For just the second time in the team’s history, the Florida Panthers are advancing to the Stanley Cup Final – and in large part due to the play of goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky. He was having an excellent start to the year; that is, until he appeared on Tobin & Leroy on 560 WQAM, the flagship radio home of the Panthers.
Brendan Tobin, one of the show’s hosts, has a good relationship with Bobrovsky and booked him as a guest, but the interview can be traced back as a harbinger of strife and misfortune. It led Bobrovsky to lose playing time to journeyman goalie Alex Lyon, and caused fans of the midday radio program to speculate as to the legitimacy of considering Tobin to be a bonafide jinx.
Ever since that time, Tobin has conveyed his desire to have Bobrovsky on the show again, and does not believe interviewing him is a potential jinx. Yet his co-host, former NFL running back Leroy Hoard, along with many listeners have exhorted Tobin to keep him off the air until the team hoists the Stanley Cup.
“The audience is getting really, really mad at me because I want to go interview him,” Tobin said. “I don’t plan on interviewing him just as the bit of the show, but just teasing them that I’m going to do it and then being mad at me has been kind of a funny side story and our own little thing with the Panthers run.”
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Sports in the Miami area have drawn worldwide attention over the last two months, accentuated by the championship-caliber play of the Panthers and excitement surrounding the upcoming Stanley Cup Final. Virtually no one in the hockey landscape expected the team to be there, especially competing as the Eastern Conference’s eighth seed. The Panthers ended up delivering the upset of the playoffs by knocking out the record-setting Boston Bruins, and have continued to shock the world in the games thereafter.
When the Panthers clinched a Stanley Cup Final berth on the strength of a last-second game-winning goal by forward Matthew Tkachuk, the Miami Heat were up three games to one in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics. There was conversation among basketball pundits as to whether the eighth-seeded Heat, led by Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, would be able to close out the series. While the Heat would generally dominate the parlance of conversation on Tobin’s sports radio show (80% Heat; 20% Panthers, as he puts it), his team decided to spend a majority of its time discussing the Panthers’ success that day.
“People always say that sports radio is driven by negativity. Maybe, but in my experience, I think most people want to come in to celebrate,” Tobin said. “I think most people like to come in and they want to be part of the party.”
For the first 18 years of his career, Tobin brought energy to 790 The Ticket in Miami, a station where he landed an internship by pestering its program director and showcasing his eager alacrity to take the mic. Tobin had an infatuation with sports radio from a young age, especially through watching his uncle, John Tobin, work in the industry.
John Tobin had been a host on WPDH and PYX 106, rock radio stations in upstate New York, and ultimately chose to switch formats and co-hosted an afternoon sports talk show with Freddie Coleman.
“I was kind of like a pseudo-intern if you will and [I] just laughed every day,” Brendan Tobin said of watching his uncle. “It just seemed like an amazing, fun way to make a living.”
Tobin attended Barry University and immediately joined WBRY, the campus radio station. The exposure to industry-standard equipment and invaluable repetitions prepared him well by the time he landed his coveted internship with 790 The Ticket, during which he assisted its morning drive host Sid Rosenberg.
“It was such a wild experience because he’s such a big personality, and you kind of could just see how a big ensemble show could work because he likes involving everybody in the show,” Tobin said of Rosenberg. “He [liked] talking to the intern and [gave] me hell my first days. He liked talking to his producer. He liked having interesting guests on, so that was a real eye-opening experience.”
For a stretch spanning over a decade, Tobin was producing morning shows and had the chance to work with Jonathan Zaslow on 790 The Ticket. Over the years, Zaslow had a variety of co-hosts – including Joy Taylor, Marc Hochman and Amber Wilson – and always brought his energy and creativity to the airwaves with input from Tobin and others from the station. When Hochman served as program director of 790 The Ticket, he recognized Tobin’s talent and gave him an opportunity to fill in as a host.
