We used to say sports was the toy department of news. I thought that sounded fun but most news and programming people back then said it condescendingly. Today, sports talk listening is eclipsing the more serious news/talk offerings of corporate or “local” radio. There are two such sports stations in Dallas: Cumulus-owned, multi-Marconi Award-winning 96.7 The Ticket, which always keeps its news/talk sisters, WBAP and KLIF, in its ratings dust, and 105.3 The Fan, the Audacy station that is consistently beating its all-news older sibling, KRLD.
I live in Dallas. It’s a huge sports market, home of the Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks, and Stars, as well as several NCAA Division I programs. The Fan and The Ticket are engaged in an epic daily battle between two superb management and talent teams. They’re both very good.
Gavin Spittle is the Vice President of News, Talk, and Sports at Audacy Dallas, radio home of the Cowboys and Rangers. I talked with him last week. I’m a fan of The Fan. The station is consistently hitting on all cylinders. Their show hosts are unfailingly informative and entertaining, blessed with the hard-to-find combination of brains, personal chemistry, and humility.
Most of all, they know their craft, staying focused on sports while weaving in an organic flow of personal observations and anecdotes that make you feel you know them. You wish you could sit down and have a beer with them, which you often can because they’re always making personal appearances at local events, family eateries, and barbecue joints.
Am I being too effusive in my praise of The Fan?
GAVIN SPITTLE: Well, thanks. I mean, you just quoted my playbook, Dave, as far as like what I look for in hosts. In sports radio I want to create that tree house feel, I want the listeners climbing up that tree to be a part of it or feel like they’re hanging with their buddies at a bar. That’s what I want The Fan to sound like. I want it to be conversational rather than just throwing out analytic after analytic.
One of the things that we pride ourselves on is having conversations, and that can include debates. The other thing that I will say is, and thank you for noticing, our staff is extremely tight. These guys talk to each other constantly, they genuinely like each other, and they want each other to win. That is a brand manager’s dream when you can put something like that together.
DW: The Fan is the flagship of the Dallas Cowboys and the reigning world champion Texas Rangers. Do those affiliations with major sports franchises pay for themselves in terms of prestige, audience, and profit?
GS: We are very fortunate in Dallas to have two amazing partnerships where, yes, it is effective for us and it’s effective for them. It’s a very creative partnership where the contract only gets pulled if necessary and it’s like, how can we help each other? So, it’s not (just that) we carry the games. It’s how can we help each other?
Like, for instance, a perfect example is that one of the first appearances the Rangers made with the World Series trophy was in our Audacy showroom. That is so special, to say to our listeners, come see the World Series trophy. We had a line around the corner. That shows how tight and how much we value that partnership. And it’s the same with the Cowboys.
DW: Another thing that I love about your on-air talents is, on one hand, they’re unabashed fans of the teams that you carry, but they also level serious criticism of the teams and never sound like they’re forcing themselves to be unbiased; they’re just being themselves and that creates that tree house or bar atmosphere that you were talking about.
GS: I think that’s a key component when carrying a team’s games, that the team understands that you’re allowed to criticize them fairly, as long as it’s not a personal attack. I think that’s something that we have a lot of wiggle room with the Rangers and a lot with the Dallas Cowboys.
(Cowboys owner) Jerry Jones is a listener and it’s cool that he talks to the guys and has a relationship with them and that doesn’t mean you can’t be critical. We love the Cowboys, but we’re still going to be The Fan. If we allowed a team to dictate what we say our listeners would pick that out immediately and we wouldn’t be ourselves.
DW: Let’s talk technology. How great is it for you as a programmer to be able to embrace the new toys that Audacy is giving you on-air and with their app? We all remember the times we sat in our driveway while listening to a great live conversation so we wouldn’t miss any of it. You don’t have to do that now.
GS: No, the ice cream no longer has to melt. You take the app in and you back it up 30 seconds. You can back up and hear the whole show if you want to.
DW: This morning I was taking our dogs to the groomer and listening to The Fan and I noticed for the first time a little audio control panel within the main touch screen. And I’m going, holy crap that’s not just on the app. I can pause and rewind right here in my car. [Which is 10 years old and still has its original audio system.]
Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s a technology not a lot of stations in this country have available yet. Radio operators are still trying to compete with the Internet while forcing themselves to send listeners to their websites for clicks. I keep thinking, guys, use it all!
GS: What I try to explain (to our on-air staff), is that we’re no longer a radio station. We’re a brand. We’re more than just over the air. We have so many Audacy app listeners, not just in North Texas, but across the country. It is absolutely awesome when we get calls from Philadelphia or San Francisco. That’s really, really cool.
DW: Yes, you’re a brand and not just a radio station anymore. I love that. A lot of radio people are still trying to struggle between being a radio station and being a website. And you have to go, ‘Wait a minute, guys, you’re missing the whole point. It’s all of these things working together.’
GS: Yeah, absolutely. When a new technology comes out, we want to be at the front of the line and we want to be the ones doing the beta testing and we want to be the ones saying, let’s give this a whirl because, you know, we feel as though that’s the future. And once again, when you change that mindset, as far as an overall brand success, not a radio station success, I feel as though the radio station success obviously is going to be there.
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I never met Gavin Spittle before this conversation. I like him as much as I love his radio station. We talked about sports and talk radio in-depth, including Gavin’s love of hockey, and his own Dallas Stars-centric podcast, Spits and Suds. To hear our full conversation go to my podcast, Conversations.buzz, or on your favorite podcast app.
