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Mustard & Johnson Dumped, Mae to MLB

August 30, 2008 By

WEEI has dumped Yankees Talk, aka The Mustard and Johnson show from their Saturday morning lineup.

David Scott has more on the move and what WEEI will be plugging in during that time slot.

Scott also touched on Hazel Mae officially landing at MLB TV, something Jessica Heslam also reported in the Herald today.

Over on Patriots Daily, Scott Benson has a look at cutdown day for the Patriots, from the view of an alternative universe.

In the wake of Jeff Horrigan leaving the Herald, his former colleague Michael Gee talks about the job and role of the beat reporter, in stark contrast to a columnist.

Filed Under: Morning Links
  • john

    Maybe there is a God up there?

  • BrendanEff

    Thank friggin’ God. Larry Johnson’s voice gives me aural diverticulosis.

  • Mitch

    They were still on the air? Good riddance.

    Johnson was a credibility-starved buffoon who would have voluntarily called it a day if he had any shame. An absolute hack with a blatant racial agenda.

    And if everyone in the USA had the value system…and spine…of Mustard, we’d all be pledging allegiance to the Russian flag right now.

    Again, very good riddance.

    Now, if they would only do likewise to Adams and Buckley on Sunday mornings, and put the listenable, knowledgable Sean McAdam in that slot with a rotating guest…they would be making an enormous weekend upgrade.

    • media-tor

      You’re going to get half your wish, Mitch. With the NFL kicking off next weekend, EEI will go back to ‘NFL New England Sunday’ or whatever they call that show in their Sunday morning slot.

      If I remember last year I believe it was either Greg Dickerson or Butch Stearns as host, and featuring Steve Nelson, Paul Perillo and Tom E. Curran from whatever game he’s at for NBC.com that week. Not sure if they’ll be changing up that lineup.

      I would think Felger might be a fit in there somewhere if he didn’t already have a Sunday morning commitment on Ch. 4′s pregame show.

  • MarkB

    How Mustard and Johnson stayed on the air this long is one of those cosmic mysteries – like where is the missing dark matter in the universe, or where do odd socks go.

    By the way… Sean McAdam. Knowledgable? Sure. Listenable? Llke having a nine-foot tapeworm pullout out of your intestines through your mouth. Without anesthetic.

  • LJ Sandwich

    God gave his only son so that Larry Johnson could suck on the ample teat of Glen Ordway…Alas, payback is a beotch.

  • Ron

    I am still amazed the ratings weei pulls in with the awful on air talent. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

    • Mitch

      Their ratings aren’t even close to what they’d have you believe with their dishonest, self-congratulatory plugs.

      Go to arbitron.com and see. They’re actually ranked 6th in the market…and falling significantly.

      Self-praise is no praise, especially in this case.

      • Research Director

        That would be in the meaningless 12+ demo that Arbitron allows everyone to see. They are a dominant #1 in M25-54, more than doubling their competition. They fluctuate between #1 and #3 in the “money demo”, A25-54. With their affiliation with the sports brands and their stellar ratings, WEEI is the 800 lb. gorilla of Boston radio (and I don’t mean Sheppard).

  • Angry Old Bastard

    …FINALLY, the “little general” Jason Wolfe sees the light……about time

    • http://billy bill

      Praise the lord no more Yankee talk… No more larry johnson no more of that Commie Mustard, No more Joey of the northend No more LISTEN TOO ME! LISTEN TOO ME CRAP..(SEEYA JOEY) How appropriate this year when the yanks will miss the playoffs and also tear there overated building down. The yankees really do suck after all.

    • snuffy smith

      Don’t give the Lost Lil’Bastard(JW) too much credit. All he saw was a need to sell advertising time for more money to support all the new bloggers. No one was going to pay higher ad rates for those two buffoons. He needs to create some buzz with new programming to get the dough.

      Hey maybe WFAN wants some Spankee talk on Sat AM???

  • Rick Mc

    Arbitron gives out only the most basic ratings. 12+ Mon-Sun is meaningless. What matters is 18-54 (Men are more significant) and drive time. From what I gather, they do well in those areas. Also, you have to look at year over year, not quarter to quarter.

  • JohnnyApps

    I’m extremely pleased to hear the news that Mustard and Johnson is no more. I just wonder what their regular celebrity callers are going to do now that the show has been canceled. I’m sure Larry Johnson will still be around…but I bet this is it for Mustard. WEEI should have made this move a long time ago.
    If Rob Bradford and his new WEEI.com cronies take over the time slot I hope they go easy on the shameless plugging of their new WEEI.com…

    • Angry Old Bastard

      ..Larry Johnson is going to be put in a back room to trace his “cartoons”…you’ll never hear his voice on WEEI again….They’ve go to get their money’s worth out of Felger, Bradford, Borges etc..etc…..as a matter of fact I can see it now, The NFL Sunday show is probably going to be Felger and Borges didn’t they do a show together before?…”On all Fours for Felger” or something like that, it was on Comcast.

  • Fred West Lynn

    Let’s face it: WEEI hit a fork in the road. They could either retire M&J with the Yankees’ relevance, or they could make the bold move and lure Joe Morgan away from ESPN to dumb down the discussion.
    Cooler heads prevailed.

    (Now if the station will only stick to their promise to keep Smerlas and D’Assie separated….)

  • Koorbloh

    I seem to be the only one here to lament the passing of Mustard and Johnson. It’s extremely odd that those two should have inspired the less-than-concealed vitriol of the preceding remarks…..just why is everyone so glad that they are gone?

    WEEI caters to a peculiar segment of society: sports lovers. In particular, Boston sports-lovers. In this demographic, the Red Sox loom large. Baseball is a subtle, elegant sport that attracts possibly the best writing that exists about sport (the old adage: the smaller the ball, the better the prose….golf does in fact also attract great writing.) So it is odd that relatively genteel, respectful conversation between two interesting hosts, Mustard and Johnson, one of whom has the temerity to be a Yankees fan, should be so reviled. Why should WEEI so often sound like a pastiche of Beavis and Butthead, and its listeners sound like retarded nine year olds? Why the odd alliance of macho posturing, right wing politics, and the love of sport? A sociologist would have a tough time figuring out the concomitance.

    Adolescent male crass vulgarity can be amusing. But it is enhanced in its effects if it from time to time to time yields to something different. Mustard and Johnson were different. Not unlike Dale and Holley. So I am dismayed that they have been sent packing, and dismayed by the glee evoked by that cancellation. But, of course, hardly surprised.

    • MarkB

      Go back to tracing cartoons, Larry.

    • CJ

      Umm, Larry, I no longer find your schtick… groovy? Far out? EEI is the Cassel of suck-dom and hopefully the days of rewarding malaise are over – but EEI’s employment of “I’m not Severin” Felger and “Hate’ Borges leaves that in question. Still it’s one small step for fans – can it translate into one giant leap for fans who are too smart to call radio shows? Probably not.

    • Jason Coyote

      Koorbloh (or Holbrook if you spell it backwards), I agree to some degree that M&J were different from the weekday morning and afternoon drive shows. But just so you know the whole story, Mustard wasn’t always a diehard Yankees fan. He turned against the Red Sox when Clemens left the team because Craig was a big fan of the Rocket back in the day (for obvious reasons that feeling has been toned down in recent years).

      So what made the show different was that Yankee fans got a chance to call in and not be slammed on air right from the get-go. But in many ways that too became repetitive. I remember going several months without tuning in, then one Saturday morning I listened only to find they were have the exact same arguments about the Sox and Yanks as before. So in a way it became as predictable as D&C/Big O and it also started to imitate them in that those Yankee callers would often get shouted over by Larry Johnson.

      I’m starting to wonder with all of sports radio if the talking over one another (as opposed to having a back-and-forth dialogue) takes place because both the callers and hosts all have minute attention spans and if they don’t make their point when they think of it they’ll forget what they were thinking.

      I hope that the new Saturday morning dot-com show can somehow be different. With Bradford and Mutnantsky on board it has a chance of not sounding like almost every other show on that station.

    • ted

      i agree with almost all you have written…although i hate the yankees, i enjoyed listening to their intelligently-stated arguments and discussions….although i enjoy other weei shows, i find it ridiculous when all the panelists and caller talk over each other…see glenn ordway…..i cannot believe that this is viewed as good sports talk….i think the ratings are good despite this presentation…mustard and johnson both demonstrated a warmth and used intelligent arguments in most of their discussions…and you could actually follow their train of thought….i will dearly miss them and am saddened by all the negativity surrounding their show…..maybe this speaks to the lack of intelligence,tolerance and attention span of the average viewer…thank goodness there was one person out there who shared my viewpoint…i wish them the best and am sorry i never did call into their show…

  • Chris

    Discrimination lawsuit coming from Johnson in 5….4….3….2….1. It’s what radio and TV media people DO; it’s part of their DNA.

    • Fivehead

      Cool, Gerry Callahan posts here.

  • Tony

    No more Craig Mustard?

    No more Mike from Canton?

    Someone check my pulse because I think I just died and went to Heaven.

    • paul

      I’ll miss them both. I won’t miss Joey from the North End.

  • Newman

    The worst show, possibly,in the history of radio. Johnson was a fifth grade, class clown wannabe. Constantly trying to be funny, but never making it. Mustard was a smarmy jerk who always thought he was the smartest guy in the room. Their regular callers made the show absolutely unlistenable. The same crap week after week, month after month, year after year. I ‘m sure we’ve heard the last of Joey, Mike, Victor, John, et al. Other shows wil dump all over them.

  • STYMIE

    i will miss the preacher and the teacher , moron from da north end and frank one tooth from da foxy lady….chowwwwww

  • BlitzingVrabels

    I will miss Larry Johnson because he was so capable of repeating what he heard during the week. Don’t get me wrong I know he does not have an original thought in his head but at least he gave a good recap of what was said between Mon thru Fri. What was best about him was that he pretended to believe it was an original thought. I weep a tear for him.

  • http://www.jonvssports.blogspot.com Jon

    Proof that God does indeed love us. Now to begin the forced expulsion of Joey from the North End, Mike from Canton, Frank from Gloucester, Danny from Quincy…

  • Ed Sarkavakian

    I hope you people express the same joy and enthusiasm over losing your own jobs as you do for the loss of Mustard and Johnson’s. Why these two drew so much hatred and vitrol is beyond me. Amazing how people continually bitch and bitch about a station, yet they continue to listen to it.

    • http://www.jonvssports.blogspot.com Jon

      That’s nice. Unfortunately, both of them already have jobs. It’s not like WEEI just made them homeless.

  • http://billy bill

    Does anyone think the other shows like Dale and Holly or the Big Show will let Joey from the northend on there show? If you think about it it would be kind of funny to listen too. Besides dont they need someone to replace frank he is getting old… just a thought

  • http://harry/marblehead harry palmer

    many of the people who are expressing such disgust with the show have a great deal of knowledge regarding the show’s callers…as for me wfan will be my station of choice

  • Pat from Staten Island

    Why should I be so surprised that the majority of the “rubes” in these parts are glad to see Mustard & Johnson gone – Mustard was the only one who had the nads to say what’s on his mind not what he thought people wanted him to say or tow the party/station line. It’s further proof that the so called “intelligencia of New England” are afraid to let anyone that has a different voice be able to give their opinion. It also proves that New Englanders are Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruin fans – they are NOT sports fans.

  • Jason Coyote

    Are you just trying to stir up trouble, Pat? Go back and read the opinion polls for both of these guys and you’ll realize the hatred of them here has little to do with them speaking their respective minds.

    The only problem I really had with the M&J show was it was becoming just as repetitive (in a pro-Yankees way) as all the other pro-Boston shows on EEI. It’s okay to try to be different, as long as you’re actually trying to be different. Despite being friendlier towards NY sports fans, M&J was really MOTS.

    • http://mmm Michael Maddox

      I am a Sox fan and hardly a liberal. But I truly miss M&J. They were refreshing voices each Saturday morning. I think many of the comments above are more about Masshole nation than about them. Listening to the new guys right now, and they don’t hold a candle to M&J. They had a loyal following and hope they get a new gig.

      PS. I would think most of the M&J haters are fans of the various “turd” references on the Big Show.

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