Michael Smerconish Wants to Talk About His Failures As Much As His Success

SiriusXM radio and CNN host Michael Smerconish has a powerful message for anyone who has ever considered giving up on their dreams, felt deserving of an opportunity, or believed they have earned a title they are pursuing.

Over three decades, Smerconish, a former attorney, received several breaks, mainly in politics. He made inroads with some of the most influential people in the country at a young age. He began offering political analysis and eventually caught the attention of Bill O’Reilly and Joe Scarborough, serving as a primary fill-in for them with the anticipation of being given opportunities to take their place.

However, these opportunities never materialized. Despite his disappointment, he did not become bitter or take his frustration out on the industry. Instead, he worked harder than anyone around him.  

Michael Smerconish considers himself lucky to have complete creative control over his SiriusXM show. Having been syndicated on traditional broadcast radio, he has felt the pressure from big market program directors to conform to a certain way of thinking. Smerconish believes that his independent thought process is one of his most important characteristics. With his show, The Michael Smerconish Program, on Channel 124, he is finally free from anyone micromanaging his thoughts or words. 

During his interview with Barrett News Media, Smerconish discussed a wide range of topics. He spoke about how he managed to turn rejections into success and how his legal background has helped him navigate the current news cycle featuring several indictments against the former President.

Smerconish also shared how he used practical thinking to grow a sizeable audience on satellite radio, what he believes sets SiriusXM apart from other terrestrial radio stations, and why it’s beneficial for people to change the channel occasionally. 

Ryan Hedrick: How do you report a breaking news story during your show? 

Michael Smerconish: When my program begins at 9:00 AM, it’s all downhill because I’ve spent the time reading, paying attention, deciding what I wanted to say, and booking guests.

So now, if something breaks during my program, I have to decide if it is worth interrupting the show I have planned to deliver. I don’t view my program as a news program. I view it more as a commentary program and an interview show. You have to meet a threshold that would be hard for me to define for you. I might interrupt [the show] and take a live feed, because I can do that if I choose to. Or I might just stay with my game plan and allow that news to percolate and offer my opinion the following day.  

RH: Many talk show hosts have told me they spend two hours preparing for every hour on the air. What does your show prep consist of?  

MS: I wish my preparation was like that. I prep 24/7, I am never unplugged, and I am constantly watching, reading, and thinking.  

If I don’t leave the restaurant where I am hosting, where they filmed the most recent Rocky movie, if I don’t see something I can incorporate into the show tomorrow, then it will have been in part, a lost evening. I’m always looking for material. The best things that come out of my program are not necessarily from the front page. I am a practitioner of the whole Seinfeld, Larry David Curb philosophy of life, which is, sometimes, the best shows are shows about nothing.  

RH: How has your background as an attorney helped you in your career in media? 

MS: It has taught me a worthy skill for critical thinking. It has helped me be able to analyze issues from both sides. I don’t come on the air with an agenda from the right or left. I don’t feel beholden to anybody or any perspective other than mine. Trying cases for ten years, which I did, was wonderful training for what I try to do on both radio and television.  

Given the news of the day, my legal background also puts me in a good position. My God, four indictments and now a civil fraud trial for Trump. Sam Bankman-Fried on trial, Hunter Biden pleading guilty in a federal courtroom. Understanding what’s going on in these cases gives me an advantage because it might not come easily to somebody else.  

When you tune into my program, you’re listening to someone who has not only read the stories about Trump but I’ve read the indictments. Every single one of them. I don’t really speak for a living; I read for a living. That’s how I feel because speaking is the easy part. What’s more difficult is what I am going to say.

RH: You claim to look beyond political affiliations and judge based on your own perspective. How does this affect your audience? 

MS: It helps me greatly with the listenership I’ve built on the POTUS channel because they know I’m passionate. I don’t like it when people who don’t subscribe to the right or left are somehow labeled as being weak or lacking an opinion. I’m neither. I just don’t buy into some faux perspective of the world where you’ve got to see everything through a left or right lens.

The only people in my life that I meet who see the world entirely through a liberal or conservative perspective are radio or television hosts. It’s just not the way the real world is.

For most people, the issues are mixed; they are often conservative on fiscal issues and more progressive on social issues. If you landed here from another planet and turned on a radio or television, you wouldn’t even know that there are centrists out there, even though we are a plurality of the country.  

RH: Do people listen to your SiriusXM show because they want something different from AM/FM radio? 

MS: Yeah, I lived that. When my show was in syndication before I came to SiriusXM, and I was on a hundred or so markets across the country, I can remember that I would often give conniptions to some of the program directors because they were so accustomed to hearing only a conservative perspective and I came along, and I was doing it differently, and they didn’t know how to react in some circumstances.

I remember in 2010, when — after having been a Republican for 30 years, I finally decided that the party didn’t look like the party I joined, and I changed my registration to independent — we call it a non-party affiliate in Pennsylvania. But the program director on the New York affiliate that I had sent a memo and told my syndicator that if this sort of thing continued, they would have pulled the plug on my affiliation. That’s how foreign a concept it was that they would have an independent thinker on a terrestrial AM station.  

RH: Do you listen to other news/talk shows on the radio? 

MS: On my radio, I am a huge Howard Stern fan. My presets are all SiriusXM, they are music, and they are Howard. But I consume a lot of cable news.

In my radio studio, I have MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, so I can look up while I’m preparing. I don’t go to bed at night without touching base with each one of those outlets and plenty more. I want to know what’s being said, I want to know what CNN is doing and saying, I want to hear what Sean Hannity’s perspective is, and I want to hear if there is a night when Rachel Maddow is on.

The biggest advice I have for people in terms of what would rescue this country is for more people to change the channel. Whatever the channel is, mix it up. Get out of your media silo. The sad irony is that we’ve never had so much selection and few people exercising it.  

RH: How is SiriusXM different than traditional broadcast radio AM/FM? 

MS SiriusXM is a fabulous employer. I’ve had these same conversations with Scott Greenstein (President and Chief Content Officer, leads SiriusXM’s programming and advertising), and Dave Gorab (VP/GM, Talk Programming), for the way they run the ship, which is to stay they totally stay out of my way. I think hiring me comes with a level of respect that says, “You’re a professional. You know what you’re doing. Now, go out and do it.”

It’s so foreign to the old days for me to have a program director who wants to make sure that all the hosts are rowing in the same direction.  

It’s a busy news cycle when you think about the speaker being ousted, Trump on trial, questions about Biden’s capabilities, war in Ukraine, and economic considerations. And yet, I will tell you that I found time this week to discuss on SiriusXM on a channel called POTUS this new show on Max called Naked Attraction, where we can finally get in the United States that is a reality show from England where everybody gets naked as they pair up and find a date.  

It’s the hottest show on TV. Of course I was going to discuss it because I had been in the UK five or six years ago and I stumbled upon it in my hotel room. Lo and behold, I read a story in The Hollywood Reporter the other day saying it was now in the United States. I told myself that I had to tell my audience about this, and I did.  

RH: Radio and TV broadcasters possess different skill sets, and you have experience working on both platforms. What draws you to working in both radio and TV? 

Micahel Smerconish: I like the spontaneity of radio. I like being able to say “Um and ah” and being able to cuss occasionally. Obviously, working in a cable realm is much more structured. If you’ve seen my shows (Smerconish airs on CNN Saturdays), one of its hallmarks is responding to social media in real time without seeing any of what’s coming my way. I think it’s become a favorite part of the program, whether it’s from YouTube or, most often, from X (formerly Twitter), people can say anything they want.

My producer is under one directive, which is that nobody wants to hear a compliment, so don’t put anything on the screen where someone is saying something pleasant. I don’t know if I would be comfortable or good at responding to anything like this if I didn’t have radio experience. That’s what I do every day. Radio has been a great preparation for me.  

RH: What is the biggest break you have ever had in your career? 

MS: It’s easier for me to tell you all the opportunities I think I earned and did not get. I feel like I earned, over the span of 30 years, the things that have come my way, but I also believe that when I guest hosted for Bill O’Reilly for five years for Westwood One and was his primary fill-in and then decided to retire from radio — this was before he left Fox News — I thought I had earned that gig, but they told me that I wasn’t a name, and so they gave that opportunity to Fred Thompson, the former Senator and movie actor.  

I earned an opportunity when I guest hosted Chris Matthews for five years and was his principal fill-on on Hardball, and I had earned that gig. MSNBC told me that they were young, liberal, and nerdy and would not give it to me, and they didn’t.  

When Don Imus got fired after he said something inappropriate and racist, I was immediately summoned to Secaucus, New Jersey, to sit in his chair and host that show. I thought I earned the gig, and instead, they gave it to Joe Scarborough. By the way, I had been Scarborough’s fill-in when he was the 10 PM host. I thought, “OK, Scarborough is getting the Imus gig, so they will give me the Scarborough gig.”

Guess what? I didn’t get that either.  

When I speak to students, particularly those interested in broadcasting, I don’t tell them about my successes. I would rather offer them all the opportunities I thought I had the sweat equity and earned something, which didn’t come through. If you’re not ready to live with those rejections, this is not a business for you.  

RH: After all that rejection, what kept you going? What kept you motivated?  

Michael Smerconish: I always had confidence in the product. My background is that I was politically active at an early age, and I had some unique political experiences for someone in their early 20s. I had some good breaks happen in the world of politics.

Then, I was invited to provide political commentary, initially for network affiliates in Philadelphia and then radio.

I think the ego of it consumed me. Initially, I was attracted to it because it was cool to be on the radio. It was the confidence I had in what I was delivering that kept me going. There was a good argument to be had to pack it in and keep practicing law.  

BNM Staff