By Mark Wilson 2/9/2014

There’s been an ongoing debate lately about the phrase “pop culture” and its roll in modern sports talk radio. I see it more than ever. I started thinking about it when I saw the TV promo for the 50th anniversary of The Beatles on the old CBS Ed Sullivan Show.

February 9, 1964.

David Letterman has been pushing the show since he will actually be ON it. All week long he’s had various musical artists and acts doing their renditions of Beatles tunes.

Sting, Flaming Lips, Sean Lennon and others have graced the stage of “The Late Show” to coincide with the end of Jay Leno’s run on NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

Maybe it was intuitive counter programming.

The more I watched, the more it hit me.

You could make a case that current “pop culture” BEGAN on February 9, 1964.

50 years ago.

Checking Wikipedia, I noticed that “popular culture” became a phrase as early as the 19th century. It reads, “the term has denoted the education and general culturedness of the lower classes.”

“Official culture” was the term used by the highbrow society or “upper class.”

Keep that in your memory bank for a moment.

Prior to The Beatles coming to America and their appearance on Ed Sullivan, “pop culture” was kind of confined to Elvis Presley and John Kennedy’s election as a “Camelot” president in 1960.

Eisenhower was the president in the 1950’s and he ended up being the last of the “war time” leaders. Television was in its infancy with radio still the more preferred medium; that would change in due time. Some believe the crossover came during the Kennedy/Nixon debates.

Oh sure, there was “popular music” in the 40’s and 50’s but not the kind of music we term as “pop” over the past five decades.

The Beatles shattered all those ideals the minute they landed in New York City.

More than 70 million Americans watched the performance that night from John, Paul, George and Ringo. To this day it remains in the top 20 list of ALL TIME highest rated non-sports/Super Bowl TV shows.

MASH, Gone with The Wind (parts 1 and 2), Cheers, 1970 Bob Hope Christmas Show, The Fugitive and Roots are among the others on that list.

Ed Sullivan with The Beatles got a staggering 45 rating with a 60 share of the viewing audience that cold February night.

At the time, it WAS the highest rated television show in the short history of the “boob tube.”

Ironically, it leaped over a show that had aired less than a month before.

On January 8, 1964, an episode of the sit-com “Beverly Hillbillies” had pulled in a 44 rating with a 57 share making it the king of all television shows. In fact, if you look at the CURRENT list of the top 100 shows of all time you will see a number of “Hillbillies” and “Sullivan” shows that are still on there from the year 1964.

Toss in a few “Gunsmoke” episodes and not many will refute the idea that 1964 was the year TELEVISION overtook radio.

50 years ago.

With Leno’s departure from the “Tonight Show” in favor of Jimmy Fallon following the Sochi Olympic winter games, it’s interesting to note the genesis of that viewing staple.
What began as “Broadway Open House” with Morey Amsterdam (of Dick Van Dyke Show fame) and Jerry Lester… morphed into “Tonight” with Steve Allen. Fred Allen, no relation to Steve, was supposed to be America’s next big TV star coming over from radio, died two weeks before he was going to make his debut on a new late night talk fest.

Steve Allen hosted the “Tonight Show” from 1954 to ’57. Controversial Jack Paar, who hailed from Jackson, Michigan, took over and grabbed audiences until Johnny Carson became host in 1962. It took a while for Carson to catch on but when he did… “Tonight” exploded.

The year?

1964.

From then on, Johnny ruled late night until his departure in 1992 to make way for Leno. Jay had won a battle with Letterman to replace Carson. If Johnny had cared more, Dave would have won that fight. Instead, NBC executives Brandon Tartikoff and Warren Littlefield along with Chairman Bob Wright favored Leno.

But, in 1964, Carson’s star was on the rise.

He was a “pop culture” phenom along with Sullivan, Lucille Ball and yes— “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

The Beatles enhanced the phrase when they busted out their mop top hair cuts on Sullivan’s show that February 9th.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights saw ’64 as a significant year.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act came that year. The dominoes fell shortly after; music included.

“Motown” was bigger than ever in 1964.

Even though Berry Gordy, Jr. founded his Detroit record label, as Tamla Records, in 1959 and then merged it into “Motown” a year later, it didn’t really cook until the mid-60’s. From 1961 to 1971, Motown had more than 100 top 10 hits. It was no mystery that as the civil rights movement gained steam… so did Motown music.

Andy Warhol is another who is given credit for the rise of “pop culture.”

When it came to art, Warhol was Michael Jordan.

1964 was the infamous “American Supermarket Exhibit” on New York City’s Upper East Side. Warhol became synonymous with a pop “counterculture” that included various excesses into alcohol and drugs.

The hip party scene was practically INVENTED by Warhol and his celebrity friends.

Between all that and the escalating war in Vietnam, American sought out its vices like never before. Even the prohibition bootlegging era of the 1920’s and 30’s couldn’t compare with what was going down in the United States from ’64 well into the 1970’s.

Hippies, Woodstock, psychedelic drugs and other such eccentricities became the rule rather than the exception.

