The Josh Innes Show - 97.5 Houston Is Whacking Folks

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

My buddy Paul Gallant, AKA Bootsie to 4 people, got the axe at 97.5 in Houston. I'd hire the guy to work with me in a second. But, I don't have any full time gigs. Anywho, this leads to a discussion of Houston sports radio. It's amazing these stations survive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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No politics, just real conversations with real people. shaping the future of energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. TD Bank knows that running a small business is a journey, from startup to growing and managing your business. That's why they have a dedicated small business advice hub on their website to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs. No matter the stage of business you're in,

visit TD.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. All right, friends. Hello. There we are. Josh Ennis and the All Up Ennis program. Hey, it seems that my buddy, Bootsie over at 975 in Houston, is no longer my friend Bootsie over at 975 in Houston. Sounds like he got whacked. How about that? That's Paul Galon, by the way. I just, I still don't know why we started calling him Bootsie. I have no idea, but that happened. That started whenever. he got to Houston with us. That was probably 13, 14 years ago, something like that. So I have no idea why we called him Bootsie, and I still call him Bootsie. And there are only really three people on the planet that call this guy Bootsie, me, Jilly, and Jim. We're the only people. Maybe Rich Lord would. I don't know if Rich does or not, but it seems like something it seems like something that Rich may still do, but I don't know. I don't talk to Rich

that often so I don't know so there's actually you know and I guess Ben would as well so there's probably a handful of people who still refer to Paul as Bootsy and we are the ones a very small crew and again no idea how we started doing that some sort of goof if I had to guess

it probably stemmed from hey everybody's got the wacky guy that's like an intern or a part time guy that needs a wacky name let's call him Bootsie and that probably just stuck like in my phone it's Bootsy but anyway he got whacked. Let me see here. Let me play a couple of commercials and we'll get into some stuff. Hey, it's Josh. The NFL season is rolling along and every touchdown can bring you closer

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Honestly, I'm shocked that that radio station keeps people employed, to tell you the truth. Like, obviously, Bootsie's out. I don't know if they fired anybody else or not. I haven't seen that they fired anybody else. And I don't mean this is an insult to anybody who's at that radio station on the air or behind the scenes because I appreciate the fact that they put me on the radio when they did and gave me kind of a platform, if you will, to continue to talk on the radio and to get, well, really just to get back on the radio. I know we talk about this a lot, but the Rona was actually kind of a lifesaver for me. I don't really know what would have happened in my life had the Rona not come about because I was out of work for almost a year by the time the Rona hit,

and I got back on the radio doing the free thing at 97-5. And that's the thing, like there were some people that were really pissed off that I got back on the radio because I thought I took somebody's job after they had to fire somebody. and that is the way that it was perpetuated by the person that ended up getting laid off there. That person's name is Barry, I believe, is who that person was. And that person always had an issue with me back to when I filled in with, I filled in, me and Meltzer, I think, filled in on a radio show that was this guy Barry, who I don't even think I've ever met in person, and Joel Blank, who's been a friend of mine since, like, the day I got to Houston. and he's one of the first people I ever met, and I've always really loved Joel. So one day I'm filling in, and me and Meltzer are.

And the only person I had ever legitimately met on that show was Joel. And so when we filled in, I'm like, Joel and the guys are out, so we're in. Because I didn't even know who the names of the people were. Like, I didn't know that there was a Barry on the show, and I didn't know that there was somebody else on the show. I didn't know. I think Nick was the producer. I had no idea who any of these people were because nobody told me

and nobody told me hey here's who you're filling in for mention who you're filling in for I was just left out there kind of in the wind and they said here you guys are filling in it's you and it was me and Meltzer I think filling in so I would say hey it's Josh and Mike Meltzer were filling in for Joel and the fellas I assume that Joel was the leader of the show

I didn't know who the other people were I didn't know their names I wasn't doing it to be a dick I wasn't doing it to you know to slight someone Why would I slight someone I didn't know? Why would I slight someone that not only did I didn't know, but I was not threatened by or had any sort of beef with or was a competitor of? I had no idea. So I would just say Joel and the fellas because Joel was the guy I knew. Well, somehow this really pissed off the other people that were on the show.

