Sports Station WEEI Takes “Grit and Balls” Literally
By Bob Branco
December 29, 2018
I have had conversations with several of you in the past about the quality of sports talk on Radio Station WEEI in Boston, Massachusetts. To make a long story short, they spend as much time gossiping about their co-workers and their personal problems rather than talking sports.
I guess former basketball player Kevin Garnette’s expression, “Grit and Balls”, means a heck of a lot more to the WEEI talk show hosts than we thought. On Thursday, December 20, I woke up early and turned on the radio. Mutt and Callahan, the morning show on WEEI, had just started. With all that’s going on with the Patriots and the Celtics these days, I expected the hosts to dive right into sports at the beginning of the show. Well, I should have known better, because normally they don’t discuss sports first. With that said, WEEI sunk to a new low.
Chris Curtis, the producer of the Mutt and Callahan Show, was in the hospital recovering from a medical procedure. The doctors needed to “untangle” Chris’s genitals in order for him to be fertile again. Many of you are probably asking why we need to know all that. Well, that’s my point. Why do we need to know all that? Despite all the sports news going on, the very first telephone interview on the Mutt and Callahan show that day was with Chris Curtis. They wanted Chris to tell the public about the operation on his genitals, and whether they felt a little sensitive when he put his hands down his pants. Remember, folks, this is Sports Radio WEEI.
I want to reassure everyone that I am not making fun of Chris Curtis. What he went through is tough for any man. However, I don’t feel that everyone should know what happened. If I needed my genitals operated on, only my fiancé and my closest family members would know. I wouldn’t need to go public with it. Yet this is the quality of information that WEEI loves to broadcast. It seems that they would rather talk about someone’s genitals than why hockey coaches pull goal tenders near the end of games. I know because I tried talking about hockey goal tenders once, but the hosts hung up on me. Perhaps if these goal tenders had genital surgery, the hosts would have listened to me.
Although a majority of the people I talk to believe that WEEI is going down the drain because of their obnoxious behavior, their producers tell us that the ratings are excellent, and that WEEI is the number one rated radio station in the area. Am I missing something? I don’t think people who speak negatively about WEEI are lying to me. It’s possible that producers at WEEI don’t want to admit anything negative to the public, otherwise, if it’s really number one, than I have no choice but to conclude that most of its listeners like to hear drama as much as sports talk. What else can I think?
On our sports podcast, my co-hosts and I refer to WEEI as Jerry Springer Radio. If you listen as often as I do, you probably know why we feel that way. I find myself listening to WEEI less and less because of its playground mentality. Yet, if they are rated number one, then that’s fine for that part of our population who appreciates that kind of mentality. I do not.
About the Author
Robert T. Branco resides in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and is the author of five self-published books. He is a community organizer, tutors persons with visual impairments, has written columns for local and international organizations, and publishes a monthly online newsletter, The Consumer Vision. Bob’s website, with full information about his books, is http://www.dldbooks.com/robertbranco/.
