Courtesy Shreveport Times

(May 24, 2010) When the New Orleans Saints were making their run in the NFC playoffs and all the way to a Super Bowl championship, there was no place for fans in Shreveport-Bossier City to talk Saints football on their way home from work.

The area's lone local evening drive sports talk show — "Sports Talk" — went silent in November.

Perhaps the greatest sports story in the state's history and nowhere to talk about it after 9 a.m.

"That's why we were trying to get back on in January," John James Marshall, the founder of "Sports Talk", says.

While the area will still be without an evening drive talk show this fall — unless something changes dramatically — there will be a newcomer to the market this summer that will be sort of a bookend to Tim Fletcher's morning show.

Marshall and his brother, Ben, who co-hosted "Sports Talk" for years, will be returning. This time, they are coming to television. Their show called "Unscripted" will air on KSHV.

"July 26 is the tentative start date," John James Marshall says.

While the radio show aired from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. for parts of two decades, the television show is scheduled for 9 p.m.

The format should look familiar to local sports fans.

"It's basically our radio show on television," John James Marshall says. "It will not be live. It will be shot as if it were live. I think we'll have guests and callers and the ability for other people to be involved."

If you were wondering why this is a big deal, then you need to look at the Shreveport-Bossier City market as a whole when it comes to sports.

While some cities of similar size have two or even three sports radio stations, Shreveport-Bossier City does not have a station devoted to sports for 24 hours per day. Heck, even Tim Brando's nationally syndicated Sporting News radio show has struggled to find a permanent home in the town it originates in — Shreveport.

The only local sports show on the air at the moment belongs to Fletcher in the morning. The Marshall brothers will be returning in the evening.

For years, there has been a sort of chicken-and-egg argument about this market.

Some say there's little in the way of sports radio because this is an apathetic market. Some say the market is apathetic because there is little in the way of sports radio.

No matter the reason, anytime an option or outlet is added for sports fans that is a good thing. Every sports organization in town and every media outlet that covers sports wants to see more fan interest.

That's because more fan interest means more ticket buying for the organization and more newspaper buying or television watching.

And competition among ideas, or even opinions, is always good.
Two talk shows on television aren't going to make Shreveport-Bossier City a great sports town.

But it's a start.

Who knows, maybe next year when the Saints are making a run at back-to-back Super Bowl championships, fans may even be able to call in and talk Saints football on an-sports, all-the-time radio station.

Dare to dream, Saints fans.

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