OT: In Today's DFW Sports Radio News, The Fan Has Hired ...

... well, even if you could care less about this subject, this is still mildly interesting, I guess. Robert Wilonsky:

Some have been wondering for a few months who’d replace Josh Lewin as Mark Elfenbein’s sidekick on 105.3 The Fan, what with the former Texas Rangers TV-booth broadcaster having headed to New York to serve as the Mets’ radio play-by-player. Today, we get that answer: Jane Slater — who, you’ll recall, used to be on KTVT-Channel 11 till she made the leap to WFAA-Channel 8 to serve as traffic reporter just one year ago.

At the moment, she’s a weekday morning-drive reporter and midday anchor on KRLD-AM (1080).

[...]

Former Ticket show host and K104′er Chris Arnold, who’s been a part-timer on The Fan while working Dallas Mavericks games, is also joining the station as a full-timer. He’ll join Gavin Dawson as part of The G-Bag Nation, which sees its hours expanded from 7 p.m. to midnight.

“The addition of Jane and Chris to the full-time staff at 105.3 The FAN illustrates our commitment to be the live and local sports talk station,” says Bruce Gilbert, CBS Radio Dallas’s veep for new, talk and sports (and himself a one-time Ticket bossman). “Their characteristics, personalities and unique perspectives emphasize our goal to be the voice of the many diverse sports fans across North Texas.”

So, for anyone actually keeping score at home, the Fan has gone from Newy Scruggs holding down the midday shift -- though that was quite a while back -- to Lewin and Elf to what is now being called "Elf & Slater," which, to my knowledge, is the first two-person male-female sports radio pairing since Dennis & Engel. Chris Arnold was a Ticket fixture during the late-90s, but eventually succumbed to burnout (he concurrently held down gigs on K104 and with the Mavericks), and ultimately departed the station for that same reason, though not before helping bring on-air exposure to a young Corby Davidson, who functioned as Arnold's producer and later leveraged his experience into his gig as the Hardline's third wheel. 

Something that I found interesting in "researching" this post -- if you consider five minutes digging around Google as "research" -- was Newy detailing the circumstances behind his departure from 105.3, and elucidating one of his biggest problems with the station:

Then we got a new boss who changed my shift to 10-2, then broke up our show, despite the fact we were beating Michael Irvin at ESPN 103.3.  I had to work with a slew of partners for a few weeks before the station teamed me up with Richie Whitt.  We had a blast for 9 months.  I went on vacation to Disneyland in May 2010.  When I came back from California the program director broke up the show and I was given a slot from 9-11 to host solo.  We got another PD a few months ago.

Three different visions since 2009 shows 105.3 The Fan never had a chance to win.   Too many changes.  No show ever got a full year on the station.  You can't gain momentum if all you do is change people and shifts.

In any event, the Ticket was still a 2:1:1 front-runner ahead of ESPN 103.3 FM and KRLD 105.3 FM as of March, and while I imagine 103.3 will enjoy some type of boost off the Rangers through the regular season and post-season, we're still looking at the same old status quo -- KTCK leading the pack by a mile, with the other two stations grabbing those listeners who hate the Ticket's concept of "humor, or want more actual sports talk than what the Ticket provides, or whatever other reasons there may be.

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Also, here's a nice Richie and Greggo commercial. I don't know, either: