The Josh Innes Show - Two Former Stations Nominated For Marconi Awards

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

First off, I really, really hate the sports radio in Detroit. It's Philly level bad, but less charming. If that makes sense. Speaking of sports radio, 610 in Houston and WIP in Philly are both nominated for the biggest award in radio. 610 being nominated makes me ill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So as we've talked about the NFL and ESPN have come together and are in bed together and are in business together. And we've talked about that over the course of this week and what it means and how serious it is that a sports league owns a piece of a network. And what does that mean for the credibility of the coverage that comes from that network? And my buddy Meltzer sent me a link to a piece of audio or a segment from a radio show in Detroit, the Mike Valenti show. Valenti is the most talented guy they have in sports radio here and the most successful guy they have in sports radio here. This is not a knock in any way,

but I mean the show is just a call-in type of talk show and you throw out a question, people call and answer. Like, I wouldn't circle him and say, wow, he's an elite radio guy. I just think he's very good at doing what he does, and he's found great success. So this is not shitting on the guy. This is not ripping him.

this is not saying, like, because I, dude, to spend X number of years in any city and be successful as something, and he doesn't suck. There are a lot of guys that stay in a place for 20 years and have success who are not particularly good at anything. He's at least a good talk show host, although the more I listen, the more I think he also just falls into doing low-hanging fruit type of shit, maybe because it's summer, I don't know, but like at least once a week I'm hearing this guy do topics like, I don't even know if you guys want me to be honest or if you just want me to drink the team's bath water

and then people will call like oh like we want you to be real and these soft media people can't handle it's like I feel like you're better than that but like I think you're a skilled guy you're a very skilled orator you're a very smart guy I don't know I just listen to it the sports radio here is so

bad like it's actually like it would almost be like in a way it's worse than Philly like I was playing planning on getting into it is the first of all let me play a couple commercials here and I will continue down this path I planned on doing an NFL thing here and maybe I still will I don't know what direction it's totally going to go but now that I've brought this up I think that Detroit sports radio is actually worse than Philadelphia because I think it's actually lazier if you'll believe that Now, Philadelphia Sports Radio is like the laziest of lazy.

Really Northeast sports radio in general is lazy. We used to talk about this a lot, me and some of my old bosses, is like if you worked down in the South and you worked in the Houston's and the Dallas's and the Atlantis, you had to put in some work to get reaction from people and to get people interested in what you're doing, to call, for instance. Like in the Northeast, you go to Philly, Boston, New York. If you open the phones, people are going to call. You ask a dumb question. You'll get 400 people calling, right? Detroit is similar sports radio in that way. It's not that way for me right now on this radio station.

Like, I couldn't get arrested right now. Like, I throw out questions. My boss, Casey, will say, you know, maybe you should ask a question, and then they'll call. And I'm like, Casey, I'm asking, I'm going to my bag of tricks and asking questions about my lowest-hanging fruit topics. Mount Rackmore and movies and like I'm going as far as I can down just to try to get some interaction, not making up fake opinions or being a dickhead, but like I'm going into my bag of tricks and finding different stories that include topics that I really like to talk about that are easy things for people to call about and they don't, which goes back to a discussion

we had yesterday, which is this is an uphill climb. This is like a monumental task. If we get this station into the top five, they should build a fucking statue of me. If this morning show is like a top three, top four, top five morning show, I deserve a statue right outside of this building, right outside of this very cool I heart building in Eastern Market in Detroit, I deserve a statue if we consistently get to the top four, top five. If I get to number one, I should get a key to the city and I should have anybody's wife I want. if I somehow can get this show to number one because it is a monumental herculean task up against big time morning shows that are well established on radio stations that people listen to like it will be a I deserve all I gold to blooms and trinkets and I deserve like I deserve

like stock in the company like I deserve a lot my name should be on the building this should be the Josh Ennis I heart radio building in Eastern Market. If we get to number one, if we get to number one, it is a long shot. But the hope is we get there. But again, back to the initial point. You go to the Northeast, it's the easiest. Just open the phones, 30 people call. They offer really nothing interesting.

You fill four hours. You go home, you do it again the next day. That's the Northeast way. Not to say there aren't some talented dudes on the radio in that part of the country. Like I'm a big fan of Geo from the Boomer and Geo show. I think he's a legitimately good radio guy that's funny and does some good shit. He's a friend of mine. I think he does very well.

Like, I like Spike. You know, he and I still communicate every now and then, and I like Spike. So, like, there are people that I like. But big picture, it's just kind of a lazy. Sports radio is a lazy format. And in the Northeast, it's done lazier than it is in most places. What I've learned here is that it's lazy and bad, but it's a different kind of lazy and bad. A lot of it's very similar to what you'd get at a WIP, you know, just kind of lame-ass questions and remember when shit and like that kind.

But at least, and I'll give Spike or I guess whoever the program director is now at WIP, as lame as like Mount Rushmore week is and Dallas week is and top 10 list week is. It at least requires some level of thought and a program director attempting to do something to do those things. Is it low-hanging fruit? Yes. But at least it takes something in the summertime and it gives it a name, makes it sellable so it could generate revenue and gets people interested in a way, right? Like if someone says, you know, if it's just a normal Tuesday in the summer and you're throwing something out, they may not be interested. If it's a Tuesday in the summer and you're like, hey, it's Mount Rushmore week. your Mount Rushmore of dickhead athletes, well, people will engage in that and it will get you

through the summertime, and at least it's an attempt to do something. This radio station, not mine, but the sports radio station here in Detroit, is lazy and that this station attempts to do nothing. It is not interesting. There is nothing sexy about the imaging, and by the imaging, I mean like the little promos and shit you hear on the station. Nothing funny, nothing creative, nothing original. They still air jingles.