And this Barry person grew to really fucking hate me for whatever reason. That's fine. So then the Rona hits and they lay this guy off. And I call and I'm like, listen, you guys are going to put on some. sort of syndicated show anyway. Why don't you let me come up and I'll work for free? I'll just let me work for live reads. So if we get any live reads, I'll make money that way. Fine, because I was making money from unemployment. And Texas was just paying ridiculous sums of money for unemployment at the time. I had used up a lot of my savings. I had a lot of money saved up from my time

at 790 because I was getting paid a lot at 790, but after a year of not getting paid, or six, seven months of not getting paid, and you have to use other money to pay the rent and blah, blah, blah, and the Rona hits before you know it, you don't have as much of that cash anymore. So you're getting some of the unemployment money. Then you're getting, you know, whatever you're getting from doing a podcast, whatever, which was fine. Then the Rona hits.

It wasn't an opening. They were just going to put on some sort of syndicated show, and I said, just let me come up and I will do it for free. And if we find any advertisers, let me get paid that way. And it just so happens that because of the Rona, mask companies and gambling sites were spending money with them. So I made a shitload of money. I was making like five grand a month to do this. I want to say one month, what if I couldn't have been five grand. It was a lot, though. Like, I made a decent amount of money just working for free and getting paid from a mask company. And I forgot what the mask company was called. But it was a mask company that sold like nice.

comfortable masks. It was that, and my bookie.ag were like two of these clients that were spending money, and I was doing advertisements with. And that's how I survived for a while. So the Rona, in a weird way, helped me out and open the door for me. And then it opened the door to get back on the radio again. I've told you this story before, too. The night that everything shut down from the Rona, I was doing a fill-in on CBS Sports Radio. They, dude, it was like CBS Sports Radio was still a thing. Now it's called Odyssey Sports Radio, but it was CBS Sports Radio at the time, and I was doing a fill-in. The people at 610 still hated me so much, they wouldn't even let me go up to the studio and do it at their place.

They wouldn't let me do it up there, and they blacked me out on the air, because they usually carried the show that I was filling in for, and they were like, nope, we're not putting this guy on the air. so then the next day everything shuts down and it looks like everything's going to hell but then I get this opportunity at 975 this you know free if you want to call it that this free opportunity and I still made money doing it but I wasn't getting paid a salary of course there were people that were pissed off because the way it was spun is oh they laid me off but they brought this guy in because they've always wanted to bring this guy in and it became like fuck Josh Ennis for this and I was kind of find myself in the middle of that with people that I don't intend to find myself in the middle of shit with. And that was one of those situations where I'm

like, I legitimately am not getting paid a salary. I'm getting paid nothing unless they bring in money. It just so happened. They brought in money from the mask company and from my bookie.orgie. AG, I believe is what it was. And that's where I actually made legitimate cash for a couple of months there. And it was pretty cool. I got paid once a month there. And it was usually, you know, three, four grand on top of getting some unemployment shit. Shit was the Wild West at that point. Like every day you'd hear about some new amount of money that you were getting paid. And speaking of, so here in Michigan, now people are going out, the state is going out, and collecting money from people who they feel were overpaid during the Rona.

And it's like, listen, motherfuckers, you paid these people. You're all out there pandering to these people, giving them all the money you can because you're trying to look good during the Rona. You can't come back five years fucking later. You can't come back five years later and be like, oops, we overpaid you guys. Like people were hurting, people didn't have jobs. People were struggling. And you're out here, oh, sorry, guys, we got to take-backsees. We're Indian, sorry, we're Native American giving this money that we gave you when you had no income, no jobs.

I'm sure some people still did. But still, the point being in all of this is now it's a huge deal where they're trying to recoup like billions, billions with a B of dollars in the state of Michigan. I imagine you survive the Rhone and you're thriving now, whatever, you have a job. And they're like, nope, sorry, if you don't give us back blank amount of money, you're fucked. Like, what are we doing? But anyway, that's a story from Michigan. But so 975, I appreciate really A.J. Todd also. But A.J. was the one that always kind of stuck his neck out.

It was like, hey, I like Josh. Put him on the radio for a while. And that helped open the door to get back on the radio in Nashville and then St. Louis. out here. But I bring all this up because my man Paul got whacked and he's a budget cut. And I'm truly shocked that anybody's making money there. Like I'm going to guess that John and Lance make the most money of anybody there. And I also would guess that they generate the most money from anybody there. So they're untouchable. Like nobody's firing Lance, nobody's firing John. Obviously, Paul was a guy that was not generating any money for them and he was deadweight

financially, not that he was doing bad shows or anything, but when, you know, he's probably going to be odd man out of there anyway. I don't know what their afternoon guys are making salary-wise, probably more than Paul was, probably not considerably more than Paul was, but they're still around too. And I'm not here to rip the radio station because they were very nice to me, and I know those people there, so I'm not here to rip them. But I will say that that radio station is a total non-factor in Houston. So it's not shocking. to me that they're having to lay people off. The shocking part is that they're not laying more people off. The shocking part is that it's still a sports station. The shocking part

