WHEN Detroit radio sports-talk host Mike Valenti apologized on the air Wednesday, he certainly sounded as if he meant it.
Two days earlier, Valenti had read an instant-feedback joke sent from a listener – a sick joke about Corey Smith, the free-agent defensive end who had played for the Lions the past three years and was among three men lost at sea off Florida’s West Coast.
“It was a very, very, very stupid decision on my part,” said WXYT’s Valenti, quoted in the Detroit Free Press. Valenti, 28, co-hosts Detroit’s highest-rated sports talk program. “It was probably the dumbest, most reprehensible decision I’ve made in my radio career.”
Valenti wasn’t done. “I just offer you my sincerest apologies. It was completely ridiculous to put it on the air. And again, it comes to me. The only thing I can promise you as my listeners: It won’t happen again. Otherwise, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t deserve to be around.”
Strong. Convincing, too.
And yet, as ear-witnesses to what sports-talk, “guy-talk” and commercial radio have become the past 30-35 years, does Valenti, or anyone else, coast-to-coast, starting here with Craig Carton, owe anyone an apology? For what? Doing what it takes?
How else do you make it – get hired, for starters – unless you fill the formula, unless you are willing to behave as a social vandal, a remorseless punk, a trash-talking, name-calling, crotch-grabbing, did-you-hear-what-he-just-said shock artist?
It doesn’t even matter if you’re any good at it.
And of course, when the inevitable, from Anthony to Opie, occurs, station management and ownership will issue their tsk, tsk, tsks – their acknowledgements of “inappropriate” content and assurances that “we don’t condone” whatever it is that caused the blowback.
In May, Mark Madden, host of ESPN Radio’s Pittsburgh affiliate, was fired several days after cracking that he was upset to learn that Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with cancer – after all, Madden continued, he’d been hoping Sen. Kennedy would “live long enough to be assassinated.”
Hey, that’s sports-talk radio!
Because Madden’s show was highly rated, it took a few days for the decision to come down to can him; it took a while before ESPN determined that this one, good ratings and all, wasn’t worth indulging.
Four months later, Madden was back on the air, at another attitude-enriched Pittsburgh radio station. Inappropriate has become the prerequisite. If you’re not inappropriate you’re inappropriate; you’ve got no shot, no business being in the business.
Selected for stardom by WFAN because he was a fully committed professional lowlife with no other discernible skill – he once recited a vulgar poem mocking those afflicted with breast cancer – Sid Rosenberg, after FAN finally had too much of a bad thing, quickly found work as a drive-time radio host on an all-sports station in Miami. He’s the industry’s ideal of a Sports-talk host.
Don Imus, fired for “inappropriate” comments that management and ownership “could not condone,” was replaced with Carton. Why, because Carton’s better? Or because he’s just as bad, maybe even worse?
*
Are you sitting down? Sad news.
For the first time in four years, the MLB season will open without Giuseppe Franco‘s “ProCede” hair replacement elixir serving YES’s Yankee telecasts and SNY’s Met games as a primary sponsor. According to sources, ProCede has sustained some setbacks.
Hey, when your generosity is such that you sell a $450 product for only $19.95, that’s bound to happen.
*
Bill Walton is still home in San Diego, healing from spinal fusion surgery four weeks ago. He says he’s bored. How do you think we feel?
There is something about sports that makes just about every broadcaster and news writer reach for cliches he or she would not otherwise speak. Last week, when Ch. 2 News anchor Steve Bartlestein reported that the Knicks had lost to the Heat, he added that Dwyane Wade had scored 24 in the final, yikes, “stanza.”
Mike Francesa could walk through Bronx Botanical Garden and figure the trees and flowers had been put there for him. Last week, in letting listeners know he and David Wright have patched things up, Francesa implied Wright was the eager party, as if the kid couldn’t sleep at night until he squared things with King Mikey.
Lookalikes: Mark Ruckhaus, Glen Rock, N.J., submits “Cash Cab” driver/quizmaster Ben Bailey and Mets’ play-by-player Gary Cohen. . . . Give Jonathan Coachman credit. The ESPN studio anchor and ex-MSG Network host is one of the few to have worked for Vince McMahon‘s WWE and/or XFL who has left that info in his bio.
If you have a sports-talk show and you really haven’t followed college baskets, but you want to sound as if you have, just ask aloud whether the Big East should have seven, eight or even nine teams make “the Big Dance.” That should do it.
Note to President Obama: Given that no one does more with less – year after, after year – Lou Lamoriello should only serve as Devils’ GM? Why not GM of the United States? . . . A town in North Jersey has sent out an e-mail reminding parents that tomorrow is “Rating Night” – for kindergartners participating in T-Ball. Seriously.
The Giants, Jets, Mets and Yanks are all in the process of calling back ticket subscribers, those who not long ago were told to “Take it or leave it,” to ask if they’re really, really sure that they want to leave it.