Sometimes in sports, things don’t work out the first time around. Mickey Mantle had to be sent back down to the minors before he came back up to the Yankees for his Hall of Fame career. John Elway lost in the Super Bowl with the Broncos the first three times he guided them there, but then he finished his career with a pair of Super Bowl wins.
The same goes for the radio industry, especially in sports talk radio. Success is not always there right from the start.
For Matt Steinmetz, things didn’t go well the first time around when he was hired in September 2012 by 95.7 FM The Game in San Francisco to do a midday show with Sean O’Connell. A year and a half later, the radio station pulled the plug on the show and that’s when Steinmetz had some doubts about his future in radio.
“Yeah, probably when Jason fired me,” said Steinmetz.
Jason is former Program Director Jason Barrett, who is now the President of Barrett Media.
“I was mad at him,” said Steinmetz. “Then I got a second chance and I figured it out.”
What Steinmetz figured out was that to do a good radio show, one has to have a passion for two to three subjects before turning on the microphone each day.
“You have to have seen something or watched something and then say ‘that’s not right’ or ‘you know what, I like that a lot’ or ‘you know what, this guy is really good’ or ‘that guy is overrated,’” said Steinmetz. “Once you start watching a game like that with that kind of foresight, then things kind of find you in terms of subjects that are interesting.”
There were no lingering hard feelings after the firing. Steinmetz would get that second shot at radio about a year or so later.
That’s when Barrett brought Steinmetz back to do some fill-in work and to host a weekend NBA show. Since May 2019, Steinmetz has teamed with Daryle “The Guru” Johnson for Steiny and Guru, weekdays from 10am to 2pm.
Steinmetz learned a lot about the industry during his first tour of duty with The Game and now he’s enjoying a lot of success.
“I think like a lot of people who get it wrong the first time, you think you can just talk on the radio about sports,” said Steinmetz. “You can’t just talk on the radio about sports. It took me a while with the radio portion realizing that you’ve got to come to the table with something.”
Steinmetz began his career as a sports writer including serving as the Golden State Warriors beat writer for Bay Area News Group. He would go on to be an NBA writer for AOL and then did some television work as a Warriors/NBA reporter for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area.
Then came the return to radio.
At first, things took a while for Matt and Guru to establish chemistry and really click. When they did, the show really took off.
“We got into a phase where if something happened on the air, we could talk about it off the air,” said Steinmetz. “When we started talking about it off the air, we became closer and tighter. Then you take that part back into the show and the show gets better too. There’s a threshold you cross that’s hard to define. It involves trust that the other guy is working with you.”
And the relationship with Guru has grown into more than just being radio partners.
“He’s turned into a great friend and there’s a lot that we can get into just because we’re comfortable with each other,” said Steinmetz.
And each day, Steiny and Guru work hard to do the best show possible and hope it all works out.
So far, so good.
“The ratings are just so mercurial,” said Steinmetz. “You can just do the best you can and hope that things fall into place. That’s all you can really do and hope you make a connection and Guru is great at that. He connects. We’re having a lot of fun right now.”
Steinmetz has done a lot in his career between print, television and radio.
He’s having blast hosting the daily radio show, but is there something else for him to accomplish down the road?
“Hopefully I can do this for a few more years,” said Steinmetz. “It would be nice to finish doing something like radio or podcasts or some freelance media on my own terms as I get up there. I’m pretty proud of where I’m at. I think there’s one more step but I’m not sure what it is.”
There’s a saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
But sometimes, there’s a lesson to be learned and that brings about that second chance. For Matt Steinmetz, that second chance was there for him and he’s taken the ball and run with it.
Peter Schwartz writes weekly sports radio features for Barrett Media. He has been involved in New York sports media for over three decades, and has worked for notable brands such as WFAN, CBS Sports Radio, WCBS 880, ESPN New York, and FOX News Radio. Peter has also served as play by play announcer for the New Yok Riptide, New York Dragons, New York Hitmen, Varsity Media and the Long Island Sports Network. You can find him on Twitter @SchwartzSports or email him at DragonsRadio@aol.com.
