Checking in on Marc James

KJR’s new host is not for everyone, but then again, who is?

In 15 years as a sports radio host or sidekick, I quickly learned that whatever I said on the air would not go over well with every listener. Some will think you’re great, some will think you’re awful, and then there’s that group in between, the ones who could take you or leave you or didn’t really have an opinion about you one way or the other.

As a host, you don’t want too many listeners in the middle because they’ll tend to tune out after awhile, a short while no doubt.

After his first three weeks in the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. time slot at KJR-FM, “M.J. In the Mid-day” has probably heard more negative than positive assessments. I’m just guessing here - uneducated guessing if you will - based on people’s general reluctance to accept change and James’ broadcasting style, which is typically found more frequently on the East Coast than in Seattle.

James isn’t necessarily in your face, but he’s not a beta male either, cranking out opinions left and right, which is what sports talk show hosts are hired to do. He’s the opposite of laid-back and monotone. He’s the kind of guy if he’s at a party, you know he’s in the room.

If I’m James, even if I’m impatient, I’d remind myself that acceptance by the new audience will take time. He fights another factor because he’s not a local guy, and I sense that that’s very important to listeners though I wonder why.

Of the 11 hosts at KJR-FM and Seattle Sports, five are from somewhere else but most had connections to teams we’re all familiar with - Dave Wyman played for the Seahawks, Michael Bumpus played for the Cougs and briefly for the Seahawks, and Bucky Jacobsen played for the Mariners.

I miss you Dave

Morning hosts Chuck Powell grew up in Illinois and Mike Salk in Boston. I don’t know if they were well-received when they came to Seattle, but over time, they’ve become respected fixtures here and viewed as knowledgeable about the teams they talk about.

Listen, that was a hard sentence for me to type as it pertains to Salk, one of the guys who fired me. He never thought I was very good at sports radio, and the hell of it is, I never thought I was either. I just didn’t think he should say that to my face. If it were me, I would have taken the passive-aggressive beta male route and trashed me behind my back.

But as much as I dislike the guy - and despise is probably a more accurate word - Salk is really good at sports radio even if his hometown of Boston thought otherwise. Did he need Brock to return to prop him up and save his job? Probably. But the guy’s still good at it.

And he was right when he told me - again to my face - that I’d be a miserable failure in any other town in the country besides Seattle. It was a rather rude and blunt comment, but I tend to think he was right - one night after a couple of drinks, I think it was back in my Gatorade and tequila days, I imagined doing sports radio in Denver and trying to act like I knew what the Broncos and Nuggets should be doing and telling everyone on the air about it.

Listeners would have seen through that and run me out of town as fast as Salk was run out of Boston.

I can tell that James did his homework before he got to Seattle. He incorporates what he’s learned about our teams and their past, and it comes through well on the broadcasts. James can’t help that he didn’t grow up here, he can only get up to speed on Seattle sports history, and he’s done a good job with that.

I also like that he incorporates sports gambling into every show, which is naturally right up my alley.

Whatever you think of him so far, good, bad, whatever, I think we can agree that James isn’t boring. And being different is good for a sports radio lineup - you don’t want one host after another with the same sound and style.

To be honest, I wanted James to suck. I know a therapist would tell me that what happened at KJR is all in the past, let it go, let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge, all that kind of shit you pay $100 an hour for.

But I just can’t do it. I don’t know what kind of person that makes me, and I’m sure it’s not good for my health to have lingering resentment, but as I said in a previous post I just can’t root for a guy who’s replacing Jason Puckett and me.

In my defense, raise your hand if you’ve been unjustifiably fired but leave your place of employment hoping the guy that replaces you is terrific. That just doesn’t make sense to me.

Besides, if you haven’t made the switch already, please check out the better option to M.J. in the Mid-day at PuckSports.com, where Puck is killing it with his own podcast, featuring great guests galore.

Not only that, you’re not exposed to eight-minute commercial breaks over and over again - with the podcast format, it’s basically commercial free.

Thanks for reading. If you like what you’re seeing here, please give me a five-star review somewhere, I just hear people saying that all the time, sounds like they’re begging, so figured I’d do it too even though I have no idea where that somewhere is.