Hello boys and Spaulding, I’m back. Not sure why my old login didn’t work anymore but alas, it’s me. If anyone wants to verify they can DM me on Twitter.

I’ve checked in occasionally since the CoronaVirus has made a drastic impact on our programming to see what you guys think and I want to address a few things. And I’m happy to answer questions in the comments.

1) The idea of fear mongering. I’m just going to tell you how I honestly feel. Whether that’s about the Bears draft or a pandemic. After having my first child in the hospital for 27 days after birth and being implored by his doctor to be careful, this shit scares me. Some days I’ve been optimistic, some pessimistic. That’s just how I feel.

2) Speaking of my son, some of you think I do that too often. Fair criticism. Becoming a father is a life changing experience and I come from the school of radio that the best personalities live their life on the air. Mac and Stern were the two hosts I listened to most when I fell in love with radio. Now obviously I’m not putting myself on their level but I think we could all agree we’d be worse off as a radio community if Mac hadn’t been so open about raising Patrick and dealing with autism. I’ve received 100’s if not 1000+ messages from listeners of parents of premature babies. NICU stays are hard and the community of people who have experienced it is real. If it’s not for you, I get it. Just try to remember there are no sports going on, it’s my first child, and he came into this world in unusual circumstances. When we depart from the sports page we try to be relatable and movies, music, parenting, fishing, whatever isn’t going to hit every person the same way. The only topic everyone cares about is The Bears.

3) Callers. Yes, I enjoy callers less than most of you seem to, but not for the reasons most seem to be outlining. We get way less than the old days. We get literally 1500+ text messages per show and depending on the topic and how much we push it we can get 10,000. Think of your life. Are you willing to wait on hold for 15-60 minutes to talk for at most 2-3 on the radio? Research back in the day showed 1% of your audience would call. It’s much much much smaller now because people have better things to do and other ways to interact with the station that take way less time. So the quality of the caller has plummeted. Also, we can filter the texts and tweets and read the funniest, smartest, dumbest, most helpful, etc as opposed to having to take 7 or 8 calls to get one good one.

Now, could we do better? Sure. We could do better at everything we do. But I’ll admit that I find caller driven shows to be mostly lazy. When I did my Sunday night CBS show it’s solo and the bosses are from NYC so they like callers. I’d do a monologue and people would call and react. It’s fine. It’s just not that challenging and so much gets repeated. As a listener I tune in for the hosts, producers, and guests. Hopefully they are all professional communicators. It doesn’t mean calls can’t be funny and good and provide unscripted gold, they can. And it is something that differentiates radio from podcasts, I just find the juice to not be worth the squeeze 9 out of 10 times we go to the phones.

That’s enough for now... I have thoughts on bits, the old days of the score, the laughable idea the score is dying, and plenty more. I know I’ll never win over some of you and that’s ok, I just appreciate your passion for the score and sports radio. It’s a good thing. Any questions?

Do you really think that the Score could survive another six months without sports?

Do you think that Entercom would pay to find out?

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Did you (or any of the regular daytime hosts) have a favorable opinion of the show content provided by the former host (or hosts) of the occasional weeknight and Saturday afternoon shows?

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@audioidkid

Should maybe stop and consider why most of the people who loved your station ten years ago now take a certain amount of pleasure in it's demise. Whether its actually dying or not isn't the point, its that you guys have totally lost touch with your fans to the point they actively want WSCR to fail.

Thank you for posting here, Parkins. Been catching up with you guys on the podcasts, still good stuff and not too disconnected even though you all are remote. Score stories has produced some good stuff.

What is the situation with Mac's contract? I know it was up this month, did he get extended or what? Hope that they keep you guys together, I know Entercom is going through downsizing.

Why are you so cared? Especially as someone who is an avid gambler and stat guy? In Illinois you have a .1% chance of catching this(ok maybe a bit higher if you factor the lack of testing), now take that subset and you have even a fraction of .1% of passing away from this.

