Phoebus leaves radio and sparks fly on the fifth reincarnation of the WSE

What a surprise on Thursday morning's Worst Show Ever.  One of us tuned in and two noticeable changes brought a smile to his face. 

First, the wallflower, Sarah, aggressively challenged Crank's opinions and came into full bloom.  The subject they were discussing was whether or not college football players should be paid.  Our critic wasn't keeping score, but he claimed Sarah won.  All he could tell us was Sarah felt strongly that players should not be paid because they signed a contract and, besides, they're getting a $100K free education...that's pay enough.  She expressed herself the way our critic knew she could.  All he could remember from Crank's side was subtle deferment to Sarah's point of view. 

The second thing he noticed was the absence of Phoebus.  With the lump of clay gone, our critic knew why the wallflower had a chance to bloom.  Flowers wither in clay, but bloom profusely when there's a lot of crap around.  No wonder Sarah came into full bloom Thursday morning.

Doing a little research later that night, we discovered that Phoebus isn't on vacation.  He's left radio to join the coaching staff at World Gym Millsboro.  We wish him the best and advise him to refrain from using his ailing Sylvester the Cat impersonation.  He might get his ass kicked by those much bigger guys we see on the website photo.

Our interest piqued, we all tuned in this morning promptly at six.  Sarah was a little more mellow than how our critic described her performance the previous day, but, yes, finally we all can say that the wallflower is blooming!  Ok, the three guys are grinning ear-to-ear, but the two women only begrudgingly acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, Sarah will blossom into an entertaining morning host show.

Right now, Sarah is a flint spark trying to ignite wet kindling.  Sarah is about ten years younger than Crank and Crank is entering his middle-aged years.  Even though the two more or less agree philosophically (conservative Christian), the age difference alone should ignite sparks to set the show on fire.  At least us three guys are hoping Sarah is the woman we always pictured would be able to body slam Crank to the ground and shut him up.  Wouldn't it be a wonderful show if Sarah sat in the Captain's seat and every time Crank spoke, his thoughts were prefaced with "Permission to speak, ma'am"?

As for reviewing the content of the show, honestly, none of us paid much attention, nor did any of us listen to the whole show.  We all were more interested in the dynamics between Crank and Sarah than we were about what they had to say.  We've seen the spark and we may have to listen more.   From Crank and JJ to Crank, JJ, and Sarah to JJ and Sarah to Crank, Phoebus, and Sarah to Crank and Sarah, maybe WZBH has finally hit a winning formula for the morning show. 

What is Matt Walsh doing now?

For those who care, or even remember Matt Walsh, Matt announced today that he is leaving radio for good. We first caught wind of this about a month ago, but facts were nonexistent. The program director at WLAP in KY only said his show was being cancelled.

 

Just like when he was fired from WZBH, he has made his leaving sound as if it were voluntary. Three radio stations in as many years - we doubt he left voluntarily. At least this time he admits two things - one, more people read his blog than listened to his radio show (out of a national audience, he has at least 91,000 fans), and, two, he lacks any real life experience, which may account for his lackluster radio performance.

According to Alexa, Matt has a strong fan base of stay-at-home Moms, but is extremely under-represented among males, and males and females with some college or higher education. That strong fan base of stay-at-home Moms will carry him for a decent living as a blogger, but we have to wonder if maybe his tune on working Moms and the feminist movement that fought for equal pay will change. Raising twins is no cheap task and running a blog with a fan base of less than 100,000 doesn't earn one a solid middle class salary. If he and his wife have to make the decision that his wife needs to get a job, I hope he is thankful for the many generations of women who fought for equality in the workplace.

 

Matt is also a speaker at the Great Home School Convention, so blogging isn't his only new career. Public speaking, especially at events supported by his strong fan base of stay-at-home Moms, may be in the offering.

 We know, because he would never tell anyone otherwise, that he won't be freeloading off the unemployment system like all the rest of those freeloaders so we wish him well on his blogging adventure. There's always flipping burgers to help make ends meet while he tries to get his blogging career off the ground.

For those who may have lost touch with Matt you can visit his blog.

 

Crank in a star pangled mini skirt

A couple of us made the mistake of listening to the morning show promptly at 6:00 am.  We vow not to make the mistake again, but, Hell, we're five drunk rednecks and at least one of us will probably listen again.

Crank came out attacking his own wife for pointing out that an actor in some movie or show was Portuguese.  The gist of his argument... or dare we say, prejudice... was the actor was a nobody until he came to America and American actors, rah-rah, are the best. 

Crank's defense of everything America as being awesome and everything not-American ( as far as TV and movie entertainment goes) was "so what?", left at least one of us with an image of Crank in a star spangled miniskirt doing cartwheels in celebration of the Great American Way.

