Throughout the last decade, the methods and means through which people consume content disseminated across different forms of media have undoubtedly changed. Jason McIntyre knows this pattern well, but like most others in the industry, is still trying to determine how to best utilize the power of evolution to facilitate effective cross-platform integration, likening it to a “million-dollar question” of sorts.
The paradigmatic shift was evident to him during his formative years in the industry when he worked as a writer for various newspapers and magazines. As the internet began to grow in the early 2000s, he distinctly recalls buying a domain with his name in it so he could ensure its ownership and began using it as a place to share his stories.
Essentially, he was looking to find new ways to market himself and built an online professional curriculum vitae, including his work with these outlets. As he began to rise in the industry, one of his colleagues with whom he was competing noticed what McIntyre was doing and decided to inform management.
McIntyre was subsequently called into a meeting with executives from the outlet and duly questioned regarding the practice. Once McIntyre told them the intent behind posting some of his stories on a personal website, they regarded how the internet was fairly new and that the legality of the practice was largely unknown.
“It was at this point when it hit me – ‘What am I doing here?,’” McIntyre remembers thinking. “‘These guys are archaic dinosaurs; this is the stone age. The internet is next.’”
By no means is McIntyre considered a scofflaw, nor did he look to take readership away from the outlet. Posting the stories was simply representative of self-promotion, marketing himself and cementing a repository of demo material for prospective employers to view. Looking back on the moment, it can be considered a turning point in his career, perhaps as the impetus of a focus on audiovisual content and its widespread promulgation.
Today, McIntyre is in his first year as co-host of the daily, national midday talk show The Herd featuring sports media personality Colin Cowherd. The program has been simulcast on FS1 after it had aired on select ancillary ESPN networks and consistently receives high levels of engagement across multiple platforms.
“Cowherd does three hours live on TV [and] you can also hear the show on the radio as it’s happening,” McIntyre said. “Oh by the way, his podcast is still a massive juggernaut – I think it’s top-five [or] top-10; I don’t even check the iTunes rankings. Then, oh, by the way, go look at YouTube – he’s still getting videos at 50-; 100-; 200-; 500,000 views…. People are consuming this at an incredible rate.”
McIntyre moved into the role after FOX Sports altered its programming lineup, resulting in Joy Taylor shifting to work alongside Emmanuel Acho and LeSean McCoy on a new program titled Speak. Before he had made the decision, McIntyre took a variety of factors into account – including his family, future aspirations, and the geography. When he and his wife visited Cowherd in Los Angeles, Calif. to have dinner, they quickly realized the area was right for them and a place McIntyre could continue to flourish as a bonafide industry professional.
Cowherd and McIntyre were not unfamiliar with one another though, as they previously worked together as commentators on Speak for Yourself, a talk show Cowherd formerly hosted with Jason Whitlock. Furthermore, when he was still with ESPN Radio in 2007, Cowherd urged his listeners to crash The Big Lead, a sports and media blog McIntyre started the previous year with David Lessa. In the end, the mission was successful and caused the website to go dark for nearly 48 hours.
At the time when the website was famously flooded with traffic, McIntyre was operating the venture anonymously – writing and editing stories in an attempt to craft his voice and grow the platform. It came when McIntyre affirms that the “www” preceding a URL stood for “wild, wild west” instead of “world wide web,” and amid a period where people could proffer content in exchange for ethos, rather than selecting content to consume based on ethos alone.
“To grow up and mature as anyone would do with social media, it’s fun to run an anonymous social media account – but ultimately if you want to make that next step and take the jump to lightspeed, you’ve got to put your name on it,” McIntyre said. “That’s when Richard Deitsch at Sports Illustrated said, ‘Hey, do you want to reveal yourself?,’ and I said, ‘Alright, sure.’ Obviously, the site gained way more credibility once that happened.”
Growing up, McIntyre was an athlete, playing everything from travel soccer to basketball, but he had a realization as an adolescent that he would not play professionally. This feeling was accentuated when he was the second person cut from his high school freshman basketball team despite having knowledge and passion for the sport. When he was in middle school, he would play a game with his friends in which they identified where NBA players went to college, testing their ostensibly boundless knowledge of the association.
At the suggestion of his parents, McIntyre called a local newspaper to ask to help out but ended up being told that he had to wait until he was 16 years old so he could legally operate a motor vehicle. Once he came of age, he began contributing to the outlet, doing whatever was asked of him including answering phones and assisting others.
Eventually, he had the chance to write stories and saw his name on bylines, leading him to conjecture working at The Washington Post and eventually, the Los Angeles Times covering the Los Angeles Lakers, right out of college.
Upon matriculating at James Madison University though, things began to change. Although he was studying to attain a journalism degree, he quickly realized that media was on the verge of enduring significant innovation across the board, prioritizing interactive elements, engagement and dynamic content.
“I got into a fantasy college basketball league through some random dudes from a chatroom I was in talking about sports,” McIntyre said. “You kept your stats [and] I was all-in. The internet just changed so much, and the idea that I would want to work for a newspaper started to slowly fade.”
