Radio and TV Talk
Rodney Ho covers TV and radio, from Atlanta’s stations to the most up-to-date “American Idol” news.
- Chris Dimino with the Fan contributor Dan Reeves.
- Sports station the Fan celebrates 25 years
- sixteen hours in the past
- By Rodney Ho
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680/ninety-three.7 The Fan celebrated 25 years at the air this past Saturday with a shindig at Sports & Social throughout the road from its workplaces on the Battery and a stone’s throw from SunTrust Park. Many Fan alums and current personnel confirmed up to fete 1 / 4 century of sports talk, and more than one famous sports activities figures popped via, too: former Falcons teach Dan Reeves and NBA legend and TNT basketball analyst Shaquille O’Neal. I need to be superbly blind because I reputedly was given there before Shaq left but did no longer see him. I recognize. How are you able to no longer see Shaq? But masses of others did as established using social media. Here’s what Rob Jenners, a manufacturer of a podcast offering Shaq and Fan host John Kincade published on Facebook:
Shaq and podcast producer Rob Jenners duke it out.
Former morning host A.J. Cannon and modern-day host Buck Belue on the Sports & Social on the Battery party. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.Com Chris Dimino and Matt Chernoff, who do Braves pre-games collectively. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.Com Hometeam Brandon Leake, along with his on-air accomplice Joe Hamilton, part of the Sports X, a sister station to the Fan. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.Com Chuck and Chernoff on stage at Sports & Social November 3, 2018. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/@ajc.Com
Brian Finneran of the Front Row with Fan director of sports activities marketing Phil Hudson. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.Com Rob Jenners with John Kincade. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.Com. The station wasn’t on continuously in the course of its 25-12 months history. For a brief time within the late Nineties, the station became taken over through Cox and went news/talk. But owner David Dickey got the signal again in 2000. Although his station was overshadowed by using the brasher, extra out-there 790/The Zone, he was patient.
He concept out of doors the container and hired Christopher Rude inside the early 2000s to be a morning host notwithstanding Rude changed into not a sports activities man. It worked, and he becomes there for approximately 15 years. (Rude chose now not to go to the reunion. “That chapter of my existence has passed,” he said.) When the Zone began suffering financially after the owners stretched themselves too skinny by buying stations in St. Louis in the overdue 2000s, Dickey slowly began plucking away the Zone’s quality skills, bit by bit. He turned into additionally capable of upload an FM simulcast, something the Zone didn’t do.
He grabbed Matt Chernoff and Chuck Oliver in 2007.
“Great station,” Chernoff said. “Everyone is chill.” And he loves being at the Battery. “Something is happening right here all the time!” In 2013 and 2014, he nabbed the complete Zone morning show Steak Shapiro, Nick Cellini, and Chris Dimino. By 2015, the Zone becomes gone. Shapiro partly owned the Zone with Andrew Saltzman (who also confirmed up to the party.) The larger-than-life host is now a part of the Fan morning Front Row show with some other former Zone alum Sandra Golden and Falcons alum Brian Finneran.
Cellini and Dimino at the moment are mid-morning. Dickey also plucked Mark Zinno for the Sports X after his stint on ninety-two.Nine/The Game. At the party, Kincade pointed out surviving most cancers in his past due to 20s and figuring out to pursue sports talk radio complete time at the Zone within the past due Nineteen Nineties. In 2000, the Fan picked him up. He began September 4, 2000, with Buck Belue and nonetheless counts the quantity of indicates he does: nowadays changed into the 4,241st display and he stated he’s underneath contract at least until five,000. “There’s no person better to paintings for than David Dickey,” he said.
Mike Thompson, who ran the Fan in 1994 and labored on the station again in the early 2000s, got here to fete his many hires, including Shapiro, Dimino, and Kincade. He said he came from a talking history and had worked with Bob Grant and Sally Jessy Raphael. He built the Fan with that template in mind. He hasn’t been lower back in Atlanta for 12 years. “I’m humbled and proud. So many people got here again,” said Dickey, like a proud papa. “It’s an amazing venue. The weather cooperated.” The most effective started out ingesting after 9:30 p.M. And become blissfully nursing a lager at 9:50.
A couple of no indicates to the celebration protected former morning guys Perry Laurentino and Beau Bock. “They requested me to do a show with Shapiro and AJ [Cannon, his original team]; however, I declined,” Bock texted me. “I didn’t even keep in mind it.” Cannon did display up and actually joined the Fan morning show the final week for a few nostalgias speak with Shapiro.
“Doing the show with Steak, it felt as though no time had passed even though we have not even talked in as a minimum eight years,” Cannon stated. “Even now, being around the 680 own family feels like domestic to me. That’s now not even BS. That’s how a whole lot I loved it all.” Dickey said the future is shiny: “We don’t take part inside the radio enterprise. What we do is help human beings and companies to develop and extend. It’s all about the way of life and the logo.”