“It was back in the day where I’d have to send some samples to the program director,” Tobin said. “I remember the first thing that he told me after my first show was, ‘You’ve got some game.’ And so that was better than, ‘You suck.’”
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Tobin eventually found a home in morning drive with Hoard on 790 The Ticket beginning in 2016. The duo discovered it had instant chemistry and duly gained a foothold on the local airwaves. Through their partnership, Tobin established a distinctive hosting style centered around exuding passion. Hoard brings his playing acumen, along with an ample network including celebrities, athletes, billionaires and other prominent figures. Tobin says Hoard is “the life of the party” when he is off the air, a stark contrast to what happens when the show starts.
Indeed, it is Tobin who takes center stage and personifies what being a zealous sports fan sounds like. His personality is rich with idiosyncrasies and hallmarks that captivate consumers and play a part in ensuring the longevity of the show.
“Think about the lunatic fan with his wild theories, and he always has to hone that in,” Tobin said. “I think that’s what the audience likes about us. We’re an odd couple. We’ve got a little bit of a gap in age and experience. We come from different walks of life, and I just think it’s made magic for us since we’ve been put together.”
Being able to develop a conspicuous, interesting and vibrant sound in today’s saturated media ecosystem is a challenge unto itself, and Tobin knows how difficult it is to appeal to different generations of listeners. There is a faction of consumers that listens for the entirety of the show each day even as it has gone through monumental changes – most notably being aired on a new station at a new time of day.
In the fall of 2022, Audacy flipped the format of 790 The Ticket, leaving the local area with five teams and three sports radio stations. Because of this, Tobin and Hoard’s show was moved to 560 WQAM. They were in the midday time slot on their new station, a move that proved beneficial for Tobin. He is now part of his childrens’ morning routines and helps send them off to school, and in turn, avoids considerable traffic on his way to work.
Since moving to 560 WQAM, Tobin has communicated with morning drive host Joe Rose on a daily basis, and he has heard his perspectives on the market and changing state of sports media. Even though he had listened to the station in his youth, the move felt somewhat unusual. After all, Tobin had been with 790 The Game for his entire career, and he admits that he was a bit apprehensive about the transition.
“You’ve got a bit of a hermit life when you’re doing morning drive,” Tobin said. “You don’t interact with people as much, and I do think that with being in the middle of the day over at 560, it’s been a nice, healthier change.”
An additional positive aspect of the move is in the evolution of audience engagement. Whether it is through reviewing a text line, watching chat rooms on the program’s YouTube and Twitch video simulcasts, viewing social media platforms or answering phone calls, the group of people contacting Tobin have promptly come to understand the nature of the show. Moreover, they are aware of how to make contributions to guide or conceive pertinent discussion.
“They almost build their own personalities,” Tobin said. “We know who the guys are who are going to roast us, make fat jokes about me [or] make dumb jokes about me. All that stuff is very, very interesting, and a lot of the time, they’ve got news before I do because they’re on their computers and hitting us up with stuff.”
Yet the surfeit of methods for audiences to communicate with hosts creates somewhat of a content vortex. Largely in part from the success of the Panthers and Heat, Tobin finds he has constantly been tapped into local sports with little ability to step away and take a break.
“My wife was joking with me the other day; she’s like, ‘I can’t wait for the Heat to… win the championship so I can get you back’ because it’s been nonstop [between] the Panthers and Heat,” Tobin expressed. “I’ve been just interacting with fans, it feels like more than family over the last two weeks.”
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While a preponderance of listeners come from the local marketplace, they remain tuned into national outlets to watch live game broadcasts and shoulder programming. When ESPN’s analytics department gave the Miami Heat a 3% chance to reach the NBA Finals against the Celtics, fans pushed back on social media. Tobin is never shy to criticize the “Worldwide Leader” on the radio, nor does he abstain from calling out other media outlets for various reasons throughout the course of the year.