Nonetheless, McIntyre interned at the Greensboro News and Record, and then received an offer from The Washington Post to cover high school sports on a part-time basis. Despite talking about working for the national outlet years prior, he declined and opted to stay local by working in Passaic County, N.J. at The Herald News. One year into that role, its sports section merged with The Bergen Record to reduce operating costs, and McIntyre eventually began to freelance for ESPN and CBS Sports’ websites.
Just before March Madness commenced in 2006, McIntyre launched The Big Lead and was operating it on the side of other jobs, including working as an editor at Us Weekly. As time went on and the website began to amass a legion of followers, McIntyre added staff members to ensure it was able to produce enough content to keep pace with demand.
Additionally, he ceded his anonymity once it became evident to him that he would need to do so for the website to continue to grow, and then went on to sell the operation to Fantasy Sports Venture in 2010, reportedly for seven figures. Two years later, that company sold the website to Gannett with McIntyre remaining critical to the platform amid both transactions.
“Selling the website was pretty cool,” McIntyre remarked. “It was written about in The New York Times. My parents have it framed. Hell, I have it framed in my house; it’s pretty exciting.”
The move to radio started upon filling in on NBC Sports Radio on Independence Day, leading someone from Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to reach out and ask if he had representation. McIntyre did not at the time, and was subsequently contacted by two other agents in a three-week span. He ultimately settled on the agent who reached out to him first, and felt that operating in this sense gave him more opportunities.
McIntyre was shocked to learn that Yahoo! Sports was interested in the content he produced and asked him to host a national internet radio show to be distributed to SiriusXM and other radio stations eponymously-named The Jason McIntyre Show. He had launched a podcast through The Big Lead by the same name in 2013, welcoming guests including Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, then-CBS Sports host Doug Gottlieb and NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport. Beginning in early 2015, the radio show began and was broadcast on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. EST, bringing listeners the latest news and opinions.
“I love sports,” McIntyre explained. “I could easily talk about sports for three hours. Once that started, it essentially kind of took off.”
Nine months later, McIntyre joined FOX Sports Radio where he hosted a Saturday sports talk show titled The Big Lead, largely functioning as a way to preview weekend action and interview guests in the industry. Moreover, he filled in for various high-profile hosts, including Gottlieb, Dan Patrick, and Chris Broussard, and began to establish a unique and distinctive hosting style.
“I’ve always thought of myself as an alpha,” McIntyre said. “I’m going to be the guy setting the agenda, leading the way. I’m going to have topics nobody else is going to have. I was never like, ‘I’m going to work with a guy,’ but obviously you have to work well with others.”
In the time between being removed from Speak for Yourself to being named co-host of The Herd, the alteration of the media landscape was hastened amid the COVID-19 global pandemic. Whether it was appearing on select television shows; hosting his Saturday radio show; contributing to gambling content; or helping FOX Sports expand its digital footprint, McIntyre was ostensibly itinerant while continuing his work with The Big Lead website.
Moreover, he worked with TVG Network (today known as FanDuel TV) providing analysis on the studio show More Ways to Win hosted by Lisa Kerney.
“I’m kind of limbo,” McIntyre said of that time. “I’m going on all the shows as a fill-in which is fine [and] I start doing a lot of digital stuff which I had already done because it’s in my contract.”
Producing the gambling content, in particular, helped boost the popularity of sports betting, especially as states gained regulatory power over its legality. Although California has yet to legalize sports betting, its base of sports fans are familiar with related content, which is very much momentary because of the dynamic nature of the niche.
“It is literally there for a day and then nobody cares the day after,” McIntyre said. “Nobody’s going back and looking at what you said about a game that’s now done. That part is difficult; it just doesn’t have a long tail.”
Everything changed, though, when The Big Lead was sold by Gannett to Minute Media in March 2019, which resulted in the bifurcation of the staff including McIntyre. In July 2020, McIntyre pivoted to begin hosting a podcast titled Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre, adopting an approach similar to his radio show except with more freedom to be himself and be completely authentic with his audience free of Federal Communications Commission standards.
The podcast, which has a new episode published on a near-daily basis, has performed well across audio platforms and given consumers another way to find McIntyre amid today’s crowded media environment. The experience of listening to a podcast, he states, differs from other forms of media largely because of the mechanisms fueling consumption.
“A lot of people listen while they’re running [or] walking their dog and the earbud is right in their ear,” McIntyre said of his podcast. “That’s different [from] the TV experience which can be on in the background. [With] the radio, you’re driving; you’re paying attention to a million things. I just feel like the intimacy of podcasts is something you don’t get anywhere else.”
Combining his podcast with a regular role on The Herd has helped burgeon his career, but present contrasts in terms of the way the shows are produced and distributed. With his podcast produced and distributed by iHeartMedia, he has flexibility to determine topics and welcome on guests as contributors.
Conversely, the visual component of The Herd equals in importance to being compelling and engaging aurally, rendering the show multitiered in terms of its production.