That's right. jingles. Like at WIP, I'm fairly certain we got rid of the WIP jingles long ago, right? They're still using jingles at the top of the hour and for sports flashes. Like, it is an archaic radio station that is terrible, and I'm fairly certain the program director does absolutely nothing for this radio station. Like, I listen to this, and I'm like, what does the program director do? What are you doing, sir? That said, so I was speaking of sports radio stations, I was looking at a list of the stations that are nominated for the Marconi, which is like the Radio Oscar, and Sports Radio 610 in Houston is nominated for the Marconi Award for Best Sports Station.

Now, it is important to note that the Marconi Award, while it is the Oscar, if you will, of the radio world, and I'd like to win one just to say I did, the process of getting nominated. nominated for a Marconi is pretty much bullshit. My dad has been nominated, I think, two or three times, and he's won a Marconi once for, I think, it's medium market personality of the year, okay? He's won at least one, and he's been nominated at least twice. He may have had another nomination in there. From what my dad was telling me, it is the most bullshit process to get nominated. Basically, you or I think somebody on your behalf has to write a maximum of like 250 words about you. These people know nothing about your ratings. They've never heard your show.

By the way, you do not send audio from the show, at least last time I've heard about it. You do not send audio. So you mean to tell me I'm one of the top radio shows in the country, but it's not based on what I do on the radio? It's just some shit that you read that somebody sent you about me or that I sent about myself. so good for them there's a part of me that that is not jealous but a little bit perturbed by it WIP is also nominated for this I think WIP may have already won at some point in the past for Best Sports Station but it bothers me that that station's nominated not WIP whatever but 610 because there is no metric at least in terms of

Certainly not ratings-wise, but online stuff could be different because the game changed over the last 15 years or whatever. But there is no way that radio station is better or more top of mind in Houston than it was when me and Vandermere and Lopez and eventually Meltzer and Brad Davies, then Seth Payne and Rich and everybody, Gavin and Barry and Sean Bajani and go down the list of people and Laura Reynolds. and Bootsie and all these people that were involved with that radio station from 2009 to 2013. Then I left in 2013, Nick eventually, when Nick Wright came in. He came in 12, I think, or 11. That radio station is nowhere near as relevant or top of mind as it was when we were doing what we were doing. We were the place. No one else mattered, and that's because Gavin created this world.

We were never nominated for a Marconi. I don't even know if Gavin nominated us or tried to do. nominate us for a Marconi. And that's the other thing. It's not like someone just sits around from like, it's not like Mr. Marconi sits around and listens to the radio and goes, that's a good radio station. I'm going to nominate them. You have to nominate yourself or somebody in your building has to nominate you for the awards. So it's not like they just find you, you know. It's like the Oscars. You've got to send out for your consideration. And that's kind of what this is. But there's no way that radio station is as top of mind as it was 15 years ago. And there's no way that it's

setting the tone for the discussion in the city like it did 15 years ago. There are podcasts in Houston and other things that are far more important to the, to creating the overall buzz in sports in the city than a lot of these sports radio shows are now. Sports radio in Houston means a lot less than it did 15 years ago. That's why, like, I find myself a little bit, like, I guess, envious in a way because that's cool, but also kind of jaded in the sense that I I feel like we did a much better job and the station was much better and the station had more pop when we were there and we never sniffed this shit. Like, you know, there was always the ticket in Dallas or whatever, Boston or whatever.

Like, I don't know. It kind of annoys me a little bit. It annoys me that they are like 15 years after the heyday, like the second heyday of 610. 610 had its heyday in the 90s. then it kind of tailed off, then it had its kind of revival in the 2010s, and now it's just kind of there. Like in the era that 610 is just kind of there and the programming is just kind of there, it annoys me that now they're nominated for a Marconi, and we never were.

You want to tell me that the Josh and Rich show and its apex wasn't a Marconi worthy show, a Marconi nominated worthy show? Of course it was. Like, when it was cooking, it was a great fucking show. And, oh, by the way, the numbers were fantastic for that station, particularly in men. And that's what we were going for. We were big time during the season, particularly in, like, 2011 and 12, I think. But somehow, like, dirty red and the boys are part of a radio station now that's, like, a Marconi nominated.

When I saw that, here's what I felt when I saw that 610 is nominated for a Marconi Award. I felt like Lieutenant Dan when he was waiting for Forrest outside of the talk show, like Dick Caveter, whatever it was, and he was sitting outside in his wheelchair and Forrest walks out into the New York cold and you hear, they gave you the Congressional Medal of Honor. Well, that's Lieutenant Dan. Like, they gave you an embecile. That's how I feel. As I sit there and read that and I read Station of the Year nomination Sports Radio 610, I'm like, they gave you a Marconi nomination. I feel like Lieutenant Dan legless in a wheelchair, angry at life. That's how I feel when I see that.

So two of my former radio stations are nominated for Marconi. Another nomination comes from Nashville, which I didn't work at that station. It's a terrible radio station, but I've lived there. And then one of the other nominations comes from the shitty sports radio station here in Detroit. And the numbers are phenomenal, but the station is dog shit. The people on the station fucking suck. Make it make sense. Anywho, we will continue in a little bit.