Back to a Roggin and Simers Squared broadcast from 2007 - static, or Tracy Morgan? You decide.

Yes, we're still plunging back into my blogging archives.

One constant throughout my nearly ten-year blogging career is that I enjoy a typical Southern California commute - in my case, from my home in Ontario to my workplace in Orange County. When you have long commutes to and from work, an operating radio (or, during the last couple of years, access to a phone-powered entertainment source such as Spotify that can be routed through your car speakers) becomes essential.

Back in July 2007, I spent many of my mornings listening to a local sports talk show called Roggin and Simers Squared, and I spent many of my afternoons listening to a local sports talk show that included Petros Papadakis. At lunchtime, I would sometimes listen to a local midday show that featured Steve Hartman. Since 2007, the fortunes of many of these broadcasters have changed - Petros Papdakis is now heard nationally, and Tracy Simers has left radio altogether (and is apparently happy about this). But at that time, all of these people were heard on the same station, which explains my introduction to this post:

[L]et's note that there are a lot of asynchronous communications going around KLAC, where the hosts on one radio show say something about hosts of another radio show, then the hosts on the other radio show do a "Guess what THEY said?!?" routine, ad nauseum.

So apparently the question of radio professionalism has been the subject of one of these debates. The players are Steve Hartman of the Loose Cannons, Petros Papadakis, and T.J. and Tracy Simers.

Now ordinarily, one would expect that such a post would launch into a detailed analysis of what Mr. and Ms. Simers said during my morning commute. But that isn't where this post went.

Fred Roggin was beginning to weigh in on the latter issue when my car radio started broadcasting static. After checking the other stations, I confirmed that KLAC's broadcast wasn't going over the air.

This serves as a reminder - you can get any yahoo (even, for several years, myself) in front of a microphone, but if you don't have the engineers doing their thing, it will all be for naught.

For the next several minutes, the KLAC frequency broadcast nothing but static.

And my post spent several paragraphs discussing the static that I was hearing over the radio. Profound, huh?

Eventually the broadcast returned to the airwaves, but it didn't improve. And it wasn't the fault of Fred Roggin, Tracy Simers, or even T.J. Simers (who can be blamed for everything, presumably). This was the fault of their guest of the morning.

The main point of the interview was to ask Tracy Morgan about his ankle bracelet. It turns out that Morgan is wearing an ankle bracelet due to a previous arrest for drunk driving....

After Roggin and Simers Squared brought up the ankle bracelet, Morgan launched into some cross between a comedy routine, a rant, and a therapy session. After Tracy Morgan stated how funny he was, Tracy Simers made a point of mentioning another comedian (Bill Bellamy) who declared he was funny when he wasn't funny at all.

Morgan didn't take the hint, and continued to declare his wit. My favorite example:

(shouting) I MADE LORNE MICHAELS FART!

But I redeemed myself at the end of the post by talking about something that I presumably should have been talking about all along - radio professionalism. For those who are not familiar with the three hosts of the old show, let me explain that Fred Roggin is a broadcast professional with decades of radio and television experience; T.J. Simers is a professional journalist with a little bit of radio broadcast experience; and Tracy Simers is a professional accountant whose radio career (since ended) consisted of appearances with her dad T.J.

As T.J. was probably fervently praying for a commercial, he (and his daughter) deferred to Fred to continue with the interview. Fred said nothing.

A few months later, Roggin and Simers Squared was off the air. Since 2007, the morning show has been occupied by Dan Patrick. And Tracy Morgan has appeared as a guest - and he immediately started by talking about farting.