If there are less callers why are they holding that long?

You don't find callers worth it but when pulling bits from Les or Francesa it's their interaction with callers.

Perhaps there are less callers because the Score has taken dismissive and antagonistic attitude towards callers? Why would people call when they get belittled for not being allowed to voice their dissenting opinion

His excuse is that its out of an abundance of caution for his child, but even then like one infant has died of the rona in the whole damn world.

What's the inside scoop on this "family" stuff that Larry and Julie were crying about last week?

Are you here to help Julie doxx all of us like she threatened to do in an interview with the Athletic?

Is Mac's paper OK?

Juice mostly beat me to it. But..

How is everyone coping with the loss of Julie DiCaro? Does everyone there have the strength to carry on without her wisdom and moral vision?

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Parko, given all of the changes that has happened to your part of the business over the last 2-3 months, what do you think is likely to be permanent? What do you think is likely to be temporary?

Are the changes that have been made that you would like to see stick around?

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context to juice's post from an article jon greenberg did on the atheltic about julie, camp, conor and shoo:

Quote:

“As of right now, I can’t imagine doing anything other than talk radio, but I also recognize that this isn’t the greatest time to get hired, so I really don’t know what comes after that,” she wrote. “There are still a couple of investigative podcasts I want to do, one sports-related, one not: focused on identifying, exposing and publicly shaming posters in an 800 page thread on a Chicago sports fan site (THIS SITE IS WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT). So maybe I’ll find someone to pay me to do that.”

parkins posts and half of the responses are seeking him to badmouth a former employee.

What are your career plans? Is being on the SCORE in drive time an end game for you? Or are you looking to move on to something more national?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

@seacrest... yes I think the score can survive it. Sports will return and sports talk radio will be there when it does. The Score is an iconic Chicago brand, not to mention profitable. Scary times though for sure.

@Kirkwood... That actually perfectly encapsulates my point. Les probably takes 40 calls a show. Francessa when he was on way more. IF we pulled an interaction with a caller we were pulling the best of the best. That filter is what I prefer. Again, reasonable minds can differ.

suggest you learn to appreciate any call you get. most of the people listening do not hate people the way the hosts do.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

The kid thing is bad radio. The problem with the way you do it and Goff before you is the fact that you guys act like you’re the first adult to experience this stuff. Talking about your infant is akin to talking about your fantasy team. There’s nothing that an infant or toddler does that makes good radio. If you take your teenager on a great fishing trip or to a playoff game, then it might be a fun listen. You walking in a room and waking up your sleeping child is not interesting.

Mac talks about his kids in very limited amounts. You’re heading down a path where it seemed to come up on every show.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Mr. Parkins,
I was critical of your child talk. I'm a Dad...I get it....just selfishly being honest that as a listener it's PTFB radio. you'll find the right balance in time.

Callers v. Non-callers.....sorry, mate....you're just wrong here. It's not the full answer but it's part of the answer. Callers did make the station unique and fun. The other part of it is playing nice with the local teams. Once upon a team....no one cared....no one was worried about pissing off Theo or pissing off "Mr. Reinsdorf". Hosts would tell things like they were. When there was a time for optimism....say the 2000 White Sox....the hosts were complimentary. In this day and age, though, there's too much fear of losing media access so the fact that the Bears are spiraling into a shit show...or the Bulls are a laughing stock....tell it like it is. it is quite possible that the lack of callers is the direct result of years of being chased away / insulted by the Bernsteins of the world. Somewhere along the way, the fun part of sports radio disappeared. THAT is what needs to return.

I will also add....Hockey may be a distant #4 in terms of popularity, but it still matters and is worth some air time. Don't be so afraid of it.

Thank you for checking in. The station only has a few hosts with any entertainment value...you're still one of them on that short list. I hope the station survives....the way it's been going over the last 10 years hard to say that's possible.

