“You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little ****ed up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to ****in’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?”– Tommy DeVito
“Most entertaining” is our 4th and final category before the big reveal of the overall Buffalo Sports Media Power Rankings.
5. Jeremy White— A driving force on WNY’s top-rated morning show, Jeremy comes in just behind…
4. Howard Simon— … the guy whose name is in the title of the show. Working together since 2004, Simon and White have grown their listening audience not just by keeping entertainment a priority, even through the most dire of Bills and Sabres seasons.
3. Chris Parker— “The Bulldog” has been “talkin’ sports” since the mid-90s at WBEN and has settled into his role as WGR afternoon host, even with his transformation from crazy-looking long-haired party guy to… well, crazy-looking long-haired family man.
2. Tim Graham— I’m sick of writing about Tim Graham. Tim hates sunshine. (That felt good.)
1. Mike Robitaille— Mike says things nobody else will say, in large part because nobody else would think to put words into the order that he does.
NEXT: TOP 10 OVERALL
Interesting results here. I love Tim Graham but I fail to see where he is most entertaining. You only hear him during an atypical radio interview or co-hosting a video chat with Sully. I’d leapfrog Jeremy to 2 because I do think he is more entertaining than Parker or Howard.
For what it’s worth, mine would be:
1. Roby-great pick who makes you laugh out loud with his Roby-isms
2. Jeremy White-Always good info in an entertaining manner
3. Howard Simon- great straight man, voice of reason, you name it; he does his role well.
4. Reuben Brown- Don’t know if he counts but his radio show on S&R is great radio and insight on football.
5. Schopp and Bulldog. I put them together because when they are solo the show isn’t as good. Bulldog is like a spokesman for Buffalo fans who plays that role well. I’m not a fan of Schopp as a person, as you may have seen from other posts, but from an entertainment perspective only he does come up with good info on sports and the entertainment side of sports. Match Game is good as well and when he was on 107.7 he had a great “name the obscure Sabre contest.” If he would just bag those car and condiment drafts he might be more listenable.
I’m assuming Brad isn’t eligible but if so he would be an easy #2 and everyone would be bumped down one (except Roby)
“I’m not a fan of Schopp as a person” – do you know him? I think this is one of the strongest misconceptions about on-air vs. off-air personalities.
I agree about Tim Graham being unusually high on the list. It’s hard because I don’t seem to hear him enough. And for Sully not to be on the “most entertaining” list is mind-boggling.
To me, this is the list:
1. Roby
2. Sullivan
That’s it.
I miss Art Wander.
I have met him and we have done business with Entercom and on or off the air your core personality does come though. Good point on Sully since he does have a weekly show, columns and video chat.
This survey has become clear silliness, with Tim Graham and perhaps Brad Riter making sure to get all of Graham’s friends to vote for him in every category to skew the results.
By your own admission, you only had 447 votes. Hardly a good sample size to make any sweeping judgments. Graham hasn’t worked in sports in Buffalo in several years, just recently returning to a non-sports gig and now moving back to Bills.
So he worked at ESPN. So what? He did blogs. And none of the work he did at TBN, which was now what — 7-8 years ago? — was that impressive to merit the kind of across-the-board rating he’s receiving over clearly more deserving people in the media, both at TBN and other outlets.
I could even make this point: Why was Graham even included in the survey? He hasn’t even started his sports gig. He hasn’t been a member of the “Buffalo Sports Media” for several years.
This survey had a lot of potential as a conversation piece. Instead, it’s a bust. Period. A lot of people who follow Buffalo media don’t even know who Tim Graham is. Hope he or anyone at TBN doesn’t think some fledgling blog clearly sponsoring him is indicative of the opinion of Buffalo sports fans.
Graham lived in Buffalo when he worked for ESPN and covered the Bills. He covered the last Sabres team that went to the ECF, so that was 2007, five years ago, not “7 or 8”. Plus he covered the Bills while he was at ESPN and had shows on WECK and WGR. Seen him on channel 2 as well. He wrote a bunch of long form Bills stories this winter for the Buffalo News. That story about the Bills leaving town was tough to read but really indepth. If you don’t think Graham has covered sports in Buffalo for seven years you haven’t paid attention. How many have covered Sabres AND Bills aside from him and Hamilton?
If you Google Graham’s work like I should of before I wrote my last comment you’d learn he won Pro Football Writers Association awards for his work last year including a story on Stevie Johnson. And he was president of the Boxing Writers Association while he was with the Buffalo News. So I guess his work wasn’t that impressive? Terrible/ignorant take.
441 responses is a strong sample, but I do question the variety of responses they received.
The survey was open for, what, a day? That ultimately is a flaw in the study. Should have been open for at least half a week.
From what I’ve read most responses came from Twitter and e-mail. The e-mail responses were probably Brad Riter’s contacts which, realistically, were probably a lot of sports media people and/or radio station employees.
I think had they kept the survey open longer, giving more “regular” people a chance to complete the survey, the responses would have made more sense to the commentators here, who are your average Joe reader/listener.
However, that fact that it was largely spread by word of mouth thru social media in itself is going to skew the sample. Ultimately this was a fun project, but in the interest of statistics, the entire thing is largely flawed.
But it’s still fun!
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