Padres Social Hour canceled

Today marks another failed experiment for this Padres regime as Padres Social Hour was rejected by fans (presumably) and now new partner Entercom (definitely). Here’s to new content in 2017.

Padres Social Hour launched on February of 2014 online, Fox Sports San Diego and 1700 AM radio. It came to us on the backs of the creators of the recently canceled Finsiders, a Miami Dolphins pre-game show developed by former Dolphins employees Padres President Mike Dee, Chief Marketing Officer Wayne Partello and Host Jesse Agler. From what I understand it was basically a cookie cutter copy of the Miami program except it talked less about the Dolphins and focused slightly more on the Padres.

The Padres pre-game show lasted just two seasons, like a British TV show except it lacked a Holiday Special finale. The first season was much better than expected, but then host Jesse Agler moved to the radio broadcast and everybody (maybe just me) stopped watching. I can’t tell you what happened in Season 2, but I do know that host Mike Janela and the Padres strangely parted ways in August well before the baseball season ended. The Padres had decided to experiment for a short time with rotating co-hosts for the remainder of the season trying to keep it afloat but Entercom decided the show should be scuttled.

There were times when I liked the show when it was topical, shared the fan view point or was just plain fun. To conjure original content for an hour everyday is no easy task though and at times it showed. With nothing but failure on the field and at the highest ranks of the front office, there was little success to celebrate and it didn’t always tackle topics with the appropriate levels of criticism. As an entity owned and operated by the Padres it was sometimes used as a propaganda tool, for executives to spin the news and control the message which was beyond annoying.

With the show now over, Jonny wants to purchase the neon sign and bring back the show for the dwindling number of fans who still love it, like he’s Netflix rescuing a failed broadcast show.

I always thought it’d be a good idea for an enterprising young person interested in the Padres to build a competing show as an alternative to the Padres messaged program. They could use the same hashtag, piggy back on topics and give a more direct fan centric program. Maybe now they will.