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@RFDC... on whether this is an end game for me or my career goals: Well, some of you seem to think I’ll be out of a job and there will be no more drive time at the score. So who knows? Afternoon drive on chicago sports radio is all I ever wanted to do. Now keep in mind when I interned for Mac in 07 and he had that gig and was making insane money that’s all you needed to have a lavishly nice life. Now I have that gig and make a fraction of that but still have a very comfortable income. But I worked two shows on Sundays, national radio fill-in, local tv, etc. I’m a careerist in that I don’t want to limit myself but I absolutely would consider my career a success if I held this job for 25 years and dominated Chicago sports radio in drive time. We haven’t lost one ratings book since moving to PM drive btw despite the W&S page holding the “perennial ratings leader” description.

So that’s to say, I don’t know. I got hired at the score when I was 30 and have been doing drive time since I was 31. I still have plenty of room to improve and grow and industry has changed so much in the last 10 years I cant imagine how much it will change in the next 30.

Bad mouthing other employees was part of what made the station great back in the day. The Murphy - Boers feud carried on for how long?

If you want to look at when the station started to alienate people, hiring someone who hated the main listener demographic was a final fuck you if you don't like it push the button moment.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

How about when Dan Bernstein actively told people on the Score to dox the "OK" guy from the Cubs game? That is when I stopped all listening to the station.

Fostering relationships with interesting listeners who end up being good and/or entertaining callers isn't lazy. It's difficult.

You say you loved the Score. So did I. There was fierce loyalty by the fan base during the golden age of the station. You cannot say the same is true today. I'm not going to pretend to have the answer as to why. I do venture a guess that it isn't so much the listening habits of the fans as it is the dilettante attitude the hosts take towards branding themselves. North is a dumb guy but he did a lot of smart things back in the day. He was able to flip the dynamic of sports talk from guys like Chet being the high priests who were the intermediaries between the gods and the people. Instead, he was one of the people and eliminated the need for an intermediary. Somehow it sure feels like the Score has flipped it back to the god-priest-worshiper model, where the hosts are the buffer for the teams/players. I listened to Chet and generally liked his work. I loved the Score with the Monsters and HFC.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

back in the day all the hosts of note had a blue-collar sensibility. nobody that is inclined to listen to sports radio wants to hear north shore weenies talk about anything. even with Bernstein, Boers was the alpha dog.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Thanks for having the balls to post here Parkins, unlike most of the hosts. Don't head down the path Goff did, limit the kid talk to maybe 5 mins, and keep it moving. Remember, listeners don't really give a fuck.

Could you please tell us your real thoughts on Julie and Conor. I want to say the majority of posters and listeners don't think either are a big loss. Both were kind of shitty at their jobs.

Last question, what's the deal with Nick Wright? Once again, a lot of things I read on message boards and twitter, most viewers/listeners think he is shit as well. I agree with them. I know you are a Wright dick rider, so please explain.

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Fuck Edwards and Zobrist

Regular callers used to be part of the show. Maybe you would get a few good ones if you actually welcomed calls. No one calls because no one welcomes them. No one is saying just open the phone lines for 4 hours a day, but not taking any sends a message that you don't care about the listeners. Picking and choosing texts to read doesn't count.

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I too wish someone from the station would repudiate DiCaro-ism.

Exactly...filtering texts just confirms the hosts' biases. Taking random calls and ending up with a live wire is more potentially interesting.

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EXPOSE HIM !!!!

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

I mean it should not be that difficult. She loathed her colleagues:



And her audience:

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Dedicated on-topic caller segment twice a week can't hurt things, can it?

It seems like calling-in and emails have long since died. Texting is so impersonal. I don't give a fuck about what the "texter from the 630" or especially the 815, has to say...but, I would be interested in a Gridiron Assassin or Illinimac text.

Seems like the only person that is ever mentioned by name is Peoria Matt, which makes sense given the Spiegel & Parkins show history.

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@audioidkid