Howard Stern did at least one commendable thing for his culture: every day he reminded us that radio is the lowest form of all media. In D.C., we needn’t have had Stern to point this out; not when we have WTEM’s Steve Czaban.
Late Thursday “Czabe” took umbrage with Washington Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis, who this week on his blog pointed out the obvious — that D.C. as a sports town is grossly, maliciously underserved by the MSM sports personalities and outlets assigned to covering the region’s teams. In fact, Czaban Thursday admitted as much:
“Washington is a political town first, and a Redskins town second. And if the Wizards ever get really good, it’ll be a basketball town. But that’s about it.”
Nothing there lending credence to the 200 million-strong number of Americans today disdaining the media for its arrogance. (Or is it 300 million?)
If you’re over 40 and a D.C. native you’re actually savvy enough to know that there was a time, not all that long ago, when the Redskins not only weren’t the only game in town, most folks didn’t bother going to games or following them. And thanks to Daniel Snyder, a healthy return to those glory days may not be far around the corner. Anyway, for the likes of Czaban, and by extension his radio station, such laziness of thought and work ethic makes for a comfy, sweatless broadcasting existence.
Czaban didn’t mean to prove the point we made last October 6, with our very first OFB post, but he did; and he underscored, italicized, and placed three exclamation points on Leonsis’ long-standing concern about D.C.’s sports media: they not only don’t aspire to be like the media in great sports cities who do cover the pro teams (all of them) with balance and pride, they’re proud to be gluttonously, unprofessionally imbalanced: “We’re not Philadelphia. We’re not Detroit. We’re not Boston. We’re not Montreal. We’re not New York,” Czaban crowed. Precisely, Steve.
Can you imagine if 30 years ago someone like Steve Czaban were tasked with running Toyota or Honda, staring up at the dominance of Detroit’s Big Three? (Not Lindsay, Howe, and Delvecchio.)
“Sports talk radio is not a democracy of equally shared time between all sports,” the Czabe alleged Thursday. “The most popular sports get the most coverage in a variety of ways.” Shuttles to New York and Boston are rather affordable; the Czabe would do well to take one to audit the voices on sports radio there. Think the wretched Celtics of the past 8 or 10 years were blotted out of airwave discourse in Beantown? Or the even worse Knicks in New York?
Isn’t there something noble about a media that with the breadth of its coverage says to the outside world, in effect, “Our guys in shorts (or skates) are having a rough go of it right about now, but we’re behind them”? Or perhaps, “Our guys are terrible, and we’re upset about it, and here’s how we think they should fix it?” A debate, preferably a lively one, is better than silent indifference.
Truth be told, Czaban isn’t exactly on terra firma discussing anything puck (the omitted spellcheck on the last name of Washington’s most dynamic athlete in his blog file Thursday is one tipoff–Alex has no “t” in his surname).
Let’s be clear about Leonsis’ concern: he never asked WTEM to devote an hour to puck talk each autumn Sunday morning. What set him off was listening to WTEM while en route to a DC United game last week, on a night when no less than ESPN was in the house for coverage, and listening to the home town broadcast talent sneeringly deride the occasion. That’s right, it wasn’t even lacking or snide hockey coverage that set off the owner of the Capitals; it was soccer coverage.
Look, it’s patently obvious that our sports MSM here get off on the likes of Michael Vick and Terrell Owens instead of Alexander Ovechkin. We get that. We’re sorry for that–we wish they aspired to something more noble–but, to quote Czaban, “it is what it is.” So how about comporting yourselves, unprofessional as you are, with dignity — at least while the microphones are capturing your thoughts?
A few questions for the Czabe:
(1) First, do you and your colleagues even aspire to make Washington a better sports town than it’s been generally acknowledged to be; if not, why are you in the sports radio business? If not, shouldn’t you get out of the way and let someone else with a greater love of Washington sports try?
(2) If it really is “all about ratings,” and that’s why hockey is one of George Carlin’s seven unutterable words for radio guys in prime ratings slots, why don’t you just Sternify your program and go for the big ones: get some Hooters talent in the studio and have them pick the Sunday pigskin matchups by tossing wet tubetops at the helmets.
(3) 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? Is it the height of their office buildings that makes it so? Better public transportation (don’t answer that)?
(4) Czaban takes pains to emphasize that his demographic is men aged 25-54, not the less-specific target of the average website; fair enough. But he presents it as a counterpoint to Leonsis’s Internet stats. While most websites’ statistics do not break down to such demographic detail, who do you think does most Internet surfing? Women aged 75+? If anything, Internet usage skews to a younger (and more profitable) age bracket than radio, by far.
Whatever caliber of sports town Washington is, Ted Leonsis this week embarked on a mission to make it better. In any other “sports town,” he wouldn’t have to be this kind of trailblazer.
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