My parents have been divorced for 24 years. If you ask one about the other, they are happy to spend the next two hours telling you just how over the relationship they are. So many former sports radio hosts feel the same way about their former employer.
Last week, Joe Benigno lamented that the future of WFAN in New York would never be as great as its past. On the very same day, Howard Eskin and Angelo Cataldi wagged their fingers at 94 WIP in Philadelphia for doing things differently than they would have when they were on the air there.
This behavior is nothing new. Hosts at every level of sports talk do it. Dan Le Batard’s obsession with ESPN is ongoing, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Hell, it’s been nearly twenty years and Dan Patrick is still airing his grievances with managers that aren’t even in Bristol anymore.
A listener experiences his/her favorite sports radio show like a phone call. There is no picture. They are sitting somewhere listening to a voice that has become a trusted friend vent for hours on end. That’s a pretty intimate relationship. Some may have it for an entire station, but for many, that level of devotion is reserved for just one host or show.
When you think about radio like that, it’s easy to see why people get territorial. For the old host, it’s not just that the station replaced him. It’s that so many of the listeners did too. Who could be blamed for lashing out at least a little bit?
Sports talk radio is also in the midst of a transformation. It’s part of a larger trend as the entire media adjusts to what a new audience demands from sports coverage. Even if I think some of these guys are overreacting, I don’t blame them for lashing out at something they knew intimately turning into something they don’t recognize.
The idea that “radio is dying” has always been too simple. Radio as a technology is in trouble. What used to be dominant in people’s cars has now become a less convenient, and thus less preferred, way to get their sports talk.
But what are Bill Simmons, the Kelce brothers, Pardon My Take and Ryen Russillo doing? They’re talking about sports, riffing on pop culture topics, and making their colleagues and audiences laugh. That sounds like sports talk radio to me. The “where” changed. The “what” is still the same.
Benigno, Eskin, and Cataldi all were at the peak of their popularity either before digital media was a thing or when podcasts were in their infancy. I am sure they had bosses that talked about that technology the way my radio bosses at the time did – “It’s losers playing pretend. If they were any good, they’d be on the radio.”
I’m not saying that any former radio host is wrong to criticize the state of sports radio. Eskin nailed the single biggest problem when he pointed out how little the business values its people.
He said you can make the same money producing a show on 94 WIP that you do at McDonald’s. The difference is that the guy hiring those producers at 94 WIP (who is someone I know well, and to be fair, is probably not the one that decided $13 an hour is all his top shows are worth) isn’t going to hire someone without experience to produce any of his shows. Those producers aren’t going to be able to just forget about 94 WIP until the next day when they go home, the way some other jobs can.
If radio is dying, it’s because radio keeps eating toxic waste and telling anyone that expresses concern that “There’s no proof that this is what’s causing my stomach aches. You sound vaxxed!”
This is something I used to write about a lot when I worked for Barrett Sports Media, a trusted advocate for the sports radio business. It’s a hard truth that so many leaders in the industry would pay lip service to and then do nothing about.
Right now, traditional media is trying to learn and implement lessons from digital audiences on the fly. As John Ourand pointed out in a Puck column from January, one thing so many of these companies are learning is that there is a large audience that wants its favorite teams covered like a fan and not like a journalist. That is fundamentally different from what made sports radio viable.
WFAN was fine when it launched with a bunch of reporters as hosts in 1987. It really found its groove in 1989 when Mike & the Mad Dog started reflecting the average New York sports fan. They were not protecting anyone, they opened the phone lines and let the people demand accountability from the players, coaches and owners they thought were screwing the New York teams. Time is undefeated. Benigno is right. WFAN will never again be what it used to, but that is because the sports audience will never be what it once was.
If the new model is protecting access over being interesting, I get why Cataldi, maybe the single most entertaining sports radio host I have ever heard, would be crushed by what the format has become and the presumably bland road ahead.
Plenty of the former radio hosts that now blast the business never wanted to leave in the first place. I get why they might be bitter. Their “retirement” was less ceremonious than they had planned. Maybe they wouldn’t want to do sports radio the way so many stations are doing it now. They couldn’t be too controversial. They would have to take less money than they’re worth. They’d have to cater to an audience that doesn’t think what they do is special.
What Benigno, Cataldi and Eskin accomplished should be held in high esteem. To compare it to what is on their stations now is not only unfair to the talent on those stations. It’s unfair to Benigno, Cataldi and Eskin. All entertainment is a snapshot of the era it originated in. Sports radio is no different. That’s not something that warrants sour grapes.
