Bob Trumpy

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http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...3/SPT/502130398

Is the caller on the air? Yep

Cincinnati has a long, strong tradition in sports talk radio

The opinion, scribbled on a piece of paper, would change everything if spoken into the microphone. Bob Trumpy knew this.The Bengals had lost the first five games of the NFL regular season when head coach Bill Johnson resigned Oct. 2, 1978.

As host of the evolving "SportsTalk" show on WCKY-AM, after spending the previous 10 years playing tight end for the Bengals, Trumpy believed the coach wasn't entirely at fault.

"Bill Johnson was blamed for the team going 0-5," Trumpy said recently. "But it was the (preseason) injury to Ken Anderson and it was also Paul Brown trying to interfere with Bill Johnson coaching the team."

Saying as much on the radio meant publicly defying the man who once signed his paychecks.

"The general manager of the station said, 'Well, tonight you have a choice,' " Trumpy recounted. " 'If you're going to remain an ex-Bengal, you don't read this. If you're going to become a broadcaster, you read this.' "

He did.

A tongue-lashing from Brown came the next day.

But a broadcasting career and an authoritative style that influenced the Cincinnati sports talk radio scene for years to come was born that evening.

Today, listeners in and around Greater Cincinnati can, on a typical weekday, tune in 12 hours of local sports talk, with its many hosts, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

"With all due respect - and I've heard three or four different names that have been thrown out there as being the grand daddy of sports talk (in Cincinnati) - Bob Trumpy was No. 1," Hall of Fame Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman said. "For my money, he's as good as there has ever been. He set a pretty high standard for those who have come after him."

Over the past quarter century, other stations such as WCIN and WBOB have been part of the local sports talk landscape.

Two Clear Channel Communications stations - WLW-AM (700) and WSAI-AM (1360) - now dominate the weekday sports talk scene.

Tom Gamble, Richard Skinner and Jeff Piecoro host weekday morning shows from 6 a.m. to noon on WSAI, and Lance McAlister's show airs weekdays from 3-6 p.m. on the station.

Andy Furman has hosted "SportsTalk" on WLW since taking over five years ago for Cris Collinsworth, who inherited the job from Trumpy in 1990.

"SportsTalk" is the top-rated local sports talk radio show and airs weeknights from 6-9 p.m.

"It's a great sports area," said Skinner, who co-hosts the "Two Angry Guys" show with Gamble on WSAI. "You have professional baseball. ... You have professional football. You have arguably the center of a really great college basketball area. ... In college football season, there's that faction of Ohio State fans in the marketplace.

"So you have the ingredients for year-round sports talk."

Wayne "Box" Miller and Eric "E.T." Thomas also host "The Prime Time Sports Show" on WDBZ-AM (1230).

And Miller believes sports talk radio can help bring people and communities together.

"If you're a UC fan, it doesn't matter if you're black or white," he said. "When you're at the game, you're a fan. Not a white fan or a black fan.

"Why can't we carry that out into the parking lot and beyond? Sports talk helps do that. Some of our callers we know are white. If they feel like they need to make that a point of distinction, they can. Different perspectives are good. Our approach is, 'Everybody is welcome to the clubhouse.' "

What distinguishes the Greater Cincinnati market from some similarly sized ones is the amount of time dedicated to local programming.

The area offers almost as much locally generated sports talk per weekday as Cleveland and Columbus combined (13 hours).

"Sports talk is as strong a media vehicle in this town as it is in any city in the country," said Brennaman, who also hosts the "Reds Hot Stove League" on WLW.

"I can't imagine another city in the country where sports talk creates so much conversation on the streets on a daily basis and also creates so much participation by the people who call in."

That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.

To listener Herb Winston, aka "Herb from Mount Healthy," it's all good.

"I love it," he said. "You get a chance to hear from people from all the different neighborhoods all over the Tristate. There's a lot of different viewpoints, different perspectives. It's good to hear."

To Bengals defensive tackle John Thornton, it goes both ways.

"It's a great source of information," he said. "But during the season when they're talking about the Bengals, I don't listen to the locals.

"It's difficult hearing somebody talking about something they don't know about and run off with it. That's just like somebody playing you in a movie. It may seem like they got it right, but they didn't quite have it right."

On the surface, a host's job would seem simple enough.

Show up. Rant or rave into a microphone on sporting topics du jour for a set amount of time. Leave.

"I think it's probably evolved from being a complete sports type of thing where all you had to do was roll in and answer the phone," Skinner said, "to now you better come in with something to offer the listener every day or he's going to tune you out and go elsewhere."

McAlister is known for his meticulous preparation.

He typically spends six hours, in addition to the three he's on the air, preparing for a single broadcast, and he also keeps a pen and notepad by his bedside to record any ideas that come to him while he's asleep.

"It's my job to present a show for three hours," said McAlister, who has hosted his afternoon show since 1999. "It's not my job to sit there and say, 'What do you want to talk about? Let's open up the phones for the next three hours.'

"I've always said a monkey can do that. I have to present a show with topics, with ideas, and give my opinion. And if people want to react to it, perfect."

Preparation can include researching Web sites as well as reading newspapers, magazines and books.

The job also includes booking on-air guests, which helps hosts cultivate relationships with sources.

"If you establish a relationship with them, and build on it without burning them, it shows you're willing to put in the time and effort and help on their end as well," McAlister said.

"That doesn't mean you're not going to criticize them. I think as long as you're fair, they're going to understand that."