Crank, denying his roots, and Phoebus, trying a lame attempt to claim some foreign royalty ancestry, are typical responses of those raised with a family disconnect and lost heritage.  Only Sarah spoke up in defense of being proud of one's heritage, but, alas, she's just the token female on the show, which means Crank and Phoebus had all the say.

Here's a news flash: most Americans are proud of their heritage and where they came from and the sentiment to boast of one's heritage is the very definition of being American. 

Denying one's heritage by thumping one's chest and declaring, "I'm  American" to the exclusion of where his/hers ancestors came from is the definition of a spineless slug trying to fit in his/her environment.

Conclusion of the ten minute segment a couple of us listened to?

Sarah needs to step up to the plate and tell the other two to shut the Hell up because she's talking.  She has a lot to say and it's not getting through.  Adam Levine, voted the sexiest man, claims on a Proactive commercial that his acne prevented him from being "assertive".  What's your excuse for not being assertive, Sarah? 

Phoebus needs to get out from behind the microphone and experience the real world so that he won't have to pretend some royal heritage. 

Crank needs some salt poured on him so he'll just wither away.

We might tune in next week.

Nah. 

After the holidays, maybe. 

Merry Christmas everyone!  Thank you for being a fan of this page. 

The Worse Show Ever's one-dimensional blandness

For the most part, we haven't been listening to WZBH. A couple of days ago, one of us listened in the afternoon and caught a blurb for The Worse Show Ever. The short spot epitomizes the shallowness and blandness of the morning crew.

Crank posed a question that appears on on the Common Core standardized test for our schools. The question: "You have three people and four horses. How many feet do you have?" Answer: six because horses have hooves and not feet.

The debate between Crank and Phoebus was if the question was really a math question or a riddle. Standard in-the-box thinking that really made the morning crew look more stupid than what they thought the question made the test look like.

Point 1: The question is a poorly constructed sentence. People are not property so "you" cannot "have" people.

Point 2: Is it a math question or a riddle? It's a reading comprehension question doubling as a math question. The question tests one's ability to understand what is read and then tests one's ability to count. Crank and Phoebus failed on both accounts.

Point 3: If we look at the question from the standpoint of the expected answer, there aren't six feet. There are the three people and "you" or four people total, which makes eight feet.

Point 4: In the strictest sense, the question "How many feet do you have" will always be two regardless of how many people "you have". While we're pretty sure that Phoebus has 12 toes, not necessarily divided evenly among his two feet, he still has two feet. We're pretty sure Crank has two tiny feet. So either one reading the question should have answered two, because they only have two feet just like most everyone else has.

Maybe it's just us, but we find multi-dimensional thinking to be entertaining. The shallow, one-dimensional thinking of the morning crew has us switching the radio dial or, as has been for the last month, simply not listening at all.

Ranters rant against ranters

You know, in any given group of five people, there always has to be one jackass. Guess what our jackass did today? She listened to about an hour and a half of the morning show.

The gist of the first hour of the show amounted to a rant against people who rant against stuff. Ahh, the irony of it. Of course, Crank quickly pointed out that their rant against ranters didn't include them because how else could one do a show unless they're ranting? About twenty minutes into the rant against ranters, Crank clarified that they (the morning crew) were "above the average person", which is why their rants aren't really rants.

Confused?

Yup. We never have understood why the public figure behind a microphone or behind a camera somehow feels, and truly believes, that what he or she does is somehow different than what the average person does. Does receiving a weekly paycheck to rant somehow make one a more qualified ranter?

Last week, the morning crew saw fit to make fun of Hallmark's decision to change the words to a classic Christmas carol from "gay" to "fun". It should be noted that, as far as talk radio hosts go, a lot of the the talkers across the radio dial had fun with Hallmark's decision. In fact, Susan Monday on Delaware 105.9 had an entire call-in segment on the "controversy".

There wasn't anything new in the morning crew's rant against Hallmark. Tune to any talk radio station, you would hear the same rant. Pull up any blog on the Internet, and you would read the same thing. In fact, we're willing to bet that as Crank and gang sang off key to make their point, ten YouTube videos were already posted with better off key singing to make fun of Hallmark's decision.

There is so much the morning crew could do to set the radio dial on fire. Instead, they choose to use ten parts water to one part gasoline for their show and when their fire doesn't ignite, they whine about all the other people, which probably includes their listeners, who already beat them to the punch line.

JJ has left the WZBH stage...

This is what we get for listening to WZBH only once or twice a month - a missed job opportunity.

One of us was going to listen to JJ tonight, but he wasn't on.  Turns out he left WZBH for Ocean 98.1 sometime within the last couple of months or so.  The jury is still out on the replacement show. 

