For every great sports radio show like Jim Rome's there are a hundred that make you understand the lack of popularity AM radio suffers from.

My favourite type of sports radio is the national broadcast shows, which usually originates from the U.S. Jim Rome is the master of the national sports radio scene. If you haven't heard his show it originates from L.A. and runs daily from Monday to Friday for 3 hours. The show is syndicated across North America on over 200 radio stations and brings in an average of 2.5 million listeners a day. Rome covers every topic imaginable in the world of sports and competition and I mean every topic; from his view on the Spelling Bee and home schooled children being wrong to his view that having a high bowling average is a not a proud accomplishment and is in fact something that you should hide from people. He also is constantly bringing in big time guests onto the show and he also uses a large portion of the show to take calls from his nation of clones. Clones are what Rome calls his listeners because a large majority of callers phone-in and simply repeat the sentiments that Rome just shared about a particular topic. One of the highlights of the show is listening to the clones call-in because their calls are completely rehearsed; full of clever insults and analogies and hardly ever touch on the sports topic at hand and of course Rome rips into their comments on a regular basis.

	Tic-Tac: The breath mint of choice for the health obsessed consumer.

The rest of the national U.S. sports radio scene includes broadcasts from Sporting News radio and ESPN radio. The problem with these broadcasts is that some of the focus is on NCAA sports and NASCAR. Broadcasting shows that focus on NCAA and NASCAR in Canada is about as relevant as Tic-Tac telling people their mints are only half a calorie. Does anyone truly count their calorie intake of breath mints? Are people growing obese by trying to keep their breath fresh? I didn't realize this was such a problem. I'm sure for Canadian sports fans hearing discussion about the Miami Hurricanes and their move to the ACC for weeks was a little much. I mean that would be like talking about one professional sports team incessantly 24 hours a day when really there is nothing newsworthy to talk about. Come to think of, that segways perfectly into my next topic: local sports radio.

	Team 1200 covers Ottawa's "hectic" sports market.

Bad local sports radio is a little like traffic: it gets everyone really annoyed, it's unavoidable and it's kind of like driving by a bad accident, you can't help but give your attention to it. I live in Ottawa and I listen to the Team 1200 which offers listeners a split of local based broadcasting and national based broadcasting. To give you a sense of the Ottawa sports scene, there is one professional team (Sens), 2 minor league teams (Lynx, Renegades). Until the CFL implements some of my suggested changes from last week's commentary I refuse to call the CFL anything but a minor league brand of football. Rounding out the market is 2 junior teams (67's & Olympiques). Hardly what I would call a bustling sports market, definitely not on par with cities like Toronto, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. I mean shouldn't a market need to have at least two and maybe three professional sports team in order to offer up local sports radio? I mean centering a local sports radio market around one team is unexplainable in that same kind of vein where people only buy tickets for the lottery if the jackpot is $20 million and will refuse to buy tickets if the jackpot is $7 or 8 million. Do people not realize the odds are much better for winning smaller jackpots where less people are buying tickets? Instead we are bombarded with 365 days of news about the Ottawa Senators. I mean, come on, this isn't the Portland Trail Blazers we're talking about. These guys are not that interesting to talk about off the ice. When you're stuck listening to a weeklong discussion about the merits of trading for Bryan Smolinski you know there's a glaring lack of interesting topics to delve into.

The most popular local show on Team 1200 is the morning show: '3 Guys on the Radio'.  Jim Jerome's (one of the 3 guys) biggest claim to fame is that he knows Wayne Gretzky and he makes sure to never let the listeners forget it. I'm pretty sure that's how he got the gig: "Do you have any broadcasting experience Mr. Jerome?" "No, but I do know Wayne Gretzky." "Welcome aboard Jim." The guy is constantly bringing up stories about Wayne or how he talked to him a few days ago or how he saw him over the summer or played golf with him and so on. I mean Tiger Woods' caddy Steve Williams probably has better constraint in public over telling everyone he sees and meets that he knows Tiger Woods.

For all its faults local sports radio is still great for listening to a hockey or football game while you're in the car. So in the end it's worth listening to horrible local programming and irrelevant national broadcasts to get sports news and information in the car or at work.

Thanks for the Vine! I'm Out!