IT’S SAD WHEN TV NETWORKS ABUSE HOSTS — SEE: DANNY PARKINS — AND LET THEM GO
His Fox Sports 1 program, “Breakfast Ball,’’ lasted less than 11 months, thanks to an executive who was fired for allegedly harassing women — and Parkins’ best future is behind a Chicago microphone
Not that anybody is noticing except me, but I continue to make history. I am the longest-running daily national TV panelist in the history of Chicago sports media. Danny Parkins lost his show Monday at Fox Sports, as I predicted last year in the suburban Daily Herald, and he’ll eventually return to Illinois because network executives don’t know what they’re doing.
My program, “Around The Horn,” was buried at ESPN because the producers went overly woke. So much for my eight years. They invited too many analysts for too long — for social reasons, instead of opting for the best four, regardless of race and politics — and lost a big audience that we earned from Day One. I didn’t care if they were female, Black, Latino, Asian or Woody Paige-ian. Make it great, which they did not.
Parkins’ show, “Breakfast Ball” drew few viewers at 8 a.m. ET and 5 a.m. PT with Craig Carton and Mark Schlereth. Why would anyone schedule a program with a Chicago radio host, a New York radio host and a former NFL offensive lineman? What would they have in common? Parkins, 38, sold his Wilmette home for $925,000 and moved with his family to the biggest market. The cancellation won’t cost him his job, not yet, but Fox still must pay $37.5 million this season to Tom Brady and $375 million through his 10th year.
Sorry. Parkins is the latest talented soul to grab the big biscuit and watch his career take a hit. The people who run FS1 don’t understand that he went to Syracuse, worked in Kansas City and began at The Score in Chicago, raising money for charities via radiothons. Colin Cowherd liked him and showcased him to the bosses. Unfortunately, he was hired by a lead dude, Charlie Dixon, who lost his job because he was accused of harassing women on his staff. This is where Eric Shanks, as the CEO and executive producer of Fox Sports, does not do his job. He let Dixon ruin livelihoods after less than 11 months. I once interviewed in Century City, on Pico Boulevard, with Dixon in the room.
He didn’t hire me. Thank you, Lord.
If the network gives Parkins a shot elsewhere — or puts him on a podcast — he didn’t make enough impact to draw eyeballs. Front Office Sports reports that two of our former hosts, Tony Reali and Max Kellerman, might be pursued. Why? Fox must depart the shaky business of competing against ESPN, which dropped “Around the Horn” in May and is left with only one traditional debate show — “Pardon the Interruption” — at the moment. Way back in the day, a million people would watch the disputes. Now? Most are drawing only five figures, not enough to matter for advertisers. Also losing their jobs were Joy Taylor, who was accused of sleeping with Dixon, and former athletes Keyshawn Johnson, Paul Pierce, Emmanuel Acho, Chase Daniel and LeSean McCoy. They join losers such as Skip Bayless and Jason Whitlock.
Chicago would be good for Parkins. He’ll be back and host a show at The Score, perhaps in morning drive. But it’s sad when networks execute people for the wrong reasons. He’ll return to a city where sports pages are dead at both newspapers, including the Sun-Times, where I thankfully left before editor Chris De Luca destroyed circulation with boredom in a wonderful sports town. He has no regular columnists, no one to stir debate when the paper attracted 350,000 in daily print circulation not long ago. How many readers now? Drop a comma and a zero. Columnists are being dumped throughout the business for financial reasons. Who’s left?
Sally Jenkins remains with a handful of credible names at the Washington Post. The Athletic doesn’t have national columnists after Jim Trotter retired. Bill Plaschke, in Los Angeles, is fighting Parkinson’s disease. Most papers spread the wealth from beat to beat, such as the Chicago Tribune, which lets Paul Sullivan cover too much baseball when diminishing franchise valuations — low for the White Sox — prove he should be commenting on the NFL, the NBA, the WNBA and college sports.
That’s why debate shows still can succeed on TV. The culture is fading.
Too bad the executives don’t know what works.
Danny Parkins? Hello, goodbye.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.