Julie Stewart-Binks has been doing a marvelous job of getting the broadcast industry attention with interviews on her fuboTV show Drinks With Binks. Over the summer, she had Dan Patrick say that SportsCenter took years off his life. Last month she had Michael Smith admit that he was bitter over ESPN’s embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement. This week, it was ESPN Radio’s Sarah Spain that dropped a bomb on Stewart-Binks’s show.
Spain was asked what message she would have for women that want to be in sports radio and what message she would have for people in the position to hire them. The ESPN Radio host’s advice for women was encouraging and relatively tame.
“Keep at it. You can do it,” she said. “Do not get discouraged by people saying you don’t belong. You can absolutely do the job. It’s no different than any other job in sports especially if you’re good at speaking extemporaneously, which bitches be talking. So, you know we can do it.”
Then Spain transitioned into a message for program directors. She compared the fear she has heard expressed regarding putting new and different voices on the radio to the fear she has heard expressed around any changes to baseball.
“If you’re so worried about scaring off your existing fan base of old, white dudes, remember that they are going to get even older and die and then there will be no one left. So, maybe you should reach out to the other parts of the population that are people of color and women and LGBTQ+ and also not insult the men listening who would like to hear those voices and perspectives and don’t need to only hear from another middle aged white dude.”
Sarah Spain is always blunt and honest when asked about topics related to race and gender in sports and sports media. Julie Stewart-Binks was delighted by the answer and promised to “pump that out there and tag every GD news director across the country”.
