertainment! He stays abreast on everything that is relevant today, stories I want to know more about, and pop culture. I love the Dan Patrick show, the only problem is that Sirius doesn't run it live for some stupid reason so I have to catch the delayed show in the afternoon.

That's the story of the past two days at Mad Dog Radio and why for the first and likely last time I'll be glued to that channel.