Riding the subway to work with Crank

Last Wednesday, Crank started a segment centered on a study of subway riders in Chicago who were commuting to work.  The gist of the study claimed riders who spoke to a stranger during the ride had a "happier" day than those who chose to ignore those around them.

Simple enough of a story to start a discussion.  Could've been a good topic of discussion if one were creative enough to link a study of the city-dwelling Chicago commuters going to work to the rural-dwelling Delmarva commuters going to work, but, alas, we had Crank leading the discussion.


Is this the subway Crank rides to work every day?

Crank went on for about ten minutes talking about riding to work on a subway and asking his listeners if they were apt to talk to a stranger.  After about the dozenth time of mentioning subways, one of our critics felt compelled to call in with one simple question: just how many subways are there on Delmarva?

Crank fumbled around and said, "Ok, you're riding in your car with strangers.  Are you apt to talk to them?"

Our critic responded "If there are strangers in my truck, then I picked up a hitchhiker, and I'm not likely to do that except for maybe once in a blue moon."

Crank promptly hung up the phone and rambled on about airplanes or something while deriding our critic as incapable of understanding an analogy of riding in an enclosed vehicle with strangers.  Even in a city, we don't know of many people who commute to work on an airplane nor do we know of many Delmarvans who ride in their vehicles with strangers or ride a subway to work so, no, we don't know what Crank rambled on about. 

There were many ways Crank could've sparked a good discussion...and maybe even been funny at it.  The problem is that to have been able to effectively pull off a funny fifteen minute segment, a creative, funny person would've had to been sitting behind the mike.  WZBH has no such talent on staff.  A creative, funny sidekick could've have helped Crank out, but Leah is fairly new and was relatively quiet during the segment.

Why do we bring this up?  Remember when we said WZBH was hemorrhaging talent?  In less than a week, Leah has been axed from the Crank Show and moved to DJ from ten until three.  Tonya, who used to hold that slot, disappeared, maybe because work interfered with her twelve-hour-a-day beauty rest.

The latest shake up, in less than a month, means Crank is back on his show, solo.  He's had many other solo opportunities, including a solo gig at another station, and flopped miserably.  Do the powers that be at WZBH simply enjoy watching a fish flopping around out of water as it gasps its last breath of air?

Here's our tally of lost talent in less than a year:

1. JJ
2. Captain Blue
3. Doug McKenzie
4. Ian McKay (missing, not confirmed gone)
5. Sarah
6. Phoebus
7. Spera
8. Tonya

We'll probably be adding Tyler soon.  After our glowing review of his show, Tyler has moved away from talking about the music.  The drastic change became painfully obvious to us when he talked about bullying a customer at a convenience store.  His story sounded reminiscent of a Matt Walsh story, only with a more pleasant voice.  A little over three months after writing that glowing review, we really haven't heard Tyler speak as enthusiastically about the music as he did that day we reviewed his show or even when we first heard him back in March. 

As listeners, we can only connect the dots the best we can given the information we have.  When a no-talent is also Director of Operations, the team under him (or her, if it were the case) can't be any better than the no-talent.  For WZBH, that means Crank is the cream-of-the-crop in talent.  Everyone else needs to be even more boring and disjointed than Crank or they need to tone down their talent so as not to outshine "the boss". 

If the powers that be would grow a pair, they would can Crank, try to woo back some of their past talent or simply start over with new local talent.  And they would terminate the Nikki Sixx nationally syndicated show contract.  My gosh.  Nikki Sixx's show is Crank's show, only with a more pleasant voice.