Ken Dito debuts at 9 AM Monday with "The Press Box" on XTRA Sports 860 AM. The first guest is ex A's, and now scout/Comcast commentator, Shooty Babitt.
Dito is a Bay Area broadcast veteran; he spent a bulk of his career at KNBR before knibber got knibbed by the lovely folks from Cumulus.
The show will be a staple of simple, non-shticky, but informative sports talk, heavy on writers, broadcasters, opinion and solid sports fare.
Not coincidentally, the one-hour-long program competes with Gary Radnich. Radnich dominates in his time-slot from 9-Noon, but Raddy's mix of inside baseball, off-sports topics and inside kitsch isn't necessarily for the average sports fan that still yearns for the x's and o's, pertinent discussion, and conversation fixated on sports.
To be fair, Radnich has cultivated a fan base that gravitates to his style and has done well because of it; Dito is more 'meat and potatoes', more Oakland A's talk, CAL football, the Niners, Giants, Warriors etc. His style is fairly "to-the-book" and there's a market for that simple formula. Whether or not he and the show can sustain a following remains to be seen, but give the folks at XTRA some credit for at least trying.
