OT: Dan Bernstein fired The Score

[Jcool0]

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[dougthonus]

I sincerely doubt The Score wanted to “lay off” its most popular host.

I don't know what the score wanted to do or didn't want to do.

However, it feels pretty unlikely to me that the economic pressure to fire him over this would be significant. This feels like it could have trivially been managed with an apology and a short suspension, or even just totally ignored.

Given Bernstein's general attitude, it wouldn't surprise me if he just had someone that had it in for him above him in the hierarchy and this was an excuse.

[waffle]

no, I think he crossed a line. Threatening someone's KIDS?

Again, I enjoyed him. He was good radio

[fleet]

I sincerely doubt The Score wanted to “lay off” its most popular host.

I don't know what the score wanted to do or didn't want to do.

However, it feels pretty unlikely to me that the economic pressure to fire him over this would be significant. This feels like it could have trivially been managed with an apology and a short suspension, or even just totally ignored.

A firing was an overreaction without more information. They gave him a week off at first. If I had to guess why, they wanted to gather everyone together to consider options, and Dan had a chance to save himself but **** it up.

[dougthonus]

no, I think he crossed a line. Threatening someone's KIDS?

Again, I enjoyed him. He was good radio

He threatened to post someone's phone number and address and if they wanted their kids involved. He didn't threaten to go hit someone with a bat. Maybe there is some inherent threat here that a bunch of people who love Bernstein are going to go vandalize this guy? I don't know seems like a stretch to me that anyone is going to go commit a bunch of crimes on Bernstein's behalf, but you never know.

He also didn't actually do anything. It's highly questionable that he actually had the ability to do what he threatened either. Who does he have PII on this twitter user? He also deleted the messages which showed immediately that he wasn't going to do anything and realized it was a stupid thing to even say.

The guy he's talking with is clearly baiting him too and picking a fight, so we're talking about a non backed up threat, that he likely didn't have the capability to back up, directed at someone picking an internet fight with him, where he later deletes the messages showing that he has no intention of actually backing up the threat that he likely couldn't have backed up anyway?

In the grand scheme of things on the internet, that seems remarkably tame. I've had at least a dozen people threaten to kill me on the internet. I've had people threaten to do far worse than post my name/address. I post under my real name, pretty trivial to find out where I live I imagine, and I've never worried about any of these threats and none have come to fruition either.

To me, this whole thing is a non event unless you're going to hunt down and persecute everyone on the internet that says something similar and actually police it and have true holistic policing of the internet. Otherwise selectively policing public personas being attacked on the internet seems pretty silly and lacking any sense of context.

But again, I agree a line was crossed here, and it isn't a totally nothing response warranted. I'm only saying there's a range of options that exist before you get to firing, and apology / suspension seems like one that would have trivially been easy for the score to manage if they wanted to.

[dougthonus]

I sincerely doubt The Score wanted to “lay off” its most popular host.

I don't know what the score wanted to do or didn't want to do.

However, it feels pretty unlikely to me that the economic pressure to fire him over this would be significant. This feels like it could have trivially been managed with an apology and a short suspension, or even just totally ignored.

A firing was an overreaction without more information. They gave him a week off at first. If I had to guess why, they wanted to gather everyone together to consider options, and Dan had a chance to save himself but **** it up.

Yeah, this seems more likely to me. Based on his personality, I would bet the guy had a reasonable amount of internal enemies looking for a reason.

[Jcool0]

I don't know what the score wanted to do or didn't want to do.

However, it feels pretty unlikely to me that the economic pressure to fire him over this would be significant. This feels like it could have trivially been managed with an apology and a short suspension, or even just totally ignored.

A firing was an overreaction without more information. They gave him a week off at first. If I had to guess why, they wanted to gather everyone together to consider options, and Dan had a chance to save himself but **** it up.

Yeah, this seems more likely to me. Based on his personality, I would bet the guy had a reasonable amount of internal enemies looking for a reason.

He has been #1 for a long time and survived doing stupid things many times. But Radio isn't what it used to be and I'm sure they think they can get a similar rating paying someone much less.

