Jim Rome on being preempted for swimming.

Radio shows that also air on TV sometimes have that TV simulcast preempted or moved in favor of live sports events, and the hosts often get mad about that. One prominent example is Mike Francesa’s war with FS1 over UEFA Champions League and NASCAR practice preemptions (both of which drew significantly higher ratings than his show). The latest case where this happened came on Jim Rome’s show Thursday, with the CBSSN simulcast of the last two hours of that show being preempted for the International Swimming League playoffs.

Note: This post has been updated. The clip below makes it look like Rome is complaining himself, but the actual complaint language at the start of the clip was apparently him quoting a tweet from an aggrieved listener.  Here is that tweet:

Here is how Rome covered this, first by reading that tweet, then saying he doesn’t  control CBSSN’s decisions.

“And you IDIOTS are going to pre-empt the show for SWIMMING?! STUPID! [splash sound effect]”

“Again, I can only control what I can control, and I can only program what I can program, and I can only control this show, and even then, I can’t control this show. Because I can’t control you clones. So what I really can’t control is what the CBS Sports Network does during these hours.”

“And I don’t have a problem with it. I mean, I don’t. They have other properties they have in addition to The Jim Rome Radio/TV Show. Including swimming. So, yes, on the TV side, we’re going to go away for hours two and three, and you’ll get swimming instead of me. Maybe that’s an upgrade in your mind. Maybe it’s an upgrade, period. All I know is we got Draymond in under the gun, so that’s good.”

As noted previously, the  “I don’t have a problem with it” and “They have other properties” is significantly more conciliatory than the “You idiots!”, and the news that Rome was actually quoting someone else for that first inflammatory part makes his response much more reasonable. We apologize for passing along this clip and misinterpreting the context that was not shown in the clip.

[Timothy Burke on Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.