“If you’re walking by the screen, the graphics; the charts; the rankings – it just visually is appealing,” McIntyre said. “I must get at least two to three random people every single day [who say], ‘Dude, I walked by the bar and this show just looks visually-appealing.’”
McIntyre still participates in sports in spite of not playing professionally, including suiting up for pickup basketball at a gym and participating in a tennis league. There have been occurrences where he sporadically begins to talk about sports with other gym members, most recently regarding the New York Jets working to acquire quarterback Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers.
The same is applicable to Cowherd, as McIntyre has heard through friends that he will start talking to people about sports at gyms, parks and other public locations. Through their time co-hosting the show, they have been able to foster chemistry and transform it into favorable ratings.
“He’s exactly like you see on air, and I know that sounds crazy,” McIntyre said of Cowherd. “Between commercials, he’ll have a random rant and just come over and we’ll start talking and just fire off 5 minutes and I’m like, ‘This guy’s just nonstop.’”
In cultivating on-air synergy conducive to success, McIntyre feels he and Cowherd are able to discern gray areas and stimulate deeper, comprehensive thinking elicited through their interactions. One reason for listening to sports talk radio is for entertainment; however, appealing to the complete base of listeners requires finding points to display erudition and circuitous pedagogical instruction within their deft communication abilities.
“We can go back-and-forth a little bit at each other without it feeling personal, and we can disagree,” McIntyre said. “Reasonable minds can disagree. On the internet, everybody has to disagree; you’re either right or you’re wrong.”
Don Martin and Scott Shapiro oversee FOX Sports Radio and its programming, and have worked hard to compile a powerful on-air lineup at all hours of the day. McIntyre believes he has heard them joke about how it arguably compares to the 1927 New York Yankees starting lineup nicknamed “Murderers’ Row.”
That compilation of hitters, which went on to sweep consecutive World Series championships, featured impactful hitters such as George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Earle Combs and Tony Lazzeri among others. Today, the FOX Sports Radio consists of McIntyre and Cowherd, along with Dan Patrick, Doug Gottlieb, Chris Broussard and Rob Parker, all of whom are considered at or near the top of the industry.
“They’ve got home run hitters all day,” McIntyre said. “ESPN seems to have punted on radio which is a little bit of a surprise. They just don’t seem to take it as seriously as they did say five or 10 years ago. CBS: I’m not entirely sure where they are. I don’t know; you tell me. Is FOX dominating now or what?”
Aside from it being his profession, McIntyre considers sports themselves as an outlet for which to find enjoyment. Discussing aspects of the games he is passionate about enhances his ability and motivation to succeed as a host, and he continues to attempt to follow the leagues and its players as closely as possible.
“[If] you tell me that the NCAA tournament is on, I’m hunkering down with multiple televisions in my house and just devouring all of it,” McIntyre said. “[If] the World Cup is on, I’m waking up at whatever time I need to [in order] to watch Saudi Arabia vs. Argentina. It’s one of those things; I really love sports.”
At the moment, McIntyre is not thinking too much about the future, instead trying to enjoy the journey as opposed to solely focusing on his final destination. Yet he acknowledges that he has always been a person thinking about how he can improve and aggrandize his content, underscoring his commitment to the craft. He does enjoy his new job working with Cowherd and finds that they have been able to have compelling discussions.
“I’m always striving for something; always trying to push forward and do more,” McIntyre said. “Now, I’ve been part of TV shows; I’ve filled in; I’ve done all this. I don’t know what’s next for me. Is it having my own show? I don’t know.”
Even though sports radio today is, in some ways, unrecognizable from the programming from just one decade ago, McIntyre maintains a positive outlook on the future of the industry. Streaming services, podcasts and other on-demand content made available through OTT and FAST platforms certainly adjusts listenership, as it creates another area for the audience to invest their time of consumption, meaning that radio programs must pivot to retain and increase visibility.
“Maybe it’s the California air getting to me,” McIntyre said of his feelings towards the future of sports talk radio. “I’m not eating avocado toast regularly, but definitely I’m trying to be a little more positive. I’ve worked with enough negative people in this industry that that’s just not the way I want to live.”
As more people look to ingratiate themselves towards consumers and establish footholds in this competitive industry, it is fundamental for aspiring professionals to find a niche and work to distinguish themselves in that area. For McIntyre, it arguably came through launching The Big Lead, deviating from the outline of a typical path writers took to build their careers, and taking a calculated risk by remaining anonymous for several years.
Being able to talk in detail about a broad array of topics and having vast experience certainly improves the likelihood of succeeding in a marketplace that prioritizes versatility, along with establishing and keeping professional relationships. These factors have helped McIntyre construct a formidable career that took him from newspapers to magazines to web to radio to television, and with more potentially on the horizon as the years go on.
“It’s tough to just jump in as a generalist,” McIntyre said. “You’ve got to really drill down on something. I was able to drill down on media on the website; [I] got the media reading; and then I was able to supplement it with talking about the NBA and the draft and the NFL and all this stuff; controversial stories…. Once you own something, then you can pretty much own everything.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
