Don Imus was a racist piece of trash who sucked at his job. Instead of being dismissed as an old, tone-deaf loser who was as entertaining as a used McDonald’s bag, his Imus in the Morning program was syndicated on sports talk radio stations in the 1990s.
As a teenager who could not get enough sports talk radio during the late 90s, having this god-awful show on our only sports talk radio station in Sacramento every morning was a kick in the dick. Oh wait, it actually was worse because Imus in the Morning was broadcast on tape delay for those living in the Pacific Standard Time zone meaning what we were hearing was three hours old.
By the way, this was something not even extended to Mike & Mike in their heyday less than a decade later. And that’s because running a tape delayed program on the west coast is freaking stupid regardless of who’s hosting.
However, Imus in the Morning being syndicated on sports talk radio reached entirely new levels of stupidity beyond simply being broadcast on tape delay. Namely, the show and its host almost never talked about sports unless it involved a non-white person doing something he deemed questionable.
The rest of the program was just Imus muttering about things he saw on the news or doing skits that never landed. Seriously, his skits and characters were the drizzling shits. Her takes may have sucked, but at least The Fabulous Sports Babe actually talked about sports.
Related: Bob Dylan and the disappointment of visiting Dealey Plaza
How did Imus in the Morning become syndicated on sports talk radio?
Imus in the Morning became syndicated on sports talk radio more by chance than anything else. WFAN, the station he worked for at the time, switched to an all-sports format in the late 1980s and, for some reason, it decided to keep him around.
A few years later, a sports-centric station in Boston started to carry the show and this led to a syndication drive across America. By 1996, stupid Imus in the Morning was being broadcast on sports talk radio outlets in numerous markets as well as having a simulcast deal with MSNBC.
That is perhaps even more bewildering than the guy who doesn’t talk sports being on sports talk radio stations. Imus had a face for radio. I watched like five minutes of him on MSNBC once. That is as long as I could tolerate looking at him. Was anyone actually sitting through three hours of this on a daily basis?
Anyway, Imus’ star began to wane in the early 2000s as more money flooded into the sports talk radio business. Syndicated alternatives, such as Fox Sports Radio, emerged while other networks opted to go local with their morning shows.
Then, of course, came his ill-fated comments on the Rutgers women’s basketball team in 2007 which led to his firing and removal from the airwaves. That was truly a wonderful day as it meant no one ever had to sit through hours of his stupid schtick ever again.
