How's this for a career?
A truly legendary figure in broadcast radio, Richard Neer's career spanned over five decades, and is second in continuous duration to Bruce Morrow ('Cousin Brucie') who himself is likely to continue broadcasting from the grave when the occasion arises. Neer was there when NY's greatest Rock station, WNEW FM was just getting its sea legs along with Scott Muni (Scottso), Alison Steele (the Nightbird), and Jonathan Schwartz, among others, ultimately serving as program director as well as taking a regular shift spinning records on air. It’s no exaggeration to say that Neer was instrumental in helping to break another kid from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen, who has apparently had a decent career of his own.
For a time in the late 1990s, Neer sat at the mic covering shifts at both WNEW and WFAN, eventually leaving the former to take up full-time duties at the FAN. Among the first local hires at the station, Neer was an integral part of a line-up whose mornings were anchored by the late controversial icon Don Imus, and featured other notable figures including long time Yankee analyst, Suzyn Waldman, Ed Coleman and Mike Francesca, and eventually, Chris Russo who became Francesca’s partner on the iconic ‘Mike and the Mad Dog’ drive time show. Known as the voice of reason among hosts, Neer's soothing way and respectful engagement with listeners stood in stark contrast to some of the more hyperbolic screeds of other hosts.
Along the way, Neer managed to publish a prescient book: FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio, which had the unfortunate publishing date of 09/11/2001. Neer has published twelve mystery novels featuring protagonist, Riley King.
The following is Part I of a two-part interview culled from a two hour conversation Neer and I recently had covering his career, experiences and memories of his time at both WNEW and WFAN, the connection between music and baseball, our shared love for both rock music and the Mets. The questions and answers have been edited for brevity and for this format.
The interview format means that this post necessarily will be longer than the norm
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Where to begin?
Cautious Optimist (CO): Let's start with Sports Talk radio? I used to turn it on and listen pretty much all day - until about 8 years ago. Now I almost never turn it on. Am I just getting older and crankier, or am I right in thinking that no one talks sports anymore on Sports Radio? It's all Barstool to my ears.
Richard Neer (RN): Face it. We are getting older; maybe crankier too. But the truth is that after you get to a certain age, 54 actually, you are no longer part of the target audience. The modern day equivalents of the suits on Madison Avenue aren’t trying to sell you anything on Sports Radio. Commercials are geared to reaching an audience they believe can be influenced to form allegiance to their products, whether it's a beer or, more likely, a betting app. Sports betting is a massive industry, and it can be all done on apps, which is already beyond our skillset. We are more likely to worry about the state of our retirement accounts than to be making bets on props or game outcomes. I worked too hard for my money to give it away.
CO: There's no real dialogue between listener's who call in and the hosts anymore.
N: That's intentional. Almost all the shows now feature two hosts and the dialogue is between them. One host takes one position and the other often takes the opposite position. Sometimes it seems to be set up that way. Then the listeners call in taking one side or the other. It feels more scripted and less spontaneous. It wasn't always this way. But the ratings are good as is the revenue, so don’t expect a return to more thoughtful engagement we may both be romanticizing a bit anytime soon.
It’s entertainment at the end of the day, and what you lament, others obviously find entertaining.
CO: We will get to your days at WNEW later, but I recall you did your first sports radio talk show on WNEW AM with Rick Cerone (not the Yankee catcher, but a PR director for the Yankees and Pirates and currently the editor o Baseball Digest).
RN: That's right. I hosted a three-hour sports talk show with Rick at WNEW AM from 5pm-8pm. The show was called Sports Connection. Rick and I were the first tandem hosts of a sports talk show, and we had a great time doing it. We ran sports quizzes on air and conducted interviews that sometimes ran nearly an hour with everyone from Mickey Mantle to Gary Carter – and did it on what in those days was a very buttoned up AM radio. Then WFAN came along in 1987 and offered sports radio pretty much all day, and it was increasingly more difficult to get listeners from the FAN to switch stations at 5pm to listen to our show. Our show fell victim to the inconvenience of switching stations.
RN: FAN was big and ambitious but had a flawed concept. They brought in all these national figures to NYC for shows. They had Greg Gumble and Jim Lampley who were great at what they did, but they were not from NY and NY fans wanted to talk NY sports. They didn't want to discuss boxing or college sports. Sports is more regional than national. NYC is a pro-sports city. Other than St. John's basketball, there was little interest in college sports. People may have forgotten by now, but it took quite a while for the FAN to find its rhythm and connect to the larger sports audience. They brought in Mark Mason as program director to remedy the situation and soon after my show with Rick Cerone ended, he hired me.
CO. We will talk about WNEW later, but are there any sports stories associated with your time at the pre-eminent rock station on the east coast?
RN: I can tell you one. We had a disc jockey, Jonathan Schwartz, who was from Boston. His shift was from 6-10 pm nightly. He was a fanatic Red Sox fan. He worked it out so that he could call into the station that was broadcasting the Red Sox games and would put the game on speakerphone every night while he was doing his music show. This was before cell phones or MLB network. These were long distance calls placed on land lines. I can't imagine what the phone bill was, let alone whether WNEW or Jonathan had to pick it up.
