Dollars and sense: ‘What's going on at The Score' sparks talk in Chicago sports media

New York Times

06-05-2025

Dollars and sense is an occasional column about Chicago sports business and media that people occasionally ask about.
This week in Chicago, there's a big media conference focused on sports radio and podcasting.
But when I checked the schedule for Barrett Sports Media's two-day affair, I noticed it's missing a timely and local discussion topic: 'What the Heck is Going On at The Score?'
It's certainly a question people are talking about in Chicago as another mainstay left the city's original sports radio station. So why not make it an industry-wide topic?
'What the Heck is Going On at The Score?' would be a lot more interesting than 'Hitting Homeruns (sic) From The Corner Office' or 'Podcasting's Big Future.'
There are already a number of 670 The Score employees speaking at different panels during the BSM conference — including Mitch Rosen, the operations director at the Audacy-owned station.
Founding Score host Mike North and the recently departed Danny Parkins, who just left for TV fame and fortune in New York City, are both receiving awards. I believe they'd have opinions.
Former Score producer John Mamola works for BSM and could be the host, and Rosen could explain the challenges of running Chicago's preeminent sports radio soap opera. Score host Laurence Holmes could even turn it into a podcast for his 'House of L' show.
The Barrett Sports Media conference is being held at the Edlis Neeson Theater and I can think of no better place for an event on sports radio than the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The latest development at the station came last week when executive producer Shane Riordan abruptly announced he was leaving the station immediately. It came on the same day the station announced that Leila Rahimi, the on-again, off-again host, was back to full time at the station as the lead host of the midday show.
This news came about a month after midday host Dan Bernstein was fired because of some dumb tweets after a long, successful run at the station and about nine months after Parkins, the hometown kid made good, accomplished something that so rarely happens in the medium these days: He left on his own accord for a better job.
Compared to ESPN 1000, which chugs along with the same lineup (for better or worse), The Score is like a merry-go-round, roller coaster or Tilt-A-Whirl. Take your pick. With Parkins, Bernstein and now Riordan gone, that's three big departures in a year, all under wildly different circumstances.
Change isn't always bad. It's beneficial to get new voices in the mix. But is the station better today than it was a year ago? I'd say the answer is no.
Not everyone has to agree, of course. Argument is the core of sports radio, right?
Was Bernstein the GOAT? Do you put him on the Mount Rushmore of Chicago Sports Radio?
Et cetera and so on.
I'm glad that Rahimi and Marshall Harris, Bernstein's former co-hosts, are making up the new midday show (along with regular third co-host, the always entertaining Mark Grote). They're good people and I hope they get the runway to develop and succeed. It's a job that any of us in the industry can do for a shift or two, but it's more difficult than you think to do it five days a week. To be original and creative and engaging, while also being a technician, for four hours a day is even tougher.
Bernstein wasn't everybody's cup of tea — at times, he could go overboard on the animus — but he's difficult to replace. There's a reason he lasted that long at one place.
The same goes for Riordan, an aggressive producer who cared how the show sounded and had the gravitas to influence a show.
Holmes, who is Matt Spiegel's latest co-host, doesn't have to measure himself up to Parkins, of course. He's been doing this for decades. He's as technically sound and opinionated as anyone. I'm guessing the longtime host would like to stay in the afternoon slot for a long while as well.
Sports radio is built on habits and familiarity, and the loss of three mainstays will hurt the Score's product, if not the ratings. But again, maybe change is a good thing.
The Score had been relatively settled for the last three years when Holmes, who was doing a solo midday show, replaced Rahimi (who briefly went back full-time to TV) as Bernstein's co-host.
But then Parkins got his big job at Fox Sports 1 just before football season.
The afternoon show he did with Spiegel, Riordan and Chris Tannehill was just fun sports radio. Riordan always joked with me about my love for their afternoon rivals on ESPN 1000, Marc Silverman and Tom Waddle, but I always toggle between the shows and stick with what interests me. When that foursome on The Score got going, it was difficult to change the station.
Parkins going from a local radio show to the morning show on national TV was a pretty big deal, and it even got a few of us to look up to see what channel FS1 was on. (Don't quiz me on that, though.) But the aftereffects of that move are still being felt.
The new afternoon show is fine — Holmes knows how to do radio — but it's not the same, and losing Riordan is a major blow.
He issued a statement on Twitter about why he left the station, or why the station left him.
The amount of support I've gotten in the last few days has been incredible. I don't have my career without you, the incredibly dedicated and appreciative Score listener.
