A lot of what seems impromptu is not improptu. It's prepped by the staff on a list of topics and they have go to pieces. Op/Ant/Jim are not regularly monitoring Mike Francesa in their free time, or the local news (i mean actually getting those clips). Just the audio production bits are probably a lot of work. They have to go through archived sound, produce it which depending on the piece and how good the editor is can take a hour/s.

I dont think they are working day to day with financial analyst intensity, but getting shit ready for air is quite time intensive. If you take into account all the archiving stuff like the podcast (which has to be selected, cut down to size, uploaded), audible and whatever other nonsense they have to do for internal storage that takes time.

They probably have to do some reporting related stuff for sales (how many breaks they ran, which and how many ads got played), because it seems unlikely that whoever is doing the actual ad sell (en masse across multiple channels probably) is monitoring each show.

Just Jocktober alone must be a shit load of work...listening to all that garbage and having to actively figure out which parts work for the air.

For something like the getting liners done by guests for outro/intro to/from break they have to talk to the people's management most likely before hand to get permission and a waiver to allow it (and in some cases probably negociate a fee....Stacy Keech isn't free. Probably a higher management thing though. I'm pretty interested if they had to pay 50 cent/Larry/Tyson for voice rights for their Friday intro...thats a pretty big piece). Their on air stuff is probably 1/4-1/3 of the time the spend in a given week getting stuff done.

Dumb Sam must actually work quite hard if you consider his other side shows and projects.

Their ability to pull clips super fast comes from the archiving they do. They probably attach a lot of key words and phrases to clips/full shows which is how erock/Travis are able to pull stuff in under a minute. Someone is probably writing that down live (intern) and then getting it added during the post production work.

edit3: I put too much thought into this.

Source: I'm a product manager/producer for tv stuff. (Thats great i have a radio show).

You're very accurate, I think. Sometimes Jim or Opie catch bits of prep sheets in their studio shots. One time there was a detailed sheet devoted to some dumb story that I totally thought was an impromptu thing. It went nowhere on-air, and they moved on after a minute. Obviously someone put some work into it, made a cd & broke down tracks with notes, and in-show they just burnt it and changed gears like nothing—probably happens a lot.

Just Jocktober alone must be a shit load of work...listening to all that garbage and having to actively figure out which parts work for the air.

I've thought about this a lot. Sam is always an expert too - like he actually 'knows' the shows inside-out - whenever they ask him a question, he knows everything about these awful shows.

I know it's popular to hate on Sam, but that kid (he's my age) really busts his ass in a dying medium. And it's obvious. They make reference to it, but he works nights and weekends and never complains.

I personally hope Sam succeeds, and if he was doing this amount of work in almost any other avenue of entertainment, he would. But radio is almost dead.

Traditional radio may be a dying medium, but there will always be some form of audio-only entertainment that people crave. There are still a lot of people that are just too stupid to figure out how to get podcasts, nor do they want to spend time trying to find out what's out there. Plus there's the participation factor of a live radio show. People will always need something to listen to at work or in the car.

It's harder than ever to breakout and make money in radio. There are too many choices and not enough money to go around when you're paying people like Howard a ridiculous amount of money. Nobody else there makes anywhere near what he does, not even the CEO of the company. If management had the balls to cut him loose and stop spending money that they don't make, then SXM might actually have a future. Maybe they would have had the money to promote their other shows or fix their stupid app. Even O&A probably make more than their share of subscribers can support. They may think they're underpaid, but radio isn't what it used to be. I really have no idea what their numbers are, so just making a wild guess on that one.

(Sorry, I know you were talking about radio in general, and I started talking specifically about SXM.)

Plus erock is constantly taking things said on the show and tagging and archiving. Ever wonder how when Opie mentions a random bit/line/moment from a random show erock manages to get it fairly quickly?

Glad to see you're still listening to the show Kennigit.

Good post, too, but I would argue Stacy Keech is free, because he records his stuff right after appearances and he gets on well with O&A. I've always gotten the impression that they only ask people to record stuff for them that they enjoy and have a good rapport with. Not only that, but Sam and Troy probably already have something prepared, so the guest just needs to sit down and read. That all seems to point to it being a gesture of friendship to record something than a business transaction, but who knows?

Apparently SXM asked the same question because their staff is like a 1/10th of what it was five years ago.

Yes, when you think about the loss of Danny, the show didn't lose anything.

The only staff I could possibly miss was Steve C. I feel like he was constantly doing production, constantly putting himself out there in a way that made him the potential butt of a joke. The talent always took advantage of Steve's vulnerability and it was hilarious. I give him a lot of credit.

That-that's terrible, I'm sorry

Nononononono

How'd your producer die?

They were also producing 2 shows back then, with the FM simulcast.

Yeah Danny was the biggest douche ever but I don't think anyone ever complained about his work ethic he probably was a hard worker/asshole

the show didn't lose anything

Not that we noticed. They didn't add anyone to replace him, but his responsibilities were definitely parceled out to the rest of the staff. I don't know exactly what Danny did as a producer, but he obviously had a function while he was there, and then the rest of the staff came in and served that function.

I don't know how late some of the guys work but as far as smoothly running the show, they'd just need like 1 more full-timer to operate everything smoothly.

radio is ran by MAGIC

you betta get off my computer b4 yo moms get home!

What does the fox say

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What are YOU doing in MY studio? N-n-noo...stay on mike I'll produce that...