1010 'The Beast' in Tampa pre-empts portions of Mike & Mad Dog this week.

1010AM in Tampa supposedly carries Mike and the Mad Dog from 3-6P weekdays, but don't count on it. You may get college football talk instead as I did both yesterday and today (Wednesday). In the 3PM hour on Tuesday was a rambling conversation by their local guy, possibly a guy named Fenton who clearly adores being on the radio and believes he should be on at all times.

• I even listened during their update to see if anyone was actually managing the station. I was hoping for an announcement that 'we'll be returning to the Mike and the Mad Dog show at such and such a time,' but no luck. Finally they picked up the show because it was on when I checked at about 4:45.

Then of course today during the 5PM hour I tuned in and got another rambling college football conversation with their local guy. I heard no mention of why Mike and the Mad Dog show had been preempted.

• I wonder if any advertisers thought they were getting airtime on Mike and Dog which they didn't get? I get the impression this one local guy in particular on 1010 won't be happy until he's on the air 24 hours a day--maybe he's the owner's son. On Monday, Mike and Dog talked only about football from 3-6p--I heard not 1 word about baseball and they easily could've done it for awhile (the Andy Pettitte return was huge news and Mike likes Pettitte). I heard about 95% of the show. I thought, boy the guys at 1010AM must be happy today, they're getting 100% football from Mike and Dog, no chance they'll preempt them on an all football day.

I also have WFAN streaming since 1010's signal is poor and the risk of preemption is great, so I checked what was being discussed during 1010's preemption (of Mike and the Mad Dog) and it was of course baseball. Baseball almost does not exist in Tampa, and to the extent it does it's NEVER the Yankees that anyone thinks of. It's the (Devil) Rays, which is good, I'm glad.

• But when you get Mike and Chris, you're going to get a lot of baseball talk and a lot of Yankees. Neither of which 1010AM cares about. Nor apparently does it care about the few listeners who strain to get their weak signal in hopes of hearing Mike and the Mad Dog like the station advertised.

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon