For those of you in the Raleigh/Durham area, the local sports radio landscape is set to change on Monday with the disappearance of 850 the Buzz. A few months back, Capitol Broadcasting which owns WRAL-TV, 101.5 FM and 99.9 The Fan made a move to purchase 620 AM WDNC from Curtis Media which also owns 680 AM WPTF. Curtis also bought 850 AM WRBZ which was owned by McClatchey Broadcasting. This shakeup basically ended the two sports talk stations scenario and consolidated everything under one company, Capitol. On Monday morning, 620 the Buzz will begin broadcasting with Adam Gold and Joe Ovies taking their morning show over there. David Glenn will be heard on 99.9 from 12-3 every day. The rest of the Buzz/Bull personalities were apparently dismissed including Bomani Jones and long time local radio man Tony Riggsbee.
One rather significant casualty in all of this is the 850 the Buzz Blog, which Joe Ovies started around four years ago. While no official reason was ever given for its demise, one can only assume the management at Capitol wanted to house everything on the WRAL Sports Fan website so the Thee Blog, as it came to be known, was axed. A little known secret about the origins of this blog is that my participation on the 850 blog gave me the inclination to start THF. Over the intervening years I developed interactions with the guys at 850 both through the blog and twice made on-air appearances. I also credit my appearance on the 850 the Buzz blogroll(along with ACC Now) and their timely linking of things I wrote as the primary driver of traffic in the early days.
The 850 the Buzz Blog was basically a local version of Deadspin handled with a modicum of journalistic integrity and sans the gratuitous use of the F-bomb. Joe Ovies did an outstanding job bringing humor, calling out local players and coaches alike and needling the respective fan bases on a regular basis. Ovies did his job so well that he has basically been accused of hating Duke, NCSU and UNC all at the same time. In short it was a steady stream of great content and a nice framing of the local sports stories. The regular readers in the comments section were not too dissimilar from what we see here at THF. Many UNC fans frequented that blog and this one as well. By and large the discussions were level headed and thoughtful. The level of flaming and general rivalry trash talking picked up here and there. However, Ovies followed a model similar to the one I follow here which is to keep the trolls out by not even approving their comments to begin with.
At the end of the day, the loss of Thee Blog is a shame. While Joe Ovies will surely be a part of the WRAL Sports Fan site, it is difficult to see a community of readers simply die. Thee Blog was a little like the United Nations. It was completely neutral and fans of all stripes from among the local schools congregated there to debate their respective teams. In a day and age of anonymous internet postings where it is very easy to be a keyboard commando or spout ignorant garbage for the world to read, the community at Thee Blog kept that kind of stuff to a minimum. Most of the readers were smart and understood not only the details and history of their own team but the other local teams as well. It made for some interesting discussions. I, for one, will miss it.
So to Joe Ovies and the now defunct 850 the Buzz Blog, I salute you.
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A daily reader of Thee Blog, I never posted there. I loved reading the comments and got a big kick out of some of the posters. I never posted because it was a bit snarky for my tastes. I think I’m older than most of the posters there (here too most likely) and my generation tends to be a bit less vocal when it comes to trash talking. I don’t mind hearing it, I just won’t get caught up in it.
Thee blog is where I found Tarheelfanblog so it’s got that going for it too.
I’ll miss it as well. Best of luck to the station employees and to the posters (many of whom I would imagine might show up here).
Imus, then Mike Solarte brought me to The Buzz, then I started to read/post on Thee Blog about a year or so ago. I’ll miss the back and forth that site gave fans of all stripes and colors. Progress ain’t always that good.
Very well written and well said THF… I definitely will miss 850 The Buzz and Thee Blog. It was very entertaining to read and to comment on, now and then. All of the comments you posted there were well thought out and I thought you did a good job of trying to keep everyone, even Carolina fans, on an even keel.
I will say though, that I enjoyed how smallandpettypat used to tweak State and Duke fans. It was pretty funny.
I feel the same today about the Thee Blogs demise that I did when goheels.com went away. Goheels.com used to provide indepth analysis and hard-hitting commentary, a lot of it provided by Art Chansky among others. Then UNC decided to do an “official” website, which was pretty much a mouthpiece of the university and they bought goheels.com and now in-depth, hard-hitting analysis of Carolina Sports is gone.
But, the silver lining in this black cloud is that your blog, THF, is still here. Keep up the good work!!!
I started listening to 850 with the Sports Babe back when I was in HS. Loved Solarte, but Chris Clark was my favorite of all time. Dave Glenn is great, I just don’t like Adam Gold, and Joe registers pretty neutral with me. It is most definitely the end of an era.
I actually really came to enjoy bomani jones and his take. especially how much he ripped on duke. if anyone caught his show after their blue/white scrimmage on the first day of practice, it was absolutely hilarious!
Good send off THF! Thee Blog was the about the first blog I visited on a regular basis as I did not even know of Deadspin or any others before. I used to post quite often back in the day but got a little slack in the last year – though I still hit it up many times a day. Thee Blog will be missed. I’ll continue to visit yours regularly but probably won’t admit aloud since I’m one of those damn Dukies!
Hate to see Thee Blog get killed. Now that 850 has gone away I do not see me upside for local talk radio in the Triangle till the next shake up. Looking at the new lineup it seems WRAL is going for a regional coverage model with Taylor Zarzar and Dave Glenn in syndication. There will be two local shows everything else national or regional. As much as I enjoyed Dave Glenn from back on his run with Sports Saturday to his drive time show, not sure how his current format will translate to a regional model
(Packman is regional). Best of Monday and Top Ten Friday rolling up against Rome and the Mighty ESPN, good luck with that. The new version of Thee Blog will have to be much tamer now that Joe O is under a big corporate umbrella. Good luck to all those guys because time are a changing.
I’m not going to make it. I’m trying to listen to this new lineup and I just can’t do it. They are talking about Mark Sanchez and Eli Manning… why should I care? So much for having local sports talk. At least Charlotte has WFNZ (which, this time of year, is Panther’s talk all day long). Now, the Triangle has nothing but generic national sports talk. Can’t wait to spend the day hearing about Kansas and Kentucky and how great the Big East is during basketball season, with a tiny bit of UNC and Dook sprinkled in. This sucks.