Chris Vernon is the kind of talent the Meet the Podcasters series was built for. He is exclusively in the digital space, but his digital presence is not exclusive. He does a successful NBA show for The Ringer called The Mismatch and he does an eponymous show for the Memphis audience on Grind City Media.
There are challenges that come with taking a local show from a broadcast platform to a digital one. Chris did it and had to learn to own the job, discovering what still worked and what no longer did.
Vernon not only has thoughts about his own digital presence, but he also shares why the NBA will always win on social media, and how the changing face of the typical golf fan helped a viral video become one of his signature bits.
Demetri Ravanos: Tell me about the unique challenges that come with doing a podcast for a local audience versus doing something like you are with The Ringer, which has more national appeal.
Chris Vernon: I would say that I think our challenges were retraining an audience in the sense of now, “We are on their time.” I think one of the things that I had to learn was that not everything has to be time-sensitive. I was constantly in that realm of knowing that the ratings come every 15 minutes, so there is this constant feeling of having to pack things in within an amount of time that would fit a commute. That’s what you were going to be judged on, that is what you could make money off of.
I started to see this changing when I left radio six or seven years ago. It used to be that if I came on at 3:00 or if I came on at 11:00, there was this feeling that the audience was tuning in right at that time. That had already started to shift where I would say something on, say a Monday, and then somebody might respond to it on a Thursday. I started to realize that people were downloading it and listening to it later anyway.
They were on my time, but as everything in the world became on demand and it was rapidly changing outside of say, a game that you had to watch at a certain time or maybe an award show. People were starting to take in virtually everything whenever they could get to it, not at the time that was allotted. We weren’t going to be any different than anything else.
So then, in its infancy, it was, “Where do I find you? How do I listen to you? What is this?” Everybody was so conditioned and used to radio for so many years. I think that was a big challenge. Very rarely, if ever, do I get that question now, but that was the only question I got for the first two years.
DR: So I’m going to circle back on The Ringer in a second. But I do want to talk about building and expanding Grind City Media. Where did the idea come from and what did you and the Grizzlies see as the potential initially versus where it is right now?
CV: Yeah, the guy that was the president of the Grizzlies was a guy named Jason Wexler, who I’ve known for many years. I think his vision was that they were going to be able to start a media branch of the team and they wanted to start a media company.
I had already talked to Bill Simmons about doing some stuff with The Ringer. That was going to be very difficult. Then obviously, I had a huge battle with my own radio station. I think things probably went along faster than was originally anticipated, so we just went ahead and did it. At that time, it was very important because it was going to give me an outlet to be on the air without having to serve a non-compete.
I think that things probably have changed dramatically since then. But at that time, a radio station could feel like they had you over a barrel, right? Cause in my case, it was, “Oh, you don’t like the money we’re offering? Okay, well, you’ve got a wife and two kids and your parents have just moved here. We know you don’t want to sit out for six months and we know you don’t want to move. So, what are you going to do?” At that point, I was like, “Alright. Well, here’s what I’ll do.” So I just took the dive into it.
I think that the whole idea with Grind City was they wanted to be able to produce content. But I think that one thing that they got right from the very, very beginning that is very difficult for others is that their agreement at the beginning was, “We want you to bring your show and do it here. We don’t want you to do a different show than what you’ve been doing just because you’re here. We want you to do the show you’ve been doing.”
I think that is a massive challenge for teams. I credit them greatly. They never tell me what I can and cannot say. They’ve never come to me and said, “Hey, don’t say that” or get mad at me. In fact, the only time I remember vividly where they said something to me was me bashing other media members.
They knew, and this is in their wisdom, their point of view was nobody’s going to want to listen to it if it’s cheerleader radio. So, they allowed me to take my show and be able to talk about the things that I wanted to talk about, and then the audience could decide, “Is he right?” I was mega critical of a lot of things, and I think in many cases, probably more critical than the rest of the media, and they didn’t jump me for that.
I think that was the trick. We had built a radio audience for a lot of years, and so that audience was going to be able to come to us and hopefully, a new audience as well was going to come to us and that they knew they were getting something that was still entertaining to them. I mean, it’s still the show we were doing. We’re just doing it on a different outlet.
DR: One of the things that I think everybody knows you for every year is The Masters update, and that’s a great example of what you’re talking about. It’s a team-owned media outlet but that doesn’t mean it’s team cheerleader media, right? One of your signature things has nothing to do with the Grizzlies or the NBA. How did it become this anticipated thing for all of us in the media where we’re all waiting for Chris Vernon’s Masters update every year?