Thank you for everything 🖤 pic.twitter.com/vSd4o0U09d
— Shane Riordan (@shane_riordan) May 4, 2025
I'm told it was mutual, though the timing was decidedly not. Riordan was thinking about leaving, as he intimated in the post, but the station's bosses picked the day that Rahimi (a good friend of his) was hired. Did they need to cut salary? It would make sense. Audacy, the owner of the station, isn't exactly thriving financially and just had layoffs across the country.
Once Holmes took over Parkins' seat, the show changed, which I think partly led to Riordan's departure. His on-air time diminished, but Riordan's greatest strength was booking guests, a lost art these days. His aggressiveness and sense of the moment put him on par with famed Chicago sports radio producers (is that a thing?) like Jesse Rogers and Randy Merkin.
If there was news happening, Riordan was on it, and he knew how to push his hosts' buttons on and off the air. He felt like he needed his show to crush the competition and he produced it accordingly. The Score will be more boring without him there, but he'll bounce back. With Barstool Sports in town, I could see him landing there in a production role.
In that regard, if The Score bosses were smart, they'd make sure Tannehill is happy at the station. He's the most indispensable person there and should be paid accordingly.
And now back to Bernstein.
Less than a month after Parkins left for New York, Bernstein went viral for a weird reaction during a transition with the afternoon show.
Bernstein didn't like how he was greeted by 'Barstool Eddie' Farrer, a Barstool Sports personality who was guest hosting with Spiegel. Bernstein's outsized reaction during the awkwardness was caught on video (because every sports radio show is now also a streaming show for some reason) and it blew up as the Barstool commentariat went wild protecting their own.
Holmes left the show to move to afternoons to co-host with Spiegel. That opened up a midday spot for Harris, who had been a regular fill-in at the station since 2022. Harris came to Chicago from Sacramento in 2021 to work on TV but was let go as sports director at CBS 2 last summer. He had some sports radio experience in Philadelphia and was officially hired as Bernstein's partner in late September.
Bernstein and Harris, with regular third co-host Rahimi, lasted until late March. That's when Bernstein's professional life exploded because of a heated conversation on X over a fish.
Yes, a fish.
A proud amateur angler, Bernstein liked to show off his catches on social media. A troll accused him of killing a fish instead of throwing it back and Bernstein lost it, threatening to reveal the poster's identity and tweeted 'want your kids involved.' It was so weird, it's hard to believe it actually happened.
No one was hurt and no one would have seen this nonsensical exchange except that Twitter is full of people who screenshot these exchanges to get other people in trouble. But Bernstein is certainly smart enough to know nothing is private when it's tweeted. He had gotten in trouble in that medium before, and this was the last straw.
He had been at the station for 30 years and his firing didn't engender much sympathy. The Barstool folks celebrated, which was to be expected, and a lot of people in Chicago had a 'you get what you deserve' kind of reaction. Bernstein is polarizing, to say the least, and if he were on the air talking about someone else getting fired for tweeting about a fish, he'd be making fun of them too. ('Questioning my sportsmanship' has now become a joke among reporters.)
People asked why I didn't write about it at the time. I was on vacation and, frankly, the whole thing bummed me out. Bernstein had a long, successful career, and he has a family. He was smart, quirky and extremely knowledgeable. To lose his job over something so dumb just struck me as an awful shame.
I didn't like it when Score original Dan McNeil lost his job in 2020 (read about that here) over a tweet, and I felt the same about Bernstein. Yes, they were responsible for what they put out there, but there's way too much emphasis put on social media.
McNeil and Bernstein were good at their jobs because they knew how to give engaging, not always polite opinions on air. That doesn't always translate to the Twitterverse. If you have a public-facing job, it's important to remind yourself you never have to respond on there. But if you do, don't flip out over a fish picture. The Pulse Newsletter
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Whether you liked him or not, Bernstein is a great sports radio host, and locally, his knowledge made him a valuable asset. He's not for everyone and had plenty of detractors, but he was popular, as evidenced by his performances when I did local media surveys in 2019 and in 2022. I'm guessing you'll find him on a podcast of his own soon, though not at Barstool. I wish him well.
The same goes for the new midday team of Rahimi and Harris — both of whom had good relationships with Bernstein. They can't replicate what Bernstein brought to the air, nor should they try.
But they have five days a week to try to stay on the air as long as they can. Because one thing about The Score, it always changes.
That would be a good opening line for a panel discussion, wouldn't it?
(Photo, from left, of ex-Bears coach Dave Wannstedt, Shane Riordan, Danny Parkins, Chris Tannehill and Matt Spiegel: Courtesy of Shane Riordan)