Yet no amount of guest preparation or topical planning can prevent callers from expressing views on topics that interest them.

"It was not my show. It was their show," Trumpy said. "If I wanted to talk to Steve Cauthen about horse racing, the minute he left they started talking about Pete Rose again.

"You have no control over that. You should be responsive to the public out there or they'll find someone else to talk about what they want to talk about."

Ratings and market shares can give station managers an idea about who is listening and calling in to a program.

Most radio stations specifically target adults ages 25-54.

"That's the money demographic for advertisers," said Darryl Parks, program director for Clear Channel's four AM stations in Greater Cincinnati. "Some slant male. Some slant female. WLW is about 60-40 slanting male. (WSAI) is about 75-25 percent slanting male.

"The more we dissect this, the more inaccurate this is."

Even tougher to gauge is whether those persons discussed on sports talk radio - players, coaches, school officials, team executives - are part of the listening audience.

"I think I probably listen to more sports talk radio than any of my teammates," said Thornton, who would like to pursue a job in the industry when his football playing days are over. "I listen to it almost all day. I'd rather do that than listen to music."

Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story. Through a spokesman, University of Cincinnati athletic director Bob Goin also declined because "he does not listen to talk radio," except for the occasional coach's show.

"It would be naïve to say (what is said on the air) doesn't get back to those people," said Cincinnati-based agent Brian Goldberg, who represents Reds center fielder Ken Griffey Jr.

Reds general manager Dan O'Brien is an occasional guest on local and regional sports talk shows.

"For the most part, the time slots for talk radio don't coincide with the daily baseball work schedule," O'Brien said. "So my exposure is limited, and I admit that."

Limited enough that he was unaware excerpts of his thank-you speech from the October 2003 news conference introducing him as the Reds' general manager are sometimes replayed on a local sports talk show.

But not so limited that word of something or someone on the air hasn't reached his office.

"Occasionally an individual will say, 'I happened to turn on such-and-such show and the topic X was such,' " O'Brien said. "That's usually about the extent of the discussion."

A strong fan reaction to comments made by Lewis about Bengals fans' investment in the team during a November 2003 news conference prompted the coach to respond on the air with McAlister.

"Within an hour, (Bengals public relations director) Jack Brennan was calling and saying, 'Look, we understand there's a firestorm. Marvin would like to come on and address this with the fans. Would you mind?' " McAlister recalled. "So Marvin came on and explained his stance."

The sports talk radio show host is the media cousin of the traditional newspaper columnist.

"But this is more of a louder-mouth columnist in many ways," said Skinner, a former sports writer at the Cincinnati Post. "Still, (columnists and sports talk hosts) can't take pot-shot liberties either, because there is some integrity at stake and some credibility at stake.

"I think anybody that has any sense treats it like that."

Newspaper beat reporters along with television anchors are regulars in the locker rooms and clubhouses.

But the local sports talk radio show host, with some exceptions, is far less visible to those they scrutinize on the air.

"I have a major problem with that," Brennaman said. "You've got to answer the bell. If you're going to be critical, if you're going to establish and maintain any credibility, you have to face up to the people or the organizations that you're taking shots at whether you're right or you're wrong."

A classic example: A face-to-face meeting occurred in early May after a USA Today story about Griffey included a quote from the Reds player about changing fan behavior toward him.

"The clowns who come to the ballpark who just want to say stuff, they're usually the ages of like 18 to 27," Griffey told the newspaper. "They sit there and yell because they've listened to some guy on the radio who probably never played sports in his life talk about somebody."

The quote was a hotly addressed topic on Furman's show in the days that followed, and it led to a loud discussion between the two when Furman showed up in the Reds' clubhouse the day after the article appeared.

"If you have the courage to go on (the radio) and attack and criticize, you better have the courage to go there (in the clubhouse) and face these guys face to face," Furman said.

"Sometimes it works out. Sometimes you get scolded. That's part of the job. The older you get, I think, the better you can handle it. When you're younger, you kind of use the microphone as a weapon and run and hide. You can't do that."

A former football player at the University of Kentucky, Piecoro believes increased attention from the public and media has contributed to players' wariness toward media members.

"Back then, it was mostly what you did on the field that was discussed," he said. "Now anything you do is scrutinized by you, me and everybody else.

"I think those guys are very guarded against us now, because everybody wants to know every little thing about them."

Trumpy remains a figure in Cincinnati's sports talk radio landscape, particularly during the NFL season when he does a show with McAlister and another with former Bengal, Boomer Esiason.

But he believes the genre has devolved some over the years.

"It was something I took seriously," Trumpy said. "Now I think guys are more interested in being on the air and they have a higher opinion of themselves than they should have.

"They think their voice has more authority in the sports world than it actually does."

But therein lies the foundation of sports talk radio. Everybody is entitled to their opinion - the First Amendment tells us so.

So long as there are sports and radio stations - be they traditional or satellite - there will be someone willing to talk, tune in and call in to offer the ninth side of an eight-sided story.

"Everybody who listens and calls up is auditioning," Furman said. "That's what I call it. They want their 10 seconds of fame like Andy Warhol. And they want to tell their buddies: 'Hey, I was on the radio last night. Did you hear me?'

"They could care less what I say. They want to hear themselves. That's what it's all about. Everybody has got an opinion on sports, and everybody thinks they can do the job."

Enquirer staff writer John Erardi contributed to this story.