is that it still exists. I don't even think they subscribe to the ratings anymore, so you have no idea what they're getting. But they're generally speaking below 610 and generally speaking below 790, and those are 5,000 watt a.m. stations. Now, part of it is they're a half signal and I think they kind of do things, they don't do things like I would do them. I think they sometimes miss it. When you've got three sports radio stations in a market, you all can't be doing the same fucking thing. They all sound like the same radio station. None of them stand out. It's just dudes doing their own kind of version of sports talk, which is kind of similar to what the other guys are doing in their version of sports talk, right? It's like in

Philadelphia. The fanatic ain't doing anything different. The fanatics just doing WIP light. That's what we used to call them. Me and Andy, we would call them like WIP light. That's all they were doing. They weren't doing anything unique, anything different, nothing stood out. They weren't trying to find a different form of fan. They weren't doing events that were different than WIP. They weren't doing shows that sounded different than WIP. They were just a lesser version of WIP. So why the fuck would you turn them on when you could just listen to the actual version they're knocking off, which is WIP, right? And that's kind of how these stations are in Houston. and they all recycle and regurgitate the same people.

They recycle them. They spit them all back out, and then they all do the same fucking thing over and over. The reason why 610 wins, because it's been around the longest, that wasn't always the case. 610 wasn't always doing great. When Gavin got there, the station wasn't doing great. But he made it into something really good, and we had a really good radio station, and 790 wasn't even a factor, and 975 wasn't really a huge factor either. We were pretty dominant. We sounded really good.

Then Gavin left, and everybody kind of fell back to the past. pack, and everybody was just kind of blah. You know, like if the Astros are playing and they're playing well on 790, they'll get, you know, a decent number for them, but it's not a huge number overall. And 975, credit to AJ. AJ was at least trying to make it sound different, particularly during the Rona when there were no sports. That's why we started drinking on the air on Fridays and doing dumb shit.

You know, here's what's amazing. And me and AJ talk about this pretty often. It's also kind of crazy how me and AJ have become such good buddies, you know, texting. We don't text every day or talk every day, but, like, we're pretty good buddies. And it's amazing that during the Rona, we would get 500 to 1,000 to 1100, 1,200 people, whatever, tuning in on Twitch to watch us get loaded on the air on Fridays during the Rona. Think about the absurdity of that. Think about how crazy that is, right?

Like, that's a radio station that ratings-wise had, like, a 0.2. Like, nobody was listening based on ratings data. But then you'd say, hey, come join us on Twitch on Friday. We're getting loaded. Trey is here. He's getting loaded. Tyler's over here chugging some nasty concoction. We're doing the mega shot.

Whatever. All this dumb shit we were doing. And you'd see five, six, seven, 800, a thousand people tuned in on a Friday afternoon. Now, granted, part of it's because we had a captive audience because nobody could go anywhere. But it was pretty fucking crazy. It's pretty nuts to see that. Like when you're like, well, we must have no listeners because our ratings are zero point one. But then you want to tell me a thousand people are watching you on Twitch?

On Twitch they're watching you? A thousand people? Like it was crazy. Like it gave you like this weird hope. Like holy shit, our ratings suck. But obviously someone's there. Someone's listening. Someone's engaging because a thousand people clicked a link, went to Twitch, and wanted to watch a couple of Jumokes drink beer together on the air.

It's fucking crazy. But anyway, I tell you all that to tell you this. My buddy Bootsie got whacked. I don't know what he's going to do. Listen, if I had the money for it, I'd bring him here tomorrow. Because I got an opening on the show. The problem is it's a part-time gig. I think it's a higher-paying part-time gig than, you know, $10 an hour.

I mean, it's a decent paying part-time gig. But it is a part-time gig. So I've got two part-time gigs I've got to fill. We think we know one person who we're going to hire for one of the spots, but I have another spot. And if I'm looking for someone on my show in Detroit that is a, you know, Someone who knows a little bit about everything can go back and forth about sports because we talk a lot of sports shit on there, but can do pop culture, can do all that. And I think Bootsie would be great at it, just like Mike Meltzer, I think, would be great at it. Guys like that that I have a relationship with.

But there ain't no way I'm getting, you know, Paul to move to Detroit for nothing, you know. But I think, like, we've been struggling to find the perfect guy, and I think he'd be great for it, but I ain't got the money to pay him. So, anywho, more to come.