Audience appeal is a tricky beast to navigate. What does success online mean? ESPN hired Pat McAfee intending to bring his devoted fanbase to the network. While the digital metrics have been positive, that hasn’t exactly translated to linear television and there is tension between the star and the suits.
McAfee isn’t the first experiment to go awry in this way. Television executives are under tremendous pressure to find what is next – the next trend, next star, next obsession. That may mean there isn’t always time to do a sober analysis of the conditions that have led a talent or property to have success in the digital space.
It was less than a year ago that Pat McAfee announced he was looking for a partner. His show was generating serious money. Each week, the sports media was paying attention to him, his guests and what was said on his show. It is no wonder there was so much interest from across the sports media landscape.
The history between McAfee and Disney stretches back to the 2019 college football season when he was hired to join Matt Hasselbeck and Adam Amin in the Thursday night booth. He is close with Mike Greenberg and Kirk Herbstreit. It is no surprise that he chose to formalize his relationship with Disney beyond just College GameDay.
But did it ever really fit?
Some of McAfee’s most devoted fans voiced their objections the second he appeared on stage last year at the Walt Disney Company’s upfront presentation to announce the partnership.
McAfee tried to assuage their fears. Nothing about the show was going to change. There would just be fewer F-bombs dropped.
Maybe that was the problem.
There was nothing wrong with McAfee’s show. It gets branded as bro humor and while that isn’t entirely inaccurate, I have always thought that McAfee and his crew are funnier and way more clever than they ever get credit for. That was never going to be enough though.
Why are some at ESPN reportedly frustrated with McAfee’s linear TV performance? Because they let the star have his way. That isn’t limited to letting Aaron Rodgers play out his transparent, boring midlife crisis on their airwaves.
The network did not insist on forcing McAfee’s audience to come to ESPN to get the show. The Pat McAfee Show is still on YouTube, where it has always been. If you don’t make someone change a habit, why would you expect them to?
McAfee’s audience is younger than the core ESPN audience. That was part of the appeal of bringing him in, but it is also an audience that doesn’t see linear TV as somehow more important or special than YouTube. Most of them were never coming along to ESPN. If the $85 million paycheck that Andrew Marchand reported was accurate, that is a lot of money to pay for an audience whose value may not be entirely understood by your sellers and their clients.
Pat McAfee isn’t the first digital star to struggle to find his footing in linear media. There are success stories you can point to on radio, both on the local and national levels. It’s much tougher on TV and kind of always has been.
Even when he had the biggest podcast in America, Adam Carolla could not find a home on television. Marc Maron’s sitcom never found a big audience. In the sports world, Bomani Jones’s Game Theory has come to an end after two seasons. FOX Bet Live with Clay Travis never drew noteworthy numbers. Bill Simmons’s Any Given Wednesday is one of the more notorious flops in TV history.
With a history that demonstrates the transition from digital platforms to television is extraordinarily difficult, why would ESPN allow McAfee to put another obstacle in the path to success?
Agencies and media buyers talk about it all the time. The podcast audience is loyal. They want to support the businesses that support the show they love. The listeners are a community unto themselves. They will protect and prioritize the things that made the community what it is. For Pat McAfee’s fans, ESPN is not part of that equation.
My mind isn’t going to change about the McAfee deal. Whatever its value, ESPN based what it was willing to pay on a model that will soon be outdated. I have written it before and I will reiterate, when the network becomes an OTT service and they are asking us to pay $39 per month for access, none of us are going to factor Pat McAfee, Stephen A. Smith or anyone else into that decision. It will be all about “what games and leagues does ESPN have that I cannot live without?”
The day is fast approaching when anything that isn’t an ESPN exclusive will be actively working against the company’s goals. If Norby Williamson and Pat McAfee are already having trouble seeing eye-to-eye, how are they going to co-exist then?
ESPN may be disappointed with the numbers that Pat McAfee’s daily show has delivered so far, and that is the network’s and Disney’s prerogative, but to pin this all on McAfee’s show is dishonest. The network has tolerated conditions that made it easy for and even likely that the linear product would disappoint.
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.
