It was all downhill once a few comedians got "too big" for the show and Patrice dropped dead. 2005-2009 is probably the peak of the show.

Death by 1000 cuts:

Patrice Dying. Opie turning into a boring married guy. Ant increasingly going on race tirades. Louie CK getting too big for the show. Sirius taking over XM and axing all of the show friendly management. Steve C leaving. Etc, etc, etc.

The goddamn smartphones and Twittermania were big contributors and ultimately the show wreckers.

Word how many times do you need to promote you twitter jesus christ we get it. #needy

Add Jimmy getting thin and thinking he's more talented/funny than he actually is. Perfect storm of shit.

It's gone up and down over the years, they were inconsistent as fuck since the start at XM. I would've liked to see them finish out one more contract together, but my life goes on either way.

I'll be honest, I love Jim, but I've never been a huge fan of his standup, and I know it must frustrate him that his friends are doing so much better than him, but there's a reason for that.

Jim is at his best on the radio. His prepared material, -IN MY OPINION-, has never had the silly goofy meanness that his best radio shit has, and it's not helped by his weird, unnatural stage voice.

I'm not saying that to say I don't like the guy, or anything mean like that, I just feel that it's the truth. I remember liking his books, but those were a few years ago now. I loved him on Tough Crowd before I ever had a chance to listen to O&A. I just see people like Colin and Louis and Patrice being of a way higher tier than Jimmy, Vos or Bob Kelly. Vos is fucking great on the radio too. If he took a speeshhh therappyyy class he'd probably be about fucking flawless. His show with Ant was amazing and his punches were so fucking hard you didn't even notice the "Vos-isms".

I haven't listened to O&J's show in a while, and I canceled my SXM sub because fuck that scumbag company, but I wish Jim the best. I really think he's a good guy.

The merger is basically what clubbed the show into being Terry Schiavo'd. They didn't want them, but they didn't want them leaving and losing subs either. But Sirius policies are what smothered the show. When the comedians weren't allowed to record plugs to run on the channel, that killed a lot of the new life from being infused with the show. Then the lawyers giving a patent "NO" to anything they wanted to do. They were left with nothing to break up the monotony of one another, just sit in the same room and repeat the same things like a bunch of mental patients.

I've been saying since 2009: Twitter and Obama getting elected ruined the show. If I could name one thing for each guy, that's it in a nutshell.

I still enjoyed allot of things with O&A in the last two years. Ju-Ju-Ju-Julia, The adventures of lady di, Bill's dead, BIG JELLY TITS!, Erock Army Nigga, I got a tree on my house, Jocktober in general, Plenty of great Chip moments, Edgar's april fahls, OH and focusing way too much time on the two intern girls.......

I wouldn't say it jumped the shark but the older stuff did have it's high points. Sadly there wasn't that constant cycle of Burr, Louie, Patrice, Vos, Fat Bob Kelly and even guys like Rogan and Kevin Smith that would stay for an entire show. I think the biggest thing that hurt them is not having interns to kick around. Thanks allot Travis.

Some of my favorite shows of 2013 had Patton Oswalt in studio

He is really an underrated guest that happens to be a big fan of the show. I got a kick out of him loving the "Yakov Smirnoff's Dinner theatre" beating.

That was a great beating but after reading all the Opie hate here I'm afraid to go back and listen. I don't really remember him adding anything to it but I'm sure he tried to hit the breaks a couple times during that.

Ahhh I know how you feel. I was listening to Jocktobers from 2008 and you can hear how out of place Opie is in that studio

Listening to the Clerks 2 compilation, same thing. The room is fucking hilarious, the guests are killing, everyone has good chemistry, and Opie could still make me cringe

I feel like I'm a broken record here but why does he feel the need to direct a show when it is flowing so well by itself. His phone calls, lists, news stories, serious opinions and so on could really wait but he tends to stop everything for it. Most of the time it falls flat on it's face and Ant or whatever other quick guest tries to get it back again with laughter.

Patton is one of the funniest people in the world and I've never heard a bad show he was on. I was not a fan of his until I heard him on the show and that made me watch his standup. He makes other comics look shitty. I've never had to give him a single pity laugh. He's kind of in the same "nerdy, self deprecating" category as Kevin Smith, if Kevin Smith were funny, not morbidly obese, and didn't wear the actual shorts the Incredible Hulk wore.

Patton was a part of one of my favorite shows of all time...Patton, Nick Swardson, & Kevin Smith

Patton just gets the show. I remember watching Comedians of Comedy and Patton has to go do radio. He's so fucking depressed after morning zoo jock actually put a whoopie-cushioin under his seat. He shits all over hacky radio afterwards

...One of my favorite Jimmy moments of the show is his movie idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7zvnpko9I4 with Patton and Nick Swardson.

The Apology Bit.

Right Opie?

If there is something Opie loves more than a list it's a clock bit. RESET THE CLOCK.

Whatever happened to the wrestler death clock by the way? Another one of Opie's forgotten bits?

That one always made me laugh for some stupid reason. No matter how many god damn times they did the "Well good thing Macho Man is still out there tearing it up" and Sam would go "Well, actually...", it would still give me a chuckle. I always loved hearing about the dumb wrestlers and whatever bizarre shit they died of at like the rip old age of 43, or whatever. And how Vince immediately erased their name from history, like Joseph Stalin.

i thought the same thing, some good stuff here and there but most of it was a non important boring show.