CV: Well, I think it’s it’s weird. I’ve talked before and said I don’t know if it’s that whole Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing or not, but I mean, we’ve done it for so many years. It was really the video element of it. That was an audio-only bit for so many years and it certainly had its audience, but it was kind of like loving an indie band, right? People knew about it and some people did write about it. It always did well, and people looked forward to it, but it wasn’t a big deal. I think it all just hit at the right time.
The year that it really blew up for the first time, it was on video and it was during the pandemic. That was the fall Masters; it was actually in November or something.
If I recall, there were very few people at the office. We did the show the entire time, all the way through, so there wasn’t a lot of support. There wasn’t a lot of live sports on. There wasn’t a lot of content, and then you had this, which was something that made people laugh.
DR: I’ve written before that I think it’s legitimately a perfect sports media bit because it is the kind of thing that people who like golf get something out of and people like me who think golf conversation is an incredible waste of time, still get something out of it. We’re watching the same thing. We’re enjoying it for two different reasons, but we’re both tremendously enjoying it.
CV: Yeah, what’s kind of odd is there has been a massive youth infusion into the golf world. Not only player-wise, but also like company wise; branding-wise; fashion-wise; all that kind of stuff. Even media-wise for that matter. Back when we first began doing it, it was used as, “What is the most polar opposite thing of The Masters? “
DR: Right, Memphis hip-hop.
CV: Yeah, that’s how it kind of originally happened. Now, instead of it being something that would be resented by “golf people,” they love it the most.
I saw this video the other day and they asked the LIV golfers; they’re finishing Drake lines or something like that, and every one of them, finished every line. That’s when you start to realize, “Okay, this is who plays golf now.” They all grew up on this music, so I do think that the fact that it was happening during the pandemic, it just hit at the exact right time.
DR: Let’s wrap here. I want to ask you about the sport you do most of your content on – the NBA. It’s interesting to me that no league has captured social media discourse the way the NBA has. Why does the coverage of the league serve a digital audience so well?
CV: I think that’s due to the youth and the relatability of many that cover the sport. I think you have a lot of people that are around my age, possibly your age, that the biggest athlete when we were kids was Michael Jordan, and that’s by a very wide margin. So the NBA was always very relevant to us during our youth. I think that you’ve also got the highlight thing and I think the transaction thing leads to an amount of coverage.
I was reading a Washington Post story today about Woj and Shams. It talks about their rise and it talks about how people are so satiated over every report and about every transaction and the drama that comes along with the NBA. That’s just not so when it comes to the other sports. There is a finite amount of time where you would have any interest in the transactions of baseball and the NFL does not really have that. So, when you have a sport that’s an 82-game season, it’s an everyday thing.
I think the people covering it and I think about the accounts, even the aggregate accounts; the meme accounts; whatever. There is no real version of, say, House of Highlights. I know they do a bunch of other stuff now, but when you think about it, the other leagues don’t have the creative people that are doing that as much and as popular. I think there’s something to that. I think it’s kind of built for the Internet age.
My 13-year-old loves the NFL. He loves his fantasy football team and he loves the team that he loves, but there’s not a lot of daily interest. It’s Sundays and it’s setting up your fantasy team. I think that young kids and the people who came up in the internet age, they love the NBA.
When we did a live show, Kevin O’Connor and I were in Memphis, and there were all kinds of 20-somethings that came up to me and said, “Hey, I do this now. I grew up listening to you and here’s what I’m doing now,” and they have a YouTube channel, and TikTok channel, and they’re just so adept at it. They’re used to that type of media and getting that content out.
DR: I don’t know about your 13-year-old, but my 12-year-old loves European soccer. And if you think about it, it is the kind of thing that is built for social media highlights, but, to your point about the NBA versus the NFL, what’s European soccer? It’s Saturdays and Sundays and that’s it.
CV: That’s right. Anybody that does this social media stuff and becomes great at it; I just think a lot more of the NBA fandom community is better at it and more adept to it and understands the internet and YouTube and all that kind of stuff so much more.
The other thing I’ve noticed, which has opened my eyes in a massive way, is that it is truly global. There have been times when we’ve gotten reports that we’ll be the No. 1 sports podcast in Australia or in some of these other countries. There’s people that care about the NBA deeply all over the world.
We’ll read some question that we got in the mailbag from a guy in Ireland or whatever. Like, wow, can you believe people are listening in Ireland, and then the next week, we’ll be flooded. I’m not kidding. But we have gotten emails in the mailbag from 35 different countries. The internet makes the world a small place.
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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.
