Wally Hall, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sports editor, is taking his part-time radio gig from The Buzz to the Arkansas Radio Network (KARN), starting Monday. He’ll be on Sports Rap, the afternoon show, with Shawn Arnell. Wally had been a good fit on the morning show three days a week with Tommy Smith and David Bazzel. On-air, he often expanded and complemented his column and his paper’s coverage in material ways. But there are also many who think he benefitted from the prompting of vet Smith. He did well enough to get a better offer, apparently. (I doubt he left for more creative control.)
This move, we’re told, shouldn’t affect the continuing relationship between Hog beat reporters who appear regularly on The Buzz’s Drive Time Sports. An interesting question is whether another voice will be added to The Buzz’s lineup and whether that could alter content to some degree. Those discussions begin Monday at The Buzz.
Wally says he’ll be on this Monday (the show is 5-8 on the Radio Network, but only 6-8 on KARN), but as of mid-afternoon Friday, he was still hammering out details on the number of days he’ll appear and the length of time on-air. He’s expected to have more exposure on KARN than on The Buzz. And there’s this, which could have figured in his move: This will be straight sports, unlike the Smith/Bazzel show, which is a “guy show” that moves from politics to music to food to boobs with plenty of sports in between.
First question for callers to Wally Monday: What was said when Houston Nutt sought you out for a private conversation during the recent SEC football confab?
Additional jock talk: Scott Inman will continue to do game day radio for the Hogs and Rick Schaeffer will have an expanded role, too.
And just because the link happened to turn up coincidentally, a blogger who professes to be the anti-Hogville. — Smarter Hogville, in fact.