Radio Days

little more than five years ago, at the start of the 1992 football season, I began my part-time career in sports talk radio. George Lapides, the originator of the sports-talk format in Memphis, had just left WREC-AM 600 to start a show at another station. His former partner, Dave Woloshin, decided it would take an entire team to replace Lapides. I was, much to my surprise, invited to join the team.

1992. Steve Matthews was about to make his first start at Memphis State, which hadn't yet changed its name. The Tiger football team was three games away from a boycott that would make national news. Larry Finch had just gone to the Elite Eight.

A lot has happened since my first day in the little Beale Street studio. The room was crowded that day. Besides Woloshin, there was Mark McClellan, the day-to-day co-host, and three newspaper reporters who would alternate days: Lynn Zinser and Ron Higgins from The Commercial Appeal, and me.

The team changed. McClellan eventually left the station and now does a morning show with Lapides at WHBQ-AM 56. Zinser moved on, first to The Charlotte Observer and then the Philadelphia Daily News. Higgins now works for a paper in Mobile, Alabama. I stayed around. Until this week.

Friday will be my last show at WREC. I won't bore you with the details, but I have resigned my spot on Sportsline, which recently has had its time slot cut in half by the station's new program director, Paul Davis. The "longest-running sports talk show in Memphis" is now only an hour long. Both Davis and station manager Sherry Sawyer deny any plans to phase out the show, but, to me, its future looks shaky.

I have a copy of the latest Arbitron ratings on my desk. It might as well be a chemistry table. I can't make much of it. This much is clear: Sports talk shows, despite the proliferation of the genre in Memphis, do not draw large ratings. Neither Lapides' morning show on WHBQ or Sportsline on WREC draw big numbers. And despite some lofty claims from the other local station operating a sports-talk format, WSFZ-AM 1030 does not have a single show that even registers in the Summer 1997 Arbitron book.

That's not to say that the sports-talk format doesn't make money. Sold properly, sports talk shows can be quite profitable. Advertisers like the demographics (men with disposable income) and they like the association with sports and sports figures.

The sports talk landscape has changed considerably since 1992. We went head-to-head with Lapides, Mike Fleming at WMC-AM 790, Jeff Weinberger and John Rainey (at different locations), and various others. One summer we even competed with Chicks owner David Hersh, who bought time for a show on WHBQ. There were days when Sportsline, because of a contract Hersh had with WREC, had to originate from Tim McCarver Stadium before Chicks baseball games. As we sat sweating in that hot, stuffy pressbox, Hersh was trying to steal our listeners one notch down the dial.

I'll miss the lunacy of talk radio. I'll miss the callers -- Mary, Charles, Bill, Ron, Caddy, Louisville Johnny, Richard, Wes -- Sportsline is blessed with a large group of regulars and they really make the show.

Over the years, Woloshin and I developed a nice comfort zone, a radio shtick. We became so good at arguing that during a phone conversation several months ago I told him I would no longer argue with him for free -- only when I get paid for it. (Call me, Dave. We'll argue.)

I'll miss Leonard Blakely, the producer of Sportsline, and a veteran at WREC. Blakely is simply the best in Memphis at what he does. I always appreciated him most on the few occasions I worked the show without him. He taught me what little I know about hosting a talk show.

I'll miss the exposure. One day I spoke to a man standing in front of me in a grocery line. He turned around and said, "You're Dennis Freeland from Sportsline. I recognize your voice." For the regular listeners, the voices of Sportsline are part of the daily routine. Many of them aren't happy with the time change and have said so.

There are things I won't miss about talk radio. The genre has been overrun in this market by people who are not informed, who, purposely or not, dispense misinformation. They have cheapened the format. I worry that so much incorrect information goes out and in a small way becomes part of our public record.

I won't miss the feeling I often got riding home from the station that I had talked too much about things I knew too little about. Talk is cheap and there is no delete key in radio.

I won't miss Larry Finch bashing and I won't miss those endless conversations about the Rebel flag.

But, it's an intoxicating medium, and someday I may come back to radio. If I do, I hope it's at a station as competent and professional as WREC.