Philadelphia and central-Atlantic broadcast territories are the ideal (maybe unique) market for director Chris Strand's filmed record of a monologue by radio/TV/Sirius Satellite broadcast personality, author, and lawyer Smerconish—who states upfront that 2020 was going to be his big year for a national tour, but COVID-19 quarantine canceled it, so he is committing the presentation to video instead.
Though he doesn't press the point about it (maybe the material would actually have been more mordantly amusing if he had), settling for second-best or fallback plans is a refrain in this plain-talking fellow's media experience.
Before a roomful of empty seats, Smerconish relates his career trajectory (only a little of his personal life), starting with a fascination with broadcasting and politics while growing up in Doylestown, PA. A youthful interest in Republicanism (an aberration, as Democrats seemed to be the ones with a monopoly on the under-30s) led to formative encounters with Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Philadelphia's Mayor Frank Rizzo (originally a Democrat who crossed the aisle). In broadcasting, Smerconish networked a lot, won talk-radio slots, tried to interest HBO (unsuccessfully) in a dystopian mockumentary satire, posed naked for Philadelphia Magazine, and understudied such heavy-hitters as Bill O'Reilly.
Still, as he tells it, big opportunities that should have been Mike's (one intriguing one, Book Talk, a brash Fox-style literary show) either got torpedoed or were handed off to other talents like Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, or (surely humiliatingly) Al Sharpton. Though initially a GOP supporter, Smerconish bemoans the widening political chasm in the USA and prides himself on having friends in both conservative and liberal camps—though it was the George W. Bush glaring failure to prioritize hunting Osama bin Laden (and Barack Obama's success in same) which led to Smerconish declaring himself an independent.
Now, he complains, broadcast talent is hired based on extremist doctrines of left and right, and the childish good-guys/bad-guys dynamics and "scripted outcomes" of cheesy pro wrestling he and his brother adored as kids have become the methodology of journalism and, by extension, Congress itself (he blames this syndrome on the late Morton Downey Jr., rather than Rush Limbaugh, whom Smerconish hails as a savior of the AM-talk format).
Part career-day pep talk, part Philly name-dropping nostalgia (Joe Frazier, Larry Kane, Todd Rundgren, etc.), part media memoir/analysis, and very frequently indulgent (do we really need to know who blurbed his various books?) the trip through Mondo Smerconish is mainly for the fans. Optional. Aud: C, P.