Are you willing to take career chances? If you are in the line of work that finds interest in the content contained in this column, you have probably already answered that question in the affirmative. As much as any line of work, one can never really predict their path in the sports media world, careers are full of winding roads. This entire industry is about taking chances, some small, some career-changing.
This one fell much closer to the small chance category, it was a decision our show made in the summer that recently paid off in a great deal of attention. Not all that attention was positive or supportive, more on that in a moment. For those not familiar with our show, a brief refresher: We left Cumulus Media in 2021 and launched our own digital platform. Our anchor show, The Next Round, is available in all areas of the digital world (basically, everywhere but radio). We own the show, we own the company, we make all the decisions.
It is in that light that this story is based: making decisions that impact your brand. In the summer, organizers of a basketball game in Huntsville, Alabama reached out and asked if we would be interested in doing a ManningCast-style broadcast of their game, Auburn v. UNC-Asheville, to air on the SEC Network. The caveat being that they would control most of the production elements, with our input. In other words, unlike our own show, not everything goes. The basic debate was this: Do we very temporarily sacrifice the complete control we have grown to love in exchange for the temporary exposure given by the SEC Network?
We decided to accept the offer and jump feet-first into a world we’d never experienced together. All of us (myself, Jim Dunaway, and Lance Taylor) had play-by-play and game analyst experience but the three of us had never done that as a team. Add in the unsaid expectation, by use of the phrase ManningCast, that we were also expected to be funny and this was a brave new world. We could fail or succeed spectacularly and wouldn’t know that result until it was too late. Depending on who you ask, we did one of those two, there seems to be very little middle ground.
Like in most things, we received tons of praise and tons of criticism. I’ve learned, if you never get either, you aren’t making much of an impact. Truthfully, I’ve never been that sports media guy that sets out just to piss people off. We have never been the “hot take” show, we just try to make people laugh while we stumble through, mostly, sports. With that disclaimer out of the way, I would say that if you never get feedback from those criticizing things you’ve said, your audience may be a tad too narrow.
The criticism was understandable, Auburn and UNC-Asheville fans thought they were watching a “normal” game telecast. We were anything but that, three guys in hoodies interviewing people, talking about concerts, and commenting on the game. The only traditional element of the telecast was The Next Round’s very talented SEC reporter, Emily Grace McWhorter, who was on the sidelines for us. The Auburn fans let us have it. Some of it was true vitriol, and some of it was the fact that the always creative “#AuburnTwitter” family decided we were the running punch line of that night’s game. They jumped on us early and, boy, did they deliver. In fact, they unknowingly helped us produce an entire “Mean Tweets” segment on our show the next day.
The praise was nice, too. Tons of people both inside sports media and outside the industry reached out with nice things to say, I assume all of them were genuine. Those who know our show daily understood what we were doing and seemed to embrace it. We went into this knowing it would split an audience and, like all other things in this industry, those upset were going to be the most vocal. But the goal was never to please everyone. The goal, as we determined on day one, was to expose our show to a brand-new potential audience.
So, are you willing to take calculated risks to grow your brand? Are you ok if those risks, even when they are successful, bring you more criticism than praise? If we just stay in our shells and never branch out, we will only have what we have always had. Sometimes growing means doing things that may blow up in your face but, can they still accomplish the goal?
As businessman and philanthropist Harry Gray once said: “Nobody ever achieved greatness by playing it safe.” Of course, Harry Gray died in 2009 so nobody ever blew him up on Twitter.
Ryan Brown is a columnist for Barrett Sports Media, and a co-host of the popular sports audio/video show ‘The Next Round’ formerly known as JOX Roundtable, which previously aired on WJOX in Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter @RyanBrownLive and follow his show @NextRoundLive.
