Last summer, West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins was weeks removed from uttering homophobic slurs on a Cincinnati radio station when he registered a blood alcohol content measurement of 0.21%, while driving his SUV in Pittsburgh. Law enforcement pulled him over and began to question him, eventually administering field sobriety tests that he failed. One day later, he resigned from his head coaching job, concluding a tumultuous tenure with scorn and contempt.
A few months later, Huggins was the topic of discussion on 93.7 The Fan where Colin Dunlap was hosting a solo nighttime shift. Several months earlier, Dunlap and his morning show co-host Chris Mack were reassigned into expanded multimedia roles within the Audacy Pittsburgh cluster of stations. The decision ended an eight-year stint for the duo and placed Dunlap back in solo hosting situations, on which he can utilize the callers as ostensible co-hosts of the program.
This role was similar to how he began his time working in radio following several years as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Although he never studied sports talk radio in the past, he came in with an innate understanding of how to relate to others and convey a sense of understanding.
On an August night where Dunlap was discussing the incident surrounding Huggins, he welcomed a usual caller from Florida onto his program. The discussion began with the listener articulating that he has beers after work and tries to relax but would never think about putting others in harm. In fact, he recognizes the dangers of driving while inebriated and expressed that he would call a rideshare service if in this inebriated state.
As he continued, he shared that his life was at an inflection point and said that his wife threatened to leave him if he did not seek help. Admitting that he was a functioning alcoholic and trying to retain his relationship, Dunlap offered to help him find a treatment plan near him to which he accepted and promised to follow up.
“I thought if somebody was that brave to call in and talk about themselves and put themselves out there, they may have wanted to get noticed or they may have just needed some help,” Dunlap said. “….There was a real-time, in-the-moment platform to use, so why wouldn’t I use it? How often do you get to do that or how many people get to do that?”
Dunlap helped the caller schedule an initial evaluation in Florida and start on the pathway to recovery, a commendatory act that will be honored at the 2024 BSM Summit. As the recipient of the Champions Award, he will be recognized for his selflessness and benevolence, an esteemed honor with the potential to serve as a microcosm of the impact those in media can have on the listening audience.
BSM Founder Jason Barrett said the following when describing the annual award, “I created this award because I saw a lot of good being done across the media industry. That isn’t always captured in the press. Many times disgruntled ex-employees and those looking to benefit from radio and television’s demise paint a picture of a crumbling industry. But what they miss completely is how much good is done by people and brands operating in it.”
Even though Dunlap battles stage fright, he is genuinely his authentic self behind the microphone and has no qualms about disseminating his opinions and emitting honesty.
“We don’t have to be hot-take artists all the time, we don’t have to be mean-spirited [and] we don’t have to run people down,” Dunlap said. “There’s still a real big place in the world just to help each other out. That still gets a lot of run and a lot of play in terms of what you can do to be a great radio host, what you can do to be a great person and what you can do just to help humanity.”
Developing an ability to concentrate and consider his audience was imperative early in his career while writing for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dunlap never envisioned himself pursuing a career in sports talk radio and strived to hone his journalistic skills by adeptly covering high school sports. After some time, he transitioned to covering Big East Conference football before being assigned to the Pittsburgh Pirates beat. The sense of trust that he fostered in the early stages of his career, specifically while in the Pirates clubhouse, continues to pay dividends on the air today.
“I think that print journalists oftentimes make the best radio hosts because they understand, especially with subjects, that you don’t always have to talk to people when you need something,” Dunlap said. “Sometimes you just talk to people as regular people when you don’t need something from them, so that helped.”
Shortly after the Pittsburgh Steelers lost Super Bowl XLV to the Green Bay Packers, Dunlap and his wife welcomed twins into the world. The newborn children were born prematurely and spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), leading him to take a year off from working in sports media to care for his family. As their condition began to improve, Dunlap worked part-time weekend shifts in the early days of 93.7 The Fan having never regularly hosted his own show. He ultimately began to ramp up his radio work and realized that the lifestyle was more optimal than that of a beat reporter, consistently traveling and writing late into the night.