RN: That was the northeast passion about sports that was at the heart of FAN. Many of the original voices at the FAN were not from the city. Ed Coleman and Suzyn Waldman were from Boston, Steve Somers was from California. All worked hard to get the NY audience and their success at doing so was as much owed to their passion and knowledge, something that NY sports fans have always appreciated, as to anything else. No one worked harder that Steve Somers. He scripted every one of his opening monologues -- many of which lasted for 15 minutes or longer - and created new ones for every show.
CO. But you were from the New York area as were Mike and the Mad Dog.
NR: Yep, but it was the passion that made the station. I do have a funny or embarrassing story to tell -- depending on your point of view -- about Chris Russo. It reveals just how wrong headed someone as experienced as I was could be. It’s the sort of story that helps to keep me modest. Mark Mason was the program director at the time and he knew I had been the program director at WNEW. He would come to me occasionally to solicit my advice about different people he was considering for a position at the FAN. One day Mark comes to me and tells me that that he’s thinking about hiring this guy, Chris Russo. Chris was doing a sports show on WMCA at the time. Mark indicates that he is intrigued since Russo seems have something of a buzz about him – getting some attention. And I go, Oh God, that guy! First of all, he doesn't know sports. He's yelling and screaming. That voice is terrible. I can't imagine anybody tolerating that voice for 4 hours on the radio. So, no, I wouldn't hire him. And of course, Mark did hire him, and Russo has certainly made me eat my words.
Funny thing; I got along great with Chris right from the start, and still do. No doubt his style is not my style. I have to admit that he is very entertaining, and you know, he's the type of guy you call and say, hey Chris, you don't know what you're talking about. And as much as he might disagree with you, he's not going to call you names or treat you with contempt. He's going to listen to you and then yell and scream that you're wrong while throwing in the occasional 'C'mon, Richard.'
CO: We will get into your relationship with the Mets in more detail in the next part of our discussion, but for now, one last question. Do you think that Sports Talk radio has changed the way teams in NY relate to their fan base?
RN: That's an interesting question. Sports talk radio provides an opportunity for the fans to express their views about how they are performing, being managed, spending their money and treating their fans. The talk shows function as messengers. You know you don't shoot the messenger. And by and large the teams are very accommodating when it comes to the talk shows. They make their players available for interviews and regular spots. When the FAN carried the Mets games they were extremely accommodating. It's not that they are less accommodating now, but it's natural that now the Yankees are more accommodating since the FAN carries the Yankee games.
The key thing is that the hosts on the FAN were as objective in their treatment of different teams as any I have known or heard. I think this is generally true of professional sports broadcasters. There was a kind of mutual respect. The teams did very little to try to influence the approach anyone took to them – critical or otherwise. We were blessed with two excellent program directors in Mason and Mark Chernoff, both of whom took a hands-off approach to what we said on air.
Officials from the local teams invariably say that they don't listen to the shows and don't pay attention to the discussions hosts have with the fans. Players may not listen, but both players and the front office learn what is being said about them. It’s New York, after all. Whether or not they listen, they certainly know what the fans think. And they are responsive. They are all trying to be more accommodating and trying to make the experience better for the fans. And in their own way, they feel for the fans who suffer through defeat and are happy when they can produce a winning team.
But some owners pay more attention to what the fans think than do others. Steve Cohen and Woody Johnson represent two different ends of the spectrum. You would never know it from the performance of the team but Woody Johnson is probably too aware of what fans think and is too influenced by it. He also doesn't seem to have a plan that he follows that would allow him to listen but ultimately ignore what the fans clamor for.
Steve Cohen is the opposite.
The fan base, me included, did not want to see Pete Alonso go in free agency. Cohen knew that, and to be honest, he probably didn’t want Alonso to leave either. But Cohen has succeeded in business by being disciplined. He hired Stearns and has put his faith in him. They no doubt discuss the plans and strategies together and then Stearns sets a course that Cohen is committed to following. You don’t hire someone because you believe in their ability to construct a winning team only to interfere with their ability to do so, even when your heart is hurting. That discipline allows him to hear the voices telling him to rescue Alonso from Stearns’ plans -- voices he was probably very sympathetic to -- and then, nevertheless, demurs as Stearns constructs the team as he sees fit. It doesn't mean he wanted to see Pete go or that he wasn't upset when he left. It just means that he has invested in Stearns to make those decisions and he stands by that plan.
Yes, the existence of Sports Talk radio has allowed the fans voices to be heard, and ownership has listened, but not necessarily followed. For the local teams to be meaningful in the fans’ lives there has to be a sustainable connection, and as someone who has spent the better part of two decades as a sports show host, it feels good to know that we have helped create that bond – through good times and bad, though for our beloved Mets, more bad times than good ones.