It can all be attributed to The Beatles arrival in 1964.

Or, at the very least, it was quite the coincidence.

50 years of hard pop culture has led us to the debate today on sports talk radio.

With the advent of the internet and World Wide Web (thanks a MILLION Al Gore!)… audio, video and information are readily available in a moments notice.

Laughable is how to describe life BEFORE the internet.

I remember working in television and waiting until stories hit “the wire” before we would know just about ANYTHING. The only video there was came via a camera we shot with. Sporting events were still special when they were on television.

Now, who needs TV?

You can get all the highlights and complete games you want with the click of a mouse.

Wings win? Presto! The highlights are up on any number of websites instantly.

Pistons lose? Voila! I saw all I need to see within moments of game’s end.

When it comes to interaction by fans, and some athletes and coaches too, you can go to various blogs or chatrooms or message boards online and let your opinions be seen and/or heard.

In 1964— that option didn’t exist.

By 1994? It came in the form of dedicated sports talk radio.

Certainly there was sports talk long before ’94.

In East Lansing, I did a sports talk show as early as 1978.

Yep, 1978.

It was a cable access TV program for WELM-TV called, “From the Press Box.” At times it would be just me in the control room physically pushing the buttons with a single camera on focused on me. At other times, I had a co-host and we did a two camera shoot in the small studio that WELM had.
Little did I know that many people, including players and coaches in the MSU sporting community watched that shitty program. Many of them I had played with or was friends with.

Ron Mason became the hockey coach at MSU in 1979. He and his team watched my cable show religiously. His lead assistant, Shawn Walsh, used to make comments to me when I would go to Munn Arena to cover the team in my real gig working for a Lansing TV station.

He loved to needle me about the crap I said on that WELM thing.

Walsh went on to be the head coach at the University of Maine in Orono and won two national championships with the Black Bears. Sadly, Shawn died of cancer in 2000 just before Red Wings’ goalie Jimmy Howard was about to commit to Maine.

I did that show as a lark but it WAS a sports call-in talk show.

Speaking of “lark,” MSU football lineman Randy Lark was watching one night when I made some disparaging comments about his Spartan gridiron buddies. So much so, that he felt compelled to drive down to the station on Trowbridge Road.

Lark and teammate Greg Lauble, who was Dan Marino’s best friend growing up in Pennsylvania, busted right into the studio while I was still “on the air.”

Lauble was one tough son of a bitch and Lark set the bench pressing record in the Michigan State weight room. I got along with them fine but… they gave me shit nonetheless in front of my expansive viewing audience.

I use “expansive” loosely.

After saying their piece, and looking like they were angrier than all get out, they left the studio without killing me.

Side note— we all went to the bar afterwards. Dooley’s, I believe.

After returning to Michigan following my work at WTVJ-TV in Miami, I did a sports talk RADIO show for the first time.

It was 1985, and WJIM-AM asked me and a former Spartan athlete to co-host the show.

Yep, 1985.

Skip Macholz was my partner and it was named, “SportsLine” and we did it from a bar near the Michigan State University campus called, “The Village Inn.”

Macholz had played football for MSU under legendary coach Duffy Daugherty in the early ‘70’s. He played professionally with the old Detroit Wheels of the World Football League.

Like Lauble, he was a tough son of a bitch.

I even used to call him, “SOB Macholz.”

Skip was friends with Pistons’ broadcaster George Blaha. They were tight. Blaha would join us frequently on the show.

We had some classic arguments on “SportsLine” and Macholz would rant long before it was fashionable to do that on radio. This was still more than two years before WFAN New York became a dedicated sports radio station.

The show lasted a couple of years because it was only a novelty; it didn’t make too much money. Sadly, Skip passed away due to cancer in July of 2012 at the age of 60.

Back in 1986, there was NO indication that FAN was considering a flip to full time sports.

July 1, 1987 it happened.

A country music outlet turned into “the world’s first 24 hour a day sports talk station.”

ESPN was already eight years into its existence as a sports television property. It was only natural to believe that radio would follow suit at some point. It was MORE natural to believe that the biggest market on the planet would be the first city to accept such a format.

The moment that country music came off and sports talk went on, WFAN sold advertising like crazy. Clients begged to get a piece of the action. Their demographic was 25-54 males and they all found their way to AM 1050.

By 1988, NBC Radio went away; selling all their stations.

WFAN wanted the big AM 660 signal.

On October 7th, they patched into 660 and celebrated the 25th year of the move in 2013.

It took a while but other cities followed.

Seven years after FAN officially became “all sports,” Detroit got their own talk hub. Lorna Gladstone came in from WGN Chicago to begin WDFN.

In July of 1994, WWWW-AM changed call letters to WDFN with the moniker, “The Fan.” AM 1130, whose roots go back to WCAR in 1939, started broadcasting 24 hour a day sports talk with the help of a national network.

One On One Sports Network was one of the first and featured a guy named “Papa” Joe Chevalier. He was kind of the grandfather of sports talk.

I got to know Papa Joe a bit in Las Vegas.

