What you guys seem to be missing about all the other towns that are considered great sports town, they all have a foundation of winning. Simply put Washington isn’t a great sports town because its teams have never laid the foundation to gather fans. Why would a radio station willingly talk about the Caps when theyre 30 points out of first place, and no one wants to hear about them? You give them a first place or even just a competitive team and I garauntee they will give the Caps time. Look at how much time they have given the wizards when they are in season because they have won.
The other cities where you say they all get equal coverage, thats only because each of their teams has done something at some point to develop a fanbase where the stations have incentive to cover that team. Look at Boston, every team has won at some time or another that has given them a reason to want to hear about their teams, the same with New York and Chicago. In DC the Wiz hadn’t been good since the early 70’s, the Caps have ~never~ been good, and the Nationals are a recent occurance.

Bottom line, if Mr. Leonsis wants coverage field a better team. Don’t blame the media that no one is interested in hearing about the Caps.

Here’s what would get me to listen to a local sports show. A knowledgeable crew talking about a variety of sports — Scott Linn for hockey comes to mind. I remember him as very insightful and I always found a new appreciation for something or someone. Introduce me to a new one. Let me learn something about nuance or strategy or some rule or player I may not know. Expose me to something unfamiliar. (Bocchi?) Make it a sports show. Not a football show, or a baseball show. There are enough sport-specific ones.

I don’t even have to like all of everything covered. But it’s like pop radio. Mix up the songs so it’s not the same 23 that make up your predictable playlist. Give me something worthwhile and diverse, I’ll tune in.

Pro local teams and/or sports and/or reasons it would be nice to hear worthwhile discussion and debate about (start of a list):

Washington Capitals — hockey (Ovechkin, Kolzig and a whole lot of other players across the league I don’t need to elaborate upon here. Debate on rules changes pros and cons — aside from the shootout. Agree or not with it, I’m tired of that being the only thing people discuss.)

DC United — soccer (Will Moreno get the goals record? Beckham, like him or not, is news, but not all the news.)

Washington Freedom — soccer (yes they still play. Is the women’s league going to make a return? Even — how’s the team faring?)

Washington Redskins — football (pre-season injuries, roster paring, Gibbs return to glory?)

Washington Wizards — basketball (fun to hear sometimes even though I don’t care for basketball much. some of the personalities are great to hear about.)

Washington Mystics — basketball (see above. Barely missed the playoffs. Why? What could be done different? Off-season improvements?)

Washington Nationals — baseball (Worst team ever??? They’ve proved just about every sports reporter and prognosticator wrong this season.)

Washington Glory — softball (that’s right — there’s a pro softball team here. They play in a league with opponents like Jennie Finch of Olympics fame. A couple Olympians on the local squad, first place in the league regular season {championship series upcoming}, pitcher of the year, player of the year, probably rookie of the year, 5 all-stars and maybe coach of the year) — and I didn’t even know anything about fast-pitch softball before this year.

My advice to Ted… Keep doing what your doing. I guarantee sports talk radio will be talking about the Caps soon… they will be the talk of the town.

But the mocking of hockey in general always puzzles me. That is what always gets me. I don’t think WTEM bashed the Capitals team specifically other than some normal/expected jokes as a bad season ran down that happens to even the major sports in this area.

Wasn’t there a time back in the 1980’s when the Wings couldn’t even sell out The Joe, in part because their teams were so bad?

The Cap blogosphere, Vogs, the podcasts make it easy to be a fan 500 miles away.

Yeah. Detroit. Detroit is a great sports town.

Great.

One of the reasons why I think WTEM is foolish is that not only do they fail to adequately cover/respect sports such as hockey and soccer, they also give paltry coverage to the Nats. The struggles of hockey and soccer are well documented, but these guys are so brainwashed by football that they don’t even pay attention to the city’s MLB team.

Baseball is one of the top 3 sports in the country, and those clowns won’t even cover that. They’d rather spend hours and hours talking about Redskin passing drills at March mini-camp than actually talk about something interesting.

In your estimation, is it actually written in the heavens that New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit (Detroit??) have been and always will be great sports towns, and that D.C. never can be?

Why the question about Detroit? The Motor City is a great sports town, plain and simple. The four pro majors are all covered well, and the newspapers boast a deep bench of talented, insightful columnists. I’ve been away from there for 10 years, and miss the level of coverage more as time goes on.

I’m curious, though, about the “consistent ridicule” of the Caps I keep hearing about. I used to be a regular listener of the Sports Reporters, and although I heard them ridicule Caps fans often (ridicule that we apparently deserve, as this whole flap illustrates), I never noticed much in the way of ridicule of the team itself. I have since stopped listening to the show, so I would like to know if this has changed. Do they actually ridicule the Caps (as opposed to whiny Caps fans), and if so, what do they say? (And no, I don’t mean Czaban’s cheap shot on his blog; I mean ridicule that was actually aired on the radio.)

And if they do actually ridicule the Caps, why on earth would anyone want more coverage from these guys?

For the NHL, silence from sports radio & MSM — while by no means ideal — is still better than constant belittling. Non-hockey sports fans are basically being told that hockey is a joke; casual fans hearing nothing about hockey from the MSM would be preferable to MSM ridicule.

So while not hearing about hockey on the radio is clearly disappointing… it’s better than hockey being the punchline for some sophomoric jokester.

This bothers me particularly when I hear my friends/acquaintances, who dont know a thing about hockey, dismissing it out of hand because that is what the majority of the talkers out there are doing. It creates a hugely false and prejudiced view of hockey which makes it all the harder for me to convince a couple buddies to give hockey a chance and join me for a game.

Here in Washington, it’s been hard to miss all the posts over at Ted’s Take taking issue with the way……

In short, what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander right? Do as I say you should not as I do right?

Uh, yeah… Whatever you say boys… Keep up the good work…

No argument there.

Step one - stop blatantly ridiculing that which you do not know.
Step two - become the SPORTS Reporters.

Strungout, anyone summing up the Capitals as “a bona fide mega-star in Alex Ovetchkin surrounded by a bunch of extras from the movie Slapshot” is an @sshat. Whether or not the “t” was intentional doesn’t matter; it’s unprofessional, as was his characterization of the team.

Capsnut, no idea what you’re talking about — nobody mentioned the Caps on WHUR (for good reason).

Vogs said it best: XM. It’s a shame that local radio doesn’t take hockey or soccer seriously; but as local radio become increasingly irrelevant, so does their snide and dismissive coverage. XM!

The show is called the Sports reporters show why don’t they report on sports instead of one sport, otherwise change the name of the show to Redskins Opined.

Perhaps their cumes would be even higher if they actually spoke about more than one team and one sport and perhaps the reason people tune out when they actually do speak about other sports is because they are uninformed and offer little to the conversation.

I certainly don’t think Mr. Czaban purposefully misspelled Alex Ovechkin’s name to make a point or to bait people in to retorts because journalistically a stronger point would be made if he actually spelled it correctly, I think he just misspelled it.

Don’t want to cover a sport? Fine…. but don’t constantly ridicule it.