“Your life isn’t on hold – you have set parameters in which you’re on the air and you give it 1 million percent within those parameters,” Dunlap said. “You put your earphones down, get in your car and you go home, and you show up and prep the next day and you do the same thing.”
There are times, however, when programs need to be upended to address breaking news or other matters that lead to a deviation from the rundown. Advertising revenue plays a part in keeping the entities in operation, and hosts are often implored to stay on schedule in order to actualize these agreements. While accepting the Champions Award during the first day of the BSM Summit, Dunlap will look to impart a message to attendees.
“You don’t need to be in a hustle to get to the next break,” Dunlap stated. “You don’t need to be in a hustle to talk about the next hot topic or the next thing that people are going to argue about or the next list that you have to tell people about. Just be pure and in the moment and real, and I think you garner respect from people.”
When he first began regularly hosting alone from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., Dunlap made it a point to listen to other hosts in the timeslot. After all, he had not studied the craft and was learning about the nuances and formatics while working in real time. Station sports director Jeff Hathorn advised Dunlap to discuss a topic if it felt right to him, a shrewd insight that helped simplify things in the early days.
Since he was from the area and familiar with the local teams, Dunlap knew how to resonate with the listeners in this new means of dissemination. With interest in what he had to say, people began to call in and Dunlap always found ways to implement their perspectives into the program.
“It’s a great American city that reinvented itself, and its people are very prideful to be from here, and fair or unfair; right or wrong, they tend to gravitate and have a magnetic pull to one of their own,” Dunlap said. “They know they might disagree with me, but I’m not somebody who got shipped in from another city to work here.”
Dunlap’s straightforward approach has been transferable to other formats, which has included recent hosting stints on KDKA NewsRadio 100.1 FM/AM 1020. The alteration in the subject matter has broadened his horizons, granting him the ability to discuss local topics pertinent to Pittsburgh. Moreover, it has enabled him to foster trust in a different audience within the marketplace and is an assignment he has genuinely enjoyed. Whether it is sports or news talk though, Dunlap abstains from recapitulating the thoughts of others and yearns to be original and distinctive.
“You can listen all day and hear the same thing regurgitated with not much personal spin on it, and that to me is mind-numbing,” Dunlap said. “This is the main thing is I think far too many people walk into a studio and become paid actors as opposed to just themselves. It’s very important for me if I’m picking my kids up from school and a fellow parent asks me about the Steelers and they say, ‘Hey, I heard you on the radio. What do you really think?’ The answer’s never different than what I say to people in my neighborhood, and I don’t think that’s true for everyone.”
Dunlap is quick to help people in difficult situations with his humanitarian spirit, something that was augmented when his daughter battled leukemia at a young age. She was diagnosed at the age of 5 and underwent 30 months of cancer treatments before being able to ring the bell to signify its conclusion. Amid this challenging stretch for Dunlap’s family, he utilized social media to share his daughter’s progress and received messages of encouragement and offers for assistance. It granted him a sense of perspective and further cognizance of the power of live radio broadcasting.
“There’s a lot more good people than there are bad people in the world, and there were a lot of people that reached out to help, which was very good,” Dunlap said. “Even though we never accepted any monetary things and nothing… there were people that reached out just to lend support. That showed me that when you’re in a time and you do need help, it’s good to have someone there or someone offer that help.”
As he accepts the distinguished Champions Award and continues carrying out his newfound career path, Dunlap hopes he can continue to embrace the moment and help the community. Employing the pulpit of the microphone, he aspires to keep helping others plow paths to victory and eliminate the obstacles to get there. The route through the maze may have many twists and turns, but he is here for the journey and far from his final mission.
“If I see somebody that’s in peril, I’m still the kind of guy in 2024 that stops and helps,” Dunlap elucidated. “I know it may be an antiquated virtue, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, but I just do. With that show that night – and there wasn’t any thinking that went into it – it’s all been in retrospect after I’ve listened back to it [that] the train just needed to stop, and that situation needed to be taken care of.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