[dougthonus]

He has been #1 for a long time and survived doing stupid things many times. But Radio isn't what it used to be and I'm sure they think they can get a similar rating paying someone much less.

I agree that is what they are thinking. I think they'll find that may not be correct, but it's not my industry so I have no idea. I would wonder if ESPN 1000 picks him up or not. Basically only two games in town unless he can pull off his own daily podcast/substack fee and get people to pay him directly.

[Jcool0]

He has been #1 for a long time and survived doing stupid things many times. But Radio isn't what it used to be and I'm sure they think they can get a similar rating paying someone much less.

I agree that is what they are thinking. I think they'll find that may not be correct, but it's not my industry so I have no idea. I would wonder if ESPN 1000 picks him up or not. Basically only two games in town unless he can pull off his own daily podcast/substack fee and get people to pay him directly.

I think he will try to do what Kap has done pretty successfully start a YouTube channel/podcast. Not sure how well that goes... I tried to watch the podcast he does with his son but it wasn't good.

[jnrjr79]

I sincerely doubt The Score wanted to “lay off” its most popular host.

I don't know what the score wanted to do or didn't want to do.

However, it feels pretty unlikely to me that the economic pressure to fire him over this would be significant. This feels like it could have trivially been managed with an apology and a short suspension, or even just totally ignored.

Given Bernstein's general attitude, it wouldn't surprise me if he just had someone that had it in for him above him in the hierarchy and this was an excuse.

To some extent, I assume this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as opposed to a firing just for this one thing.

[Jo Jo English]

I keep asking why that is, and nobody comes up with a good answer other than he did ‘something’ before. I just want to know what.

It was very briefly mentioned earlier in the thread, but the biggest individual incident that comes to mind were some Twitter remarks directed at Aiyana Cristal.

https://www.insideedition.com/10092-i-enjoy-her-giant-boobs-sportscaster-apologizes-for-tweets-about-sports-reporter

A Chicago sports reporter is speaking out today after she was the victim of some pretty crass tweets.

Aiyana Cristal was covering the Chicago Bulls for Comcast sports when a local Sportscaster Dan Bernstein began tweeting about her appearance.

Bernstein tweeted: "I have no rooting interest in her work, but enjoy her giant boobs.”

Ayiana responded on Facebook, calling the comments "ignorant."

She wrote, "This incident serves as a gross reminder that women continue to fight everyday to be treated equally. Sexual harassment is never acceptable."

And today, the sportscaster is apologizing.

Bernstein said, “I'm an idiot. My tweet was childish. My tweet was crass and unnecessary. I made an observation I shouldn't have made and it was childish and silly and stupid."

[dougthonus]

I keep asking why that is, and nobody comes up with a good answer other than he did ‘something’ before. I just want to know what.

It was very briefly mentioned earlier in the thread, but the biggest individual incident that comes to mind were some Twitter remarks directed at Aiyana Cristal.

https://www.insideedition.com/10092-i-enjoy-her-giant-boobs-sportscaster-apologizes-for-tweets-about-sports-reporter

A Chicago sports reporter is speaking out today after she was the victim of some pretty crass tweets.

Aiyana Cristal was covering the Chicago Bulls for Comcast sports when a local Sportscaster Dan Bernstein began tweeting about her appearance.

Bernstein tweeted: "I have no rooting interest in her work, but enjoy her giant boobs.”

Ayiana responded on Facebook, calling the comments "ignorant."

She wrote, "This incident serves as a gross reminder that women continue to fight everyday to be treated equally. Sexual harassment is never acceptable."

And today, the sportscaster is apologizing.

Bernstein said, “I'm an idiot. My tweet was childish. My tweet was crass and unnecessary. I made an observation I shouldn't have made and it was childish and silly and stupid."

Yeah, that incident was almost a decade ago as well.

Bernstein strikes me as a guy whom is just kind of douchey and does a lot of dog whistle douchey stuff but generally knows where he needs to have a hard stop to avoid real trouble, and these couple times he didn't manage to stop in time, but a long career of being right up next to the line generates a lot of people waiting for you to accidentally cross it.