They were phoning it in for 4-5 years. They had a good show once or twice every 2 weeks of shows. They had turned to shit way before the turdmaster opester tookk full control.

Opester has been trying at least now. It's just he's pretty talentless. You'll notice there's way less hour breaks of remembering classic music of 70's and 80's now. That was the ultimate in phone it in radio & ant was a willing participant of that shitspiracy against the radio subscriber

I may be overlooking something, but it's probably safe to say that the "Misheard Lyrics" bit from May this year was probably the last good bit they did together.

I was just thinking this. That was the last time the band was in sync.

There was ups and downs in every different era of the show. Theyve never , ever been consistent. Even nowadays...some of the shows are good.I think people are way overglamorizing how good the show was with ant in the last few years of the show. I remember in 2011 to 2012 the show became almost unlistenable. Ant became a vince mcmahon charicature version of himself ranting about race every day like a maniac and it dragged down the show a lot. They made a bit of a resurgence in 2013 or so but there was a couple years of at least half the show being completely unlistenable because of ant ranting about blacks.

The worst time for me was during the Trayvon Martin shit. I would turn the show off or ffw through like 45 minutes at a stretch because of Ant's endless fucking tirades. It was exceptionally bad because it was guns AND race. It would literally be an hour of the show a day sometimes, for 3-4 days straight.

What was the jumping the shark moment?

Yes. Anthony being fired was like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Everyone says that started WW1, when it was actually fifty other conflicts that'd been waiting to happen for years.

I thought it was great. The Lady Di internship is literally what got me into listening every day.

[deleted]

I had never heard Lady Di before, I was amazed at the time. Listening to her phone screen had me laughing so fucking hard.

You should definitely check out their older shows then! Especially the ones with Burr, Patrice, Jefferies, etc.

Oh yeh, I've since heard all that stuff. I was all in with the O&A for a while there. From probably March-May/June I was listening basically 24/7. I even watched all the Live from the Compound episodes from like 3 years ago, lol. I tend to jump from one obsession to the next.

Before Anthony got fired people were saying some of the best shows were the ones Jimmy wasn't in studio. I still like 2013 O&A a lot more. The new show has been good but only when it has help. Some of the best older shows were when no guests were in.

it was at its peak with patrice. having dan soder on w/ anthony made the show electric

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k_M09lgKLU

"Electric"......? Eww

yes electric, like your mother's boyfriend

Boo. Fucking horrible.

kill yourself

The day the show went to sirius o&a stopped caring about the show. instead of using sirius to grow the show by getting bigger guests, and doing good interviews. they just gave up. acting like doing a shitty job hurts sirius (which it didn't, they just want noise to fill the airwaves) they would not see movie, not read books, have the most uninteresting interviews. ant got more right wing, and was at least interesting to listen to, because he was informed and had a real thought on something. but he was the same, unless it was a fox news type, (who he would lap the ass of) ant could give a fuck about the guest. the show stopped being fun the day they moved.  

The plummet began with the end of 92.3 krock

2 or 3 months before Ant got fired, the show was shit

The whole sub was complaining about how they were meandering through YouTube videos, music segments, and food segments. People were jumping ship and saying, "the show has never been so bad"

I would check in every week or so, just to listen to segments with comedians. 2014 was pretty rough

2012 was a terrible terrible year. It was nothing but song parody contests almost the whole show several days a week with filler that Opie admitted they were just trying to run out the clock until they got to go home.

2011 was the last really good year. Jocktober peaked in 2012.

I just like to remember the laughter and forget the tears.

Does anybody remember LAUGHTERRR?

It wasn't as good as it was in the 2006-2011 years. But it was still an enjoyable show. I think Patrice passing away was such a big blow to the show that it was never really going to be the same. But even post Patrice till Anthony's firing it was still a good show. Tons of soild guests and comedians, and Jimmy would come up with a good bit now and again.

This is true. BUT Ant was just a fun radio guy. Even when the show didn't have any good content at all, which happened a lot in the past few years, his noises, voices, long-running dumb jokes (HELLO BILL!), and other fun radio nonsense made the show a good time. Now all of that is totally gone.

My top things... 1. Comics dying or moving on from the show, with the biggest blows being Louis CK in about 2010 to Patrice at the end of 2011. 2. Losing Free FM gutted Opie. 3. Twitter and Smartphones. One person here said he heard the show die when Opie was on his smartphone and said "I just created a Twitter account." 4. Obama election for Ant. 5. Opie getting married and having river babies destroyed any chemistry he had with Ant. They became totally different people from each other. 6. Jim doing things other than the show and missing Fridays. 7. Nopie shows, Opie taking lots of days off and exposing how unnecessary he is. 8. Opie having zero chemistry with Jim, which was masked by Ant playing off of him perfectly. 9. More Sam involvement. 10. Losing way too much producer talent. Steve C, Than, Stuntbrain, D-Boi and Danny were a much better crop of producer talent than they have now.

The joe piscopo trilogy was radio gold

You are so right! I'd say the "jump the shark" moment was when they did that fake as hell bra bombing bit.