He told some great stories of the early days of building a network brand. He had to literally get friends and family to phone his show just to take some sports calls.

I was there in Vegas when Papa Joe died at age 62, July of 2011.

Now, this isn’t going to be a DFN retrospective. We can do that later in the year as DFN approaches its 20th anniversary. Even though they have just one local show and carry mostly the Fox Sports Radio Network, they are still doing sports. Albeit, their ratings have dipped to an all-time low of 0.1 in the overall numbers.

Detroit right now has FIVE dedicated sports talk stations.

WXYT-FM is the monolith with monster ratings and broadcasting all four major Motor City sports teams. WMGC just flipped their big FM signal to sports back in August of 2013. WCAR-AM brings in NBC’s network offering and WXYT-AM carries the CBS network lineup.

The only network not represented in Motown is Yahoo Sports Radio but they are working to find a broadcast partner.
David Gow owns Yahoo as well as his own sports station in Houston, Texas. Gow bought the old Sporting News Radio which was One on One.

Rob and I did fill in shows on Sporting News Radio.

In 2014, more than ever, the debate rages on as to what sports talk should be in the 21st century.

I think it’s a split.

Half the people who listen want TOTAL sports content with nothing else.

“No fluff… the real stuff,” says Parker.

He loves that damn line.

The other half wants a little “guy talk” mixed in with their sports. Pop culture usually being the axiom they use to indicate that.

Program directors of these stations vary in their opinion of what to offer.

Being a PD myself, I have never seen anything wrong with tossing in lifestyle, movies, TV, etc. as part of the daily dose of blabber. I believe listeners WANT to know their hosts on an intimate level. At the end of the day the host or hosts are the only constants.

You can have all the great guests you want from the sporting world on the air but they won’t be back tomorrow. So, a strong host staff is essential for ratings and revenue success.

If the people bore me… I am not coming back for more.

Detroit has always been lucky to have good hosts. Other big cities aren’t as lucky or don’t work hard enough to provide interesting and provocative characters. 20 years have gone by since WDFN flipped and since then the names have remained the same for the most part.

This is not a good town for outsiders.

Some of blown in like the polar vortex and have been shown the radio door just as fast.

I would say that MOST big cities are similar in that regard. They don’t take kindly to new people. The philosophy is simple. Listeners need to know that their hosts “are all in” on the community and the teams.

They don’t have to be rah rah root root root but… all in regardless of where they grew up.

So they talk about the best hamburger in the city. So what?

If they have a point to make and make it compelling then ANYTHING can be good talk radio.

When 9/11 happened in 2001, Rob and I spent more than a week opening up the phones and letting people vent about the atrocities in New York and the Pentagon that fateful day. We dumped all our music, sound effects, stingers and other bells and whistles that usually accompanied our Parker and The Man Show.

It helped.

Let’s face it; there was NO WAY we could talk about the Lions struggles or the Tigers changes or anything else sports wise until we knew it was safe to get back into the water. Meaning… until our fans/listeners were comfortable with resuming sports talk, it was 9/11 all the way.

Obviously that’s an isolated incident that twisted the fate of our nation in unspeakable ways. Trying to put words to it only made sense during a nonsensical situation.

Everyone wanted to say something.

Don’t even think for a moment that I am comparing the best hamburger to 9/11. However, the idea is the same. Allow folks to put their OWN spin on a topic even if it doesn’t relate to sports.

There are political shows and showbiz shows and music shows without a doubt. But, the power that sports talk stations have to gauge public sentiment can not be denied.

Yes, even if it happens to be about hamburgers.

As we recall February 9, 1964 when a four kids from Liverpool, England joined an old man on his TV show in the same building David Letterman turns down the thermostat to freeze his audience, remember what it did to American entertainment.

The Beatles introduced us to a lot more than just “A Hard Day’s Night.”

They introduced us to a pop culture wave. The British Invasion was really a Pop Culture Invasion that hasn’t stopped since.

Reality TV, the Kardashians, Justin Bieber’s troubles and anything else under the TMZ sun have become common gossip points for this generation. Crap we never thought about is now first and foremost in many minds.

Add to that the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram explosion and it is a whole different social world out there.

Sports talk radio just reflects what’s happening in our world and that isn’t about to change any time soon.

I’m watching the Sochi Olympics as I type this.

We have access to everything around the globe in an instant. I see Vladimir Putin clapping. I see him clapping in HD quality digital perfection. After 1980, I would have bet money there would never be an Olympic games again in the former Soviet Union.

“Back in the USSR,” to be sure!

Thanks Beatles. Thanks for opening that Pandora’s Box. I think I’ll talk about it on our next podcast.

Or, maybe not.

Oh, man! I waffle; it varies from minute to minute.

I know one thing sports fans. Paris Hilton isn’t getting a second of air time on the show. Unless of course she eats a hamburger like she did in the Carl’s Jr. TV spot. I need to watch that again on YouTube right after I download these two songs onto my android phone and I-pod.

Yikes! Stop me! I am out of pop culture control!

See what you started 50 years ago, Fab Four?