John McDermott

Author: John McDermott @mcdradio

  • D-Day 1994 and John Gambling sits down to run the board

    Twenty five years goes by quickly.

    25 years ago I was producing John Gambling and we were working on a montage for the 50th anniversary of D-Day.  This was back in the days before digital editing so if you made a montage you sat at the board and did it in real time while recording it on a reel to reel

    John wasn’t happy with the mix I was doing and told me to get up. What?  He was going to mix it himself?  What?  NYC radio host John Gambling is going to mix it himself?

    John sits down and damn he’s smooth on a board. Like really smooth.  And nails the mix.

    I was quite surprised. John educated me that (despite his famous father) he had spent time in the trenches and knew how to do these things, and if I remember correctly also knew a little engineering.

    Seven years later I’d have a similar but flipped experience on 9/11.  I was the APD at WOR and a few years past running a board, and the newer staff only knew me in my then-current role.  I forget the particulars but I know there were some moves I wanted to make (the PD had gotten stuck on the other side of the Hudson, so I was calling the plays) and it was just going to be easier to do it myself than to explain it.

    So I told him to get up and I sat down at the very same board from the D-Day story.  I think I ran the board for about twenty minutes that morning. Those are stories for another post.

    Anyway, those 25 years ago went by quickly. I’m not sure it feels like yesterday but when I heard it was the 75th anniversary I felt like we’d just had the 50th.

  • My own personal NFL Ratings theory

    My own personal NFL Ratings theory

    tv sports

    I used to be a hardcore NFL watcher.  Every window, even spending some late December Saturday afternoons slogging through some awful games because I didn’t want to miss anything.

    A big driver in that was Fantasy Football and my Football Picks Pool.

    I think Thursday Night Football has killed my enthusiasm.  Here’s why.

    Sunday morning used to be the time when I would collect information.  I’d watch pregame shows to learn if it were snowing in Green Bay, or maybe my running back wouldn’t start.  That affected both my fantasy team (and I have been playing since the days when that hobby was called rotiserrie football and we did the scores by hand.)

    Thursday Night Football ruined the flow, but the TNF games were only in the latter part of the year, so it was a little easier to ignore.

    Now, I find myself cursing TNF every Thursday around 6pm when I remember that I haven’t made my picks or set my lineup yet.  So I do them in a hurry, and don’t have any attachment.  I personally have no room in my life to watch football on Thursday, so if my players play that makes me even less attached to my fantasy team.

    Add in a few years of that pattern cycling, and I find i just don’t care.  If I am home I will stare at the crack of Red Zone, but the 4pm window gets harder for me to slog through (with less crack) and I have zero interest in staying up until midnight on Sunday (a great TV night for non-sports) or Monday.  I can just check my phone on Monday morning and shrug.

    So that’s my theory.  Thursday broke my ecosystem.  It’s too much and it’s too early in the week.  What’s your theory?