Listening to KLAC 570 this morning, I was sad to learn that Roggin and Simers Squared will be going off the air. Beginning Monday, the trio will be replaced by Dan Patrick's new radio show.
Personally, I had enjoyed listening to Fred Roggin, TJ Simers, and his daughter Tracy Simers for the past few months in the morning. They really seemed to coming into their own. It was fun listening to the dichotomy between Roggin and TJ, two very different LA sports personalities, while Tracy acted as the voice of reason in the crew. They discussed more than just sports, and they made my slow morning crawl across the 101 just a bit easier.
Still, putting them in the morning time slot might have been a bit too much. It probably wasn't easy for Roggin to do the 11 PM news on NBC 4 followed by the KLAC show at 6 AM. Likewise, TJ had his own difficulties balancing his LA Times and KLAC responsibilities. This morning he admitted:
"I made it very clear to management that this was killing me. I'm an old man. This was a tall order we took on. It was bigger than I thought. As recently as a couple of weeks ago I told them I couldn't do it every day. So I think it was pretty much understood that we were not going to continue in the same format," Simers said.
Hopefully this isn't the last of TJ, Tracy, and Fred on the radio. TJ and Tracy did co-host a weekend show before joining Roggin in the morning drive time slot. Roggin did say on the air that all three have been offered other opportunities within the station.
In the meantime, this leaves Los Angeles without any local sports talk shows before noon. (Jim Rome's show starts at 9 AM and originates from Southern California, but it is geared toward a nation-wide audience.) It's been speculated that local morning sports talk can't succeed in LA. But I'm not so sure. Steve Mason and John Ireland used to host an entertaining morning sports show on the old XTRA 690 before parting ways and eventually reuniting to do an afternoon drive time show on KSPN 710. With the right host getting the right amount of sleep, there's no reason why local sports talk radio can't work here.