[Jo Jo English]

Yeah, that incident was almost a decade ago as well.

Bernstein strikes me as a guy whom is just kind of douchey and does a lot of dog whistle douchey stuff but generally knows where he needs to have a hard stop to avoid real trouble, and these couple times he didn't manage to stop in time, but a long career of being right up next to the line generates a lot of people waiting for you to accidentally cross it.

Yep, agreed. I used to listen to Boers & Bernstein at work quite a bit a couple of decades ago. I enjoyed their schtick for the most part, but Dan undoubtedly had an abrasive personality. Given Dan has never been anything other than outspoken about his political views, and that sort of talk has been super-charged emotionally in recent years (for obvious reasons), it is no surprise that there has been a sizable group of folks trying to antagonize him and get him to cross that line.

Bernstein would have been better off pulling back from social media. Someone really needed to get in his ear and remind him that due to his position he was going to be held to a standard that the people who make a hobby out of pushing his buttons would never be held to themselves.

[fleet]

I keep asking why that is, and nobody comes up with a good answer other than he did ‘something’ before. I just want to know what.

It was very briefly mentioned earlier in the thread, but the biggest individual incident that comes to mind were some Twitter remarks directed at Aiyana Cristal.

https://www.insideedition.com/10092-i-enjoy-her-giant-boobs-sportscaster-apologizes-for-tweets-about-sports-reporter

A Chicago sports reporter is speaking out today after she was the victim of some pretty crass tweets.

Aiyana Cristal was covering the Chicago Bulls for Comcast sports when a local Sportscaster Dan Bernstein began tweeting about her appearance.

Bernstein tweeted: "I have no rooting interest in her work, but enjoy her giant boobs.”

Ayiana responded on Facebook, calling the comments "ignorant."

She wrote, "This incident serves as a gross reminder that women continue to fight everyday to be treated equally. Sexual harassment is never acceptable."

And today, the sportscaster is apologizing.

Bernstein said, “I'm an idiot. My tweet was childish. My tweet was crass and unnecessary. I made an observation I shouldn't have made and it was childish and silly and stupid."

I was asking about something serious where he needed to be fired. That’s not really it. Folks are talking as if there was something else in his past along the lines of what he did last month, which was the alleged last straw. What straws? I begin to get the feeling there isn’t anything, and people are repeating comments they read on the internet that do not have a factual basis. Don’t get me wrong, It’s not about him. He’s got enough warts where I stopped listening to his show. Incidentally he and Lawrence brought out the worst in each other. They were competing with each other as who could be the most insufferable on any given day. Twitter just blows with the telephone game, and Twitter is what I love to hate.

[DropStep]

I don't know what the score wanted to do or didn't want to do.

However, it feels pretty unlikely to me that the economic pressure to fire him over this would be significant. This feels like it could have trivially been managed with an apology and a short suspension, or even just totally ignored.

A firing was an overreaction without more information. They gave him a week off at first. If I had to guess why, they wanted to gather everyone together to consider options, and Dan had a chance to save himself but **** it up.

Yeah, this seems more likely to me. Based on his personality, I would bet the guy had a reasonable amount of internal enemies looking for a reason.

Agree. It feels like a Bobby Knight "Zero Tolerance" situation where his ticket was already punched, they were just waiting until he screwed up again. Or, he didn't grovel properly. On its own it isn't termination-worthy.

[evilboy]

While he was good at his job, there were also few more deserving of his fate. For a guy that talked so much about mental health, therapy, marijuana use, he never walked the talk. He'll have to live with that.

I keep asking why that is, and nobody comes up with a good answer other than he did ‘something’ before. I just want to know what.

Dan made radio seem easy. His ability to keep meaningful conversation flowing. It's not easy talking sports as a job for 4-6 hours per day five days a week. Just spend an hour listening to Leila and Marshall, you'll notice a stark difference in flow, vibe, understanding, passion. Dan made it seem like a professional occupation. With that said, he was a bully. So I don't feel bad for him. But Chicago radio will be worse without him. Maybe it will be nicer without him, but it won't have that same quality of thought and opinion that has the ability to make a listener react to what they're hearing.