The Score

You know, I just can't get enough of bashing the Score. You see, Chicago's onetime favorite sports talk radio station got trounced in the ratings this past quarter. The usual excuses were bandied about, from Rick Telander's insanity, to Mike North just needing to find his footing in the mornings. Anyway, one of my favorites was that a big part of the reason that WSCR was lost the ratings battle for the 2nd quarter was that ESPN 1000 is the current home of the first place White Sox, broadcasting all of their games. It's an excuse that I expected, for the simple reason that WSCR has signed a contract to begin broadcasting the Sox games next year, thus they were basically building up the product that they'll soon have. Well, in today's Tribune, Teddy Greenstein pointed out that Mike Murphy's evening show on the Score had pretty good ratings against the first hour of ESPN 1000's powerhouse afternoon drive show, Mac, Jurko and Harry, and decent ratings overall. That's nice for WSCR now, but evidently nobody's pointed out that during the 2nd quarter, Murphy's show is usually going up not against Mac, Jurko and Harry, but the White Sox broadcasts. And if the White Sox games can't outdraw a hack like Murph in the ratings, the Score may have just made a very dubious investment.