ON THE AIR
Spadaro: King of all media for Eagles
If Howard Stern is the "King of all media," then Dave Spadaro is the "King of all Eagles media."

By LAURA NACHMAN


If Howard Stern is the "King of all media," then Dave Spadaro is the "King of all Eagles media."

Spadaro, 37, runs the team's Web site, www.philadelphiaeagles.com, appears on television and radio and is the editor of the weekly team magazine "Eagles Digest."The Temple University graduate appears on two TV shows, "Eagles Game Day Live" on Fox and "The Andy Reid Show," on WPHL at 10:30 p.m. Saturday. On the radio, he hosts the pre-game and halftime show during Eagles' broadcasts on WYSP 94.1-FM. On Monday night, it's "The Monday Night Kickoff Show" with Tom Cardella on WBCB 1490-AM at 8 p.m. He also appears on Angelo Cataldi's show the morning after each game on WIP 610-AM.

However, his main focus is maintaining www.philadelphiaeagles.com, which according to Spadaro gets one million hits a month.

"This is not just a fluff site," he said. "The responsibility of the site is to inform the public about the team. The media goes to our Web site for information. We change the home page three or four times a day."Spadaro acknowledges that he has taken his laptop on vacation with him to update the site.

Besides writing an insider column for the site, he also hosts the several weekly internet radio shows on the site. Editor of "Eagles' Digest" since 1989, Spadaro said things really took off after the team "brought all the media properties in-house" and created the Eagles Television Network in 1997.

The Web site became a high priority. "Before then, nobody cared about the internet," he said. "Now Eagles fans from all over the world keep up with the team because of the Web site."

Spadaro, an employee of the team, deflects criticism that he can't be objective. "You can't fool Eagles fans," he said. "People who read my columns know that if there is a problem, I will address it. I'm not searching for negatives. My job is to get the message out about the team."

California dreamin'
Fox is hoping that the 49 other states will be interested in "The Fall Classic" between California's Giants and Angels, which begins at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver calling the action from Anaheim.

Game 2 is Sunday night at 7:30. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan will handle the radio broadcast for ESPN radio (920-AM) and WPEN (950-AM). The playoffs averaged 9.4 million viewers for Fox, a 7 percent increase from last year.

Because Buck will be in Anaheim, Dick Stockton will handle the Eagles-Bucs game with Troy Aikman and Cris Collinsworth on Fox Sunday at 4:15 p.m.

New job
As expected, Joe Kerrigan accepted the Phillies' pitching coach position and won't return to "Phillies Post-Game Live" on Comcast SportsNet. What's Lenny Dykstra doing these days?

Moonlighting
WIP funnyman Joe Conklin will be doing his schtick on "Lou Tilley's Sports Connection" on CN8 on Wednesdays at 11 p.m. Conklin's morning colleague, Rhea Hughes, is also doing some television. She'll be part of a weekly panel on "Sports Final" on WCAU at 11:30 p.m.

Bouncing around
Ahmad Rashad will join ABC's NBA team, and Jeff Van Gundy will join Marv Albert and Mike Fratello as the No. 1 NBA announcing team on TNT.

Laura Nachman covers television and radio sports for the Courier Times. She can be reached at [email protected].

October 18, 2002