Was the show as a whole overrated?

[guest]

If you found out about o&a through clips you’d probably think the show was non-stop hilarity. But ive been relistening for a while now and every show is 80%

• Listener calls
• Opie talking about how great the show is
• Anthony bitching about blacks
• Jim fantasizing about being a disgusting fag
• The boys ranting at the staff and crying about how hard their jobs are

Then the last 20% is the actual funny shit. The stuff that gets turned into YouTube clips.

 

[Riccardo Bosi]

Gotta do something to get to 10, know what I mean

 

[TheGhostOfAbeVigoda]

They really did A LOT of fucking whining.

 

[Dummy Gaynuts]

Nobody liked O&A as a whole, they liked Patrice, Colin, Jocktober, and Intern David. Ron and Fez was always the better show

 

[KaNAMBLA Harris]

Keep in mind we’ve not had any new ONA for ten years. In that time, if you’re only relistening to the old stuff, the things that mildly irritated you will begin to grate more and more with repetition

 

[TonyDanzasBalls]

It's become underrated. Look at all the podcasts now that come nowhere close.

 

[guest]

It's become underrated. Look at all the podcasts now that come nowhere close.

When it was good it was the best but there is SO MUCH filler.

 

[midwit]

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that they did an ungodly amount of radio and most of it is simply bad. Your 20% good shit estimate is way high.

But there was nothing else. For white men of our age it was O and A, then BB style message boards like this. That was it. No podcasts, Youtubing your way to specialized hobbies/interests wasn't really a thing yet, etc. There were no "content creators."

It was a strange time in US Culture wherein touching grass was out of fashion/we were already socially autistic, but social media hadn't hit yet. Everyone had a way to nigger-rig their way to listening to the show for free at work if you put 10 minutes into Googling and so the real number of listeners was far higher than the Sirius data suggests.

Ant was a lot more self-deprecating during the peak of the show, and he talked A LOT about his lifestyle in intimate detail. I've been insecure about my finances for my entire adult life, especially when I was younger. So listening to how the "grown up world" worked regarding actually keeping up the mcmansion, the property taxes, investments, all that stupid shit was fascinating for a lot of ppl. The significance of Ant's relatability cannot be overstated during their peak years. Living vicariously through him is what drew many ppl in. This also goes a long way towards explaining why so many people enjoy pathologizing and shitting on him even still.

 

[StlakerFatti]

If you found out about o&a through clips you’d probably think the show was non-stop hilarity. [...] 20% is the actual funny shit. The stuff that gets turned into YouTube clips.

Beats anything else

 

[quasi101]

zero.point.zero.

 

[JoeCumiawearsDIAPERS]

Was the show good? Yes, it was good. Has it aged well? Not really.

You look at how things shook out for Anthony and then you go back and listen to him brag about gambling 10s of thousands away and you realize he has always been a dipshit fuck, he was just a high earner at the time.

You listen to Norton talk about brooding over something his girlfriend did and then you think about how he’s literally getting fucked in the ass by a tranny and you realize he’s always been a giga fruit, he was just terrified of calling himself gay for some reason.

You listen to Opie complain about management and then you think about how he got fired for filming a fat lesbian taking a shit and you realize he has always been pfg.

Hindsight is 20/20

 

[RealTonySchiavone]

I always hated how Opie was constantly pausing the audio they were listening to (or if someone else was playing it, yelling "Pause!"), and every time he'd unpause, he'd back it up 5 seconds. It would stretch 10 seconds of audio into 45 seconds even when nobody had anything to say. Between that and the callers, the Ship Steerer was constantly padding out the show with nothing.

 

[HH Brother]

When it was good it was the best but there is SO MUCH filler.

The last 3-4 years it became let's watch Youtube clips for a few hours, Chairster. teehee

Although there was some really good ones in there. Craig Shinkel gave me a hearty loff.

 

[IGotATreeOnMyHouse85]

Ron and Fez were still the best for me. I miss the big cat.