In fact, we're not even sure if the show is hosted by a local DJ or is a nationally syndicated show.  It'd be really sad if WZBH, a station promoting the shop local message, has decided to outsource its departing local DJ's position with a nationally syndicated show instead of hiring local talent to fill the vacated spot.  We mean, it's not like Delmarva has high unemployment in a limited job market or anything, right?  Besides, if WZBH offered a job to a local, unemployed talent, how could the morning show make fun of the unemployed freeloading off of unemployment insurance?

The daily dumbass no one at WZBH will report

Two of us happened to listen to The Worst Show Ever Monday morning.  Listening is not what makes us the daily dumbass.  Listening with the hope that maybe the show would be funny is what makes us the daily dumbass.  As Albert Einstein pointed out - insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We've pointed out, on more than one occasion, that what makes the morning show such a tedious, humorless, bore is the monaural hosts running the show.  Mono recordings lack depth and direction.  Can't get a more apt description of the morning show than that.

WZBH will be hard pressed to produce an engaging show with depth and direction as long as the powers that be at the station choose to retain a self-centered, everything-is-about-me yapper, who lacks any real life knowledge, but is full of conservative-think slogans that sound good, but lack substance.  Compounding the problem is the powers' that be decision to team the yapper up with a puppy, who lacks any real life experience to be able to connect the dots on any given subject without first consulting the hippest conspiracy site available.  At least the powers that be decorated the station with a wallflower, you know, like one of those singing bass novelty items.  Every once in awhile, the yapper or puppy will push a button, and the wallflower entertains us with a couple of sentences that don't add any depth or direction to the conversation, but does let the listener know her batteries are still working.

Monday's show paints a perfect picture of the above description.  In typical conservative slogan speak, collecting unemployment is a form of a free handout.  Freeloaders rather collect unemployment than go to work. 

As we stated as far back as the Matt Walsh days when unemployment was at its peak, collecting unemployment is not a free handout any more than letting your health insurance pay for a medical procedure is a free handout.  All workers pay a premium to fund each state's unemployment insurance program.  Employers match the premium payment, usually two dollars for every dollar the employee pays.  Unemployment insurance is just that - insurance.  It is no different than your health insurance or car insurance.  And one doesn't get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely.  Most state benefits end after six months.  Congress has extended benefits during these hard economic times, but, at most, one can collect benefits for an additional six to eight months.  One can't make a "career" of collecting unemployment benefits. 

Food stamps and welfare is a favorite topic of conservative slogan throwers to bash about so, of course, the yapper couldn't resist.  The freeloaders on the food stamp and welfare programs need to get a job.  Facts, of course, don't support the conservative slogan speak.

Sixteen percent of Americans receive food stamps, with almost half of those recipients (49%) being under 18 and another 8% being elderly.  Of food stamp recipients, almost half live in a household with an income from employment.  The average monthly benefit received for an individual is $133 and for a family, $247.  Go ahead.  Try to feed yourself on that budget. 

Welfare is even skimpier.  Four percent of Americans receive TANF/AFDC (welfare) benefits.  The average monthly payout to a family of four is $900, which translates to $5.62 an hour.  Go ahead.  Try to raise your family on that wage. 

Even if we add the two programs together, the average recipient receives benefits equivalent to $7.16 an hour, just below the $7.25 national minimum wage.  Before you are tempted to claim that a recipient on one program must also be on the other program, keep in mind that only ten percent of food stamp recipients are also on welfare.

Now compare the rates of welfare and food stamp recipients to the poverty level.  The poverty rate stands at 15% and is defined, for a family of four, as $11.32 per hour.  The median wage of a retail worker is $10.15 per hour.  Ironically, or maybe by design as America loses its traditional middle class manufacturing jobs to foreign markets, 19% of those employed nationwide work in the retail industry, an industry that pays more than half of its workers poverty level wages. 

In fact, we can connect the dots further.  In a typical, national chain retail store that employs 150 people, 95% of the employees earn at or near poverty level wages, and that's assuming all employees work full time (40 hours per week).  If both adults in a household work in the retail industry, their combined income would still fall short of the median household income of $51,000.   

All of these figures, while not readily available, can be found by digging through various government websites.   But our monaural hosts have no interest in adding depth to a discussion.  Cheap slogans and empty rhetoric is about all one can expect from a morning crew sadly under-qualified to talk about any subject with any degree of expertise.  It is a whole lot easier to deride imaginary lazy people and throw around empty slogans than it is to talk about facts and interpreting those facts in a meaningful manner.

We still earn the daily dumbass reward, though.  We'll listen to the Worst Show Ever, again, in the near future and, sadly, we'll still expect different results.  This time, though, we're stacking the odds in favor of a different outcome by providing a cheat sheet.  Household Incomes Remain Flat Despite Improving Economy will hopefully inspire at least one of the hosts (our bets are on the wallflower) to break the formulaic mold that has become the staple script of the Worst Show Ever and challenge the empty and uneducated rhetoric to add depth and direction to the show.