In the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Tobin recalls hearing that the weather was affecting the New York Knicks against the Heat, a statement he viewed as incomprehensible since the games are played at indoor venues.
“I think Miami gets a bad reputation nationally [and] doesn’t really get a good voice from some of the big networks,” Tobin said. “I think the audience appreciates [the criticism] because I don’t necessarily think that they have that feeling of respect nationally, [and] I think that kind of goes back to the old Canes days. People in Miami love the ‘us against the world’ mentality.”
Tobin believes coverage of the Panthers and Heat at the national level “really sucks,” so he takes matters into his own hands. He’s in the Miami Heat locker room after every home game talking to the players and gathering their thoughts to implement into his show. Tobin also has created digital series on Instagram centered around documenting his experiences at games – on which he proffers and demonstrates his self-professed disproportionality towards decrypting vague messaging.
“That stuff I love diving into,” Tobin said, “especially when I have Leroy because I’ll overreact to everything and he’ll call me an idiot and say, ‘It’s stupid and nothing,’ but that’s just the vibe we go on with things.”
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In March, Ford announced it would be removing AM radio in its internal combustion engines in 2024 after it found electric vehicles caused electromagnetic interference with the signal’s reception. Following pressure from lawmakers and the introduction of the bipartisan “AM for Every Vehicle Act,” Ford decided to reverse course.
Even so, the threat of its elimination in motor vehicles is surely concerning. Tobin believes AM radio is habitual in and of itself, as it gives people a fast and free option to hear news, entertainment, sports and other content. Both the Panthers and the Heat call 560 WQAM their flagship station, and it is the place where many Miami sports fans heard their teams clinch championship berths.
“I do think the importance of it is that everybody has access to it,” Tobin said. “Even in this on-demand age where everybody can get access to everything, locally you’re happy to just kind of be in tune with, ‘Hey, this is going on in the market right now.’ That’s kind of the beauty of it, and I think that it has been cool that it’s been a run where we’ve had both teams on our station.”
Recognizing just what encompasses success as a radio host can be a difficult task since there are a wide array of determinants and external factors involved. Tobin recognizes how fortunate he has been to have the chance to disseminate his opinions to an audience and speak with prominent sports figures, including Pat Riley, Dwayne Wade and Dana White.
He is not focused on making bombastic opinions that instantly appeal and gratify consumers at one glance, recognizing the usual levity of the subject matter at hand.
“We’re talking about sports,” Tobin articulated. “It’s not life and death. It’s not politics. It’s not this maddening life-and-death battle that everybody tries to make everything these days. We are in kind of a silly sauce department of life, and that’s kind of how I define it.”
As the Panthers and Heat both sit four wins away from achieving the ultimate glory, Tobin is remaining focused on bringing Miami sports fans the local coverage of the teams they desire while keeping them entertained and enamored with the content.
“One of the things that I love about [the industry] is I do think that there are a lot of good people; a lot of talented people,” Tobin said. “I love the fact that now in today’s day and age, you don’t necessarily need a radio station to start building your audience and get good at this.”
For those looking to get into the industry, Tobin urges them to take advantage of technological advances and create their own opportunities with the intent to stand out and show prospective employers what they can bring to their organization. After all, he produced morning radio for over a decade and received a chance simply by being in the building and demonstrating his skills in other areas, including as an update anchor.
Now, Tobin has been hosting for the last seven years, and is just eager for that elusive championship. He and other Miami sports fans just might have double the fun if both teams can pull off what was initially regarded as a nearly impossible outcome.
“I’ve actually been really happy with the growth that we’ve had during these runs because I do think that winning does bring audience, and I do think that it brings people just discovering you,” Tobin expressed. “I’ve had so many people over these last four weeks just say, ‘I’ve never heard of you guys. I’m so happy that I have a place where I can go get some coverage of my favorite teams,’ because they don’t feel like they have that outlet necessarily.”
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.
