Steve Mason - FishbowlLA

Steve Mason Reveals HBO Star’s ‘Pocket Personality’

Richard Horgan — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:55:42 +0000

Today at lunchtime, a memorable pair of anecdotes were shared on 710 ESPN Radio by John Ireland and Steve Mason, chatting on the crossover with Mychal Thompson and Mark Willard.

First, Ireland recalled how he and Mason once owned a horse that started out well but then became a loss leader. They wanted to call the horse Pocket Personality, but the name was taken and they settled instead for Phone Abroad.

Mason meanwhile explained that when he worked on The Late, Late Radio Show with Tom Snyder and Steve Mason, he once asked an absolute knockout of a female guest why she was dating a certain celeb. She admitted it was because he had “pocket personality,” e.g. his wallet was the overriding attraction. Mason promised to share the details on Twitter, only, and did.

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ESPN Duo Less Than Amazed by The Amazing Kreskin

Richard Horgan — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:15:18 +0000

For better or worse, this is the power of Twitter. Within seconds of hanging up the phone this afternoon with New Jersey guest The Amazing Kreskin, ESPN 710 AM host John Ireland was letting listeners know about receiving this tweet:

He also, in the same breath, apologized to the audience for having to suffer through the 20-minute Kreskin conversation. But truth be told, it wasn’t quite as bad as Ireland, colleague Steve Mason and the above fan from “The 818″ were making out.

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Mass Shooting Takes Sports Out of 710 ESPN Talk Radio Equation

Richard Horgan — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:00:36 +0000

The first two hours of today’s Mason & Ireland broadcast on 710 ESPN AM radio, beginning at noon with Max Kellerman sitting in for John Ireland (who is on the road traveling with the Lakers), was much like the rest of today’s tragically interrupted U.S. sports talk radio slate. The mass shooting of young children at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut was suddenly and deservedly the only topic of discussion.

Instead of people calling in to discuss Lakers losing streaks and Angels free agent signings, Steve Mason and Kellerman were fielding calls from people like a SoCal male registered nurse. The caller said that in his experience, it was not so much the quantity of mental health care available that was an issue as much as the quality of treatment. Much of what is available for people who need it, he explained, falls far below what it should be, mainly because of the higher expense of top-notch mental health treatment. This caller also chillingly suggested he has dealt with many perpetrators who were simply “pure evil.”

Ireland called in from Washington, where the Lakers play the Wizards tonight. He addressed the issue of how to talk to kids about what has happened today, and the idea that school security must become more of a consideration for parents when they select the place to send their kids.

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Lakers Announcer Revisits Toronto Makeup Incident That Went Viral

Richard Horgan — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:30:02 +0000

Chicago-based 411mania.com contributor Tony Farinella has posted a solid interview with 710 ESPN radio host and Lakers play-by-play man John Ireland.

It’s always a compliment when the person being interviewed notes that no one has asked them a particular question before. This happens twice to Farinella. When asked to grade his first season as a Lakers radio announcer, Ireland gives himself a B minus. The veteran journalist also says his favorite “third chair” celebrity guests on the broadcast so far have been Jamal Wilkes, David Hasselhoff, Andy Garcia and Jeannie Buss.

Ireland also revisits an infamous incident from earlier this year during which he could be seen on TV in the background of a Lakers-Raptors broadcast, applying makeup to his face. He says this was a particularly lazy version of dealing with the juxtaposition of his radio duties and a live post-game TV interview show:

“It was the sixth game of a six-game round trip. What I had done was I had always gone back to the bathroom at halftime to put my makeup on, so when the game ends, I can run right to TV.”

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Despite Colossal Dodgers Blunder, ESPN Opts for No Immediate Apology

Richard Horgan — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:15:14 +0000

LA Weekly reporter Gene Maddaus starts off his crackerjack expose of con man Dodgers bidder Josh Macciello with a dozen or so paragraphs about the duped January 2012 reporting efforts of ESPN journalists Steve Mason, John Ireland and Ramona Shelburne. To make a long story short, all three stumped for a guy eight zeroes short of any real shot at the MLB team.

Surprisingly, at least to FishbowlLA, there was no addressing of this issue at the top of this afternoon’s “Mason & Ireland” broadcast on 710 ESPN Radio. Separately, our efforts to get comment from Bristol, CT HQ generated an email response that “the network and hosts will be making no statement about this matter.”

As Kevin Roderick noted in a blog post late last night, several other LA journalists got the Macciello story wrong. But it all started with the January introduction and recall on ESPN of this individual as a vetted entity.

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Hollywood Still Going To The Dogs

Dan Cox — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:56:57 +0000

“Marley and Me,” a loveable bowser of a movie about a pooch and his itinerant relationships, continued to dominate the box office this weekend, pulling in some $24 million to reach a cumulative of $106 million, says FBLA box office guru Steve Mason.

Mason continues that the movie is on track to rake in some $160 million domestic making it the No. 1 live-action dog movie of all time. Won’t touch the Dalmations, as they’re animated, but for live-action, Marley is taking top slot.

The film means big money for Fox, but the real winner may be director David Frankel (see pic at left), who chalks the film up as his second $100 million-plus earner after “Devil Wears Prada,” which closed at $124.7 million.

Frankel also happens to be the son of Max Frankel, a longtime editor of the New York Times.

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Hollywood Goes To The Dogs; But They Like It There

Dan Cox — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:37:48 +0000

Hollywood did indeed go to the dogs with a $51.8 million four-day performance for Warner Bros.’ “Marley and Me,” which also put WB over $1.74 billion, eclipsing Sony’s $1.6 billion 2006 revenue, FBLA’s box office guru Steve Mason reports.

Brad Pitt‘s starring film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” followed at $39.1 million and Adam Sandler‘s comic turn for kiddies “Bedtime Stories” collected some $38.6 million to close out this post-Xmas stellar weekend.

Everyone complains about the Internet and its effect on the movie biz, but last weekend says movies are as big as ever. Maybe video will be the one that will suffer.

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‘Marley and Me’ Wins X-mas; Beating Up On Pitt, Cruise And Sandler

Dan Cox — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:21:38 +0000

“Marley and Me,” starring a very-much-alive Owen Wilson, proved that the movie business, to renew an awful pun, is truly going to the dogs, box office analyst Steve Mason confirmed to FBLA.

The film, which took in $14.5 million on Christmas day, beat out Paramount’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Sony’s Tom Cruise affair “Valkyrie” and Disney’s Adam Sandler film, “Bedtime Stories,” to capture the Christmas crown.

The performance was a bit of an X-mas present for Fox, which grabbed the second-highest Christmas day performance, more than $5 million behind the Ben Stiller hit “Meet the Fockers.”

My guess is that “Marley and Me” needed to cast Barbra Streisand, or at least use a song of hers.

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