 

[wbgreen]

I can't imagine any radio show could be non stop funny four hours a day, five days a week. The most consistent radio show I can recall is Loveline, which relied on retarded callers and was shorter than a morning show. Late night is a better time for comedy too; not like comedy clubs are open at 7am.

Adam Carolla was Anthony (right wing wop retard) if Ant was capable of sex with a woman.

 

[Chive Turkey]

When it was good it was the best but there is SO MUCH filler.

Even the filler's better than 90% of 'comedy' podcasts now. Those are like 4 hour segments of food breaks and pornstar interviews.

It's not so much a testament of the greatness of O&A as it is to how low the bar is now and back then as well, because all the hack radio in those days was awful too.

 

[Brooke Shields]

I always hated how Opie was constantly pausing the audio they were listening to (or if someone else was playing it, yelling "Pause!"), and every time he'd unpause, he'd back it up 5 seconds. It would stretch 10 seconds of audio into 45 seconds even when nobody had anything to say. Between that and the callers, the Ship Steerer was constantly padding out the show with nothing.

lil known secret is that eating up the quarter-minutes plays a big role in eating quarter-hours SNIFFFF

 

[LingerLonger]

How come hitters don't get homeruns every plate appearance? Are they stupid? Just hit a homerun every single time.

O&A were live five hours a day. Five days a week. 45 or more weeks of the year. With almost no rehearsal or time to prepare the entire show. Two or three hours a day basically had to be filled on the fly. You never knew where the show would take you or where things would go. Not every sporting event is a walkoff homerun or touchdown or photo finish. Some events are total blowouts or awful. But the sports are consistently good enough to watch every week or day like baseball or auto racing.

Part of the fun was setting things up and maybe they would fail or succeed. The listeners send in jingles and you get the success of Erock Jingle Day. The listeners send in bits for Dickie Goodman and most of them bomb horribly. Jocktober might be incredible one day then unlistenable the next day. Some interns worked well some were awful. You had to figure out on the fly who was who.

How many radio shows are listenable now? None? Podcasts? Where you can listen and anticipate something good every single day? O&A was in a league of its own. The show holds up better than any radio show or podcast in history quality wise. It was the most consistently funny show for the amount of hours of content it provided for sure.

 

[sherockradio]

How come hitters don't get homeruns every plate appearance? Are they stupid? Just hit a homerun every single time.

O&A were live five hours a day. Five days a week. 45 or more weeks of the year. With almost no rehearsal or time to prepare the entire show. Two or three hours a day basically had to be filled on the fly. You never knew where the show would take you or where things would go. Not every sporting event is a walkoff homerun or touchdown or photo finish. Some events are total blowouts or awful. But the sports are consistently good enough to watch every week or day like baseball or auto racing.

Part of the fun was setting things up and maybe they would fail or succeed. The listeners send in jingles and you get the success of Erock Jingle Day. The listeners send in bits for Dickie Goodman and most of them bomb horribly. Jocktober might be incredible one day then unlistenable the next day. Some interns worked well some were awful. You had to figure out on the fly who was who.

How many radio shows are listenable now? None? Podcasts? Where you can listen and anticipate something good every single day? O&A was in a league of its own. The show holds up better than any radio show or podcast in history quality wise. It was the most consistently funny show for the amount of hours of content it provided for sure.

I agree with this fella, but I'd go even further.

I think O&A filler is still much more entertaining than whatever comedy podcast I could find today

I can count on one hand the top tier radio/podcasts: O&A, The Ricky Gervais Show, Ron and Fez, Loveline.

I have one more finger left if anybody has a suggestion.

If the suggestion is Cum Town or Stern, you will only get my middle finger

 

[FezzieAlwaysWins]

Good compared to what?

Was it better than anything else available on terrestrial radio or satellite at the time it aired? Yes. By miles.
Especially when you consider the sheer volume of radio that they had to produce.

Was it objectively good by today's standards when compared to cherry picked niche podcasts doing a small fraction of the content volume? Maybe not.

If you time travel back to 2010 what else are you gonna listen to?