Don’t worry, this column has NOTHING to do with politics. Just inspired to write the impeachable offenses of Sports Radio. Here are the five things that are inexcusable and I cringe every time I hear them on a local or national sports station.
Bumper music with lyrics: Probably nothing I hear drives me crazier than bumper music with lyrics competing with your host(s) talking. There’s no reason with today’s quick and easy digital editing tools to not have a clean music bed under your hosts. The lyrics just compete with what the hosts are saying and make for a sloppy on-air presentation.
Formulaic Show Promos: You know you have heard this promo before. The promo starts with the name of the show and maybe the showtime voiced by the voice guy. Next, it’s the host introducing a guest edited to a comment by the guest from the interview. The promo closes with the show name and show time voiced by the voice guy.
Ugh.
Unless you have top-shelf guests every day or the guest says something unbelievable, a promo needs to give me a reason to listen to the show. Preferably something the host or hosts say or something as simple as the host telling me what to expect on the next show. The generic, formulaic promo is not only weak promotion, but it is lazy.
“Hour 2 of the Show”: This one is specifically for sports radio hosts. No one is listening to your show from beginning to end. Not even the biggest P1s of your show and station will do that. So please stop talking about what happened in “hour one” of your show or what’s coming up in “hour two” of the show. Fans aren’t listening like that and have very little idea when “hour one” was and when “hour two” starts.
If something in the first hour of your show was that good, play me a clip now and tell me why it’s so amazing. If you’re promoting something coming up later in the show, let me know what it is and what time to listen to it. That’s it. Simple. No one, not even your PD is listening to all 3, 4, or 5 hours of your show. No offense.
Boring Guests: This one is 95% on the producers. Please, Please, Please stop booking guests who aren’t interesting or entertaining. You are producing a radio SHOW.
You are not booking someone to just provide information. Information is everywhere in 2019. If you can’t find an interesting or entertaining guest to talk about a certain topic, you are way better off getting sound about the topic and having your hosts talk about it.
On this topic, please do not book a guest for the sake of booking a guest. The other 5% is on the hosts. Stop requesting boring guests from your producers. Additionally, if you know a guest is not good on your show, wrap it up as soon as you can. I hate when hosts feel like every guest is worth the entire length of the segment. Some guests are worth only 5 good minutes and that’s fine. Do something else for the rest of the segment.
Hosts Leaving Early: If you’re in a smaller market or just getting your career started you may not think a host or hosts would ever, regularly, leave their show early. I hate to break it to you but it happens. I know daily and weekly shows that will replay an interview or multiple interviews so they can leave as much as 30 minutes before the end of their show.
I’m sure this has spurred other “impeachable offenses” in your mind that are inexcusable on sports radio, but these are my top five. What drives me crazy about the five “impeachable offenses” above is that they all come down to people being lazy. Not acceptable.
Matt Fishman is a former columnist for BSM. The current PD of ESPN Cleveland has a lengthy resume in sports radio programming. His career stops include SiriusXM, 670 The Score in Chicago, and 610 Sports in Kansas City. You can follow him on Twitter @FatMishman20 or you can email him at FishmanSolutions@gmail.com.
