Sports talk radio stations fight for listeners in Houston

Defining them as "movies where the typical woman will walk out of the room if it's on TV," the duo energetically listed the usual suspects of the genre. "Death Wish — I mean, he starts killing everyone — he's going into crack dens and they all look up at him and he just starts blowing them away. It's an awesome movie," one said in full frat-boy tones.

The next day there were plenty of chortles over whether one of them wore "tightie-whities." ("I can't use them — I need the room, if you know what I mean," one said.)

The Davies & Dukes show provides the most recognizable red flag that you're going to be hearing bad sports radio: There's a giggling female cohost. Chronicle columnist John McClain, who's usually excellent on the radio — and who is, by the way, part of a growing contingent of Chron writers providing cheap labor for local stations — isn't exactly suited to the strained semi-flirting he does with his female cohost on his one-hour show.

Some hosts, even if they are relatively loose off the air, just possess the kind of stentorian pipes that make the repartee sound strained.

"I hate it when guys come on the air and say, 'We're going to have some laughs along the way.' No we're not. No we're not," says Granato. "When it doesn't work, nothing sounds more contrived."

"I'm fine with irreverence and occasional silliness in a show, [but] our culture has been dumbed down so much that for me, doing a show that caters to the lowest common denominator is a bad show," says Pallilo, speaking of "guy talk" in general.

Finding a balance is difficult, but more and more shows will be seeking to do it. "That's where your growth opportunity is," says KBME's Berry. "There's a limited number of people to listen to sports talk...if you're measuring that by people who want to argue about whether .300 is the barrier of who's a great hitter and who is not. But there is a broader group of people who are trying to decide between political talk and sports and Ellen DeGeneres on the air, and you can keep them if you give them a little bit of all that and keep your core of being a sports station."

Maybe.

"From time to time we've been encouraged to explore [guy talk], but I think we're more about sports than anything else," Lord says. "I like to talk about that stuff as much as the next guy, but I don't think it should be to the extent that if someone tunes into the station randomly, he can't figure out what our format is."

Thanks for taking my call. I know you guys are up against the clock, so I'll just make this quick. Who's going to survive out of all these stations?

KILT has been the most roiled. They've lost their morning hosts, and Rich Lord is on his third cohost in the last two years.

KILT has replaced Granato and Zierlein in the mornings with Marc Vandermeer and Andre Ware. That's raised some eyebrows in town, because Vandermeer and Ware are the announcers for Texans games.

Vandermeer was already being criticized for going easy on the Texans when he was cohosting with Lord, so no one's expecting any huge onslaught of candor from the two when football season rolls around. (Vandermeer and Ware aren't paid for their NFL jobs by the Texans, but the team does have some say on who's in the booth.)

"They are going to have a hard, hard time establishing credibility," one host says. (It could be worse: There's a growing trend now of pro teams buying their own radio stations. The Washington Redskins and Los Angeles Angels have done it; the St. Louis Cardinals ended a 50-year partnership with legendary station KMOX to do it.)

Still, KILT has the numbers, such as they are (see "Jock Radio: Numbers Game"). They're not going anywhere, and KBME also looks like it's here to stay.

Which leaves KFNC and KILE. Here's the common wisdom on both: KFNC has a signal out of Beaumont that can be tough to get here; Houstonians are not accustomed to getting sports talk on FM and they want local talk as opposed to national. KILE (which will probably be renamed) is at the far, far end of the radio dial and doesn't have the resources for a start-up against the big boys of CBS, Clear Channel and Cumulus.