When you have a problem, there are two ways to deal with it. You can bury your head and deny the fact that a problem exists or you can do something about it. Look at ESPN and news/talk radio and we have the wild extremes of each example.
ESPN and the NBA have been on the wrong end of plenty of finger pointing and snickering from conservative media recently. Ratings are down. That is undeniable. There are a myriad of reasons why, but the fact remains that fewer people are watching on linear TV than were before.
What has the NBA done about it? Monday night, the league leaned into a little Disney synergy. ESPN2 presented Marvel’s Arena of Heroes, an Avengers-themed broadcast of the Warriors’ visit to New Orleans. The network took a game between two teams without winning records and used it to excite younger viewers and families.
It was a lot of fun. Three stars from each team were assigned superhero partners create a storyline for the game. The score bug was redesigned to look like a comic book. Graphics were created to make it look like Iron Man and Black Panther were watching the game from the rafters. My 9-year-old son thought it was the coolest thing.
The broadcast wasn’t perfect. Ryan Rucco and Richard Jefferson struggled to figure out how to react to Marvel podcast host and producer Angélique Roché, who was in the booth with them. On top of that, the Pelicans were extraordinarily bad.
The quality of the product was not as important as the product’s existence. Look, this was a game that was going to go totally unnoticed without trying something new. The Arena of Heroes broadcast represented ESPN and the NBA acknowledging that things are not perfect right now and trying something unique to fix it. The broadcast targeting a younger, more casual audience was part of a larger strategy to solve the problem.
Compare that to a story that came out last month. Atlanta’s 106.3 FM flipped from sports to news/talk and in the process announced it would be the latest talk station to air old episodes of the Rush Limbaugh Show in the mid day.
Talk radio has a problem since the biggest star in the format’s history died. No one was built up as the “star in waiting,” so there is a huge void left nationwide. Kudos to the networks and stations putting new voices in Rush’s old time slot and trying to create their own stars, but every time a station decides that there is nothing better it can do from noon until 3 pm than pretend a rant about NAFTA is relevant in 2021, it’s another band-aid over a bullet wound.
That is the difference between content in the sports space and content in the news/talk world. They’re hoarding every band-aid they can find to deal with their biggest problems while we are trying out experimental surgeries.
Sometimes there is nothing wrong with a band-aid. Move outside of the media realm and we see it in sports all the time. What else would you call the Bears signing Andy Dalton?
If you have a long-term plan that requires a little more incubation, so be it. A band-aid may be a necessary stop gap. This industry has proven time and again though that without a permanent solution in mind, executives have a way of talking themselves into band-aids being acceptable permanent fixes. That is bad for talent and that is bad for listeners, which in turn is bad for stations.
Programming band-aids should be a “break glass in case of emergency” scenario. Not every big swing will be a home run, but that is no reason to play it safe and prioritize never spending a penny over addressing a problem.
Problems require solutions. You find those by thinking differently and trying new things. ESPN deserves a ton of praise for leveraging all of the assets Disney puts at its disposal. The talk stations airing 20 year old Rush Limbaugh episodes don’t deserve scorn necessarily, but they should constantly be reminded that there is no way out of their current predicament by pretending they don’t have a problem.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
