Don Martin has a way of making everyone he talks to feel ten feet tall and bullet-proof. Seriously, if you ever get the opportunity to speak with the Executive Vice President of Programming for iHeartMedia Sports, jump at it! The guy is smart, kind, and relentlessly positive.
Many of you will have the chance to speak to Don and hear him speak next month in New York. He has become one of those faces we just cannot have a BSM Summit without.
It’s hard to tell Don Martin that though, because he is always more interested in lifting someone else up.
“Well, first of all, it’s not even about what we get to do,” he says when I ask him what he is interested in teaching people this year. “I need to say that this has become the seminal event for sports radio across the country, okay? It’s the one and only real sports talk event that pulls everybody together that’s built around our industry and I want to say thank you to you and Jason and everybody there that pulls it off.”
See what I mean?
Don will be on stage next month in New York at the 2022 BSM Summit. He will have plenty to teach, but he doesn’t think that makes him any more important than anyone else there. The value of the Summit for everyone is back-and-forth conversation.
“What I appreciate is you learn, but you also get to have your voice,” he says. “And I don’t care if you’re an on-air host or if you’re an audience member, if you’re a producer, if you’ve decided to go on your own. I don’t care if you’re a sales person that gets to go in there and figure out what’s going on within the vertical. This is a place you want to be because none of us are short of opinions and none of us are pulling in any direction other than the same direction to make the vertical better. And that’s what makes this group work so well.”
The industry doesn’t come together nearly often enough. That is why it has always been important that the BSM Summit is not just about giving knowledge, but also about giving credit.
Don Martin has watched a lot of people be called up to accept an award at events in the past, and he has noticed a trend. The awards at the BSM Summit honor industry trailblazers, standout hosts, and programmers that have built and led unstoppable brands. Martin has been impressed to see every one of them show real humility and gratitude when they step to the microphone.
“I mean, you see all of the emotion. You see that it’s legitimate. To be honored by your peers, there’s not a bigger thing I don’t think. You can get honored by the people in your building or your upper management, etc., but to be honored by your peers is sensational. You can see it in their faces and hear it in their voices that they’re speaking from their hearts and that it really does mean something to them.”
In Don’s eyes, there is something special, maybe even poetic, about the BSM Summit being back in New York for 2022. After all, the last time we did one of these, the country was a little over two weeks away from using the phrase “the new normal” in everyday conversation.
In 2020, the event took place on February 26 and 27. On March 13 of that year, Rudy Gobert tested positive for Covid-19. The games were halted. Shows went from everyone in a single studio to a collection of zoom feeds and hosts learned to stretch the boundaries of the format.
“The Barrett Summit closed down the media and the Barrett Summit is now going to open it back up and it’s all in the same city,” Don Martin laughs. “We closed it down when we left New York, and now we’re opening back up by going back to New York.”
There is a virtual ticket option for those that can’t or don’t want to attend in person, but Don is right. This is going to be the first full gathering of the sports media industry since Covid became part of our lives. Hopefully, that means people are ready to get out and network.
Don Martin has a little advice. Don’t show up with your sole goal being to tell you’re story.
“When you put a lot of people into the room, there’s a diversity of voices,” he says. “So, you’re not hearing it from one side or the other. You’re hearing it from all of them and they all have a really good point. So the one thing I will tell everybody, while we all have a great opinion inside every one of these brains, the more you can listen, the more you’re going to get out of this.”
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.
