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ESPN’s Mike Greenberg has been a sports media staple for decades. Working in both television and radio has given him a unique perspective of the industry, and he believes both will continue to provide things podcasts can’t.
In a profile with GQ Magazine, Greenberg was asked about the rise of podcasting and the “demise” of sports radio that has been “greatly exaggerated” over the last few years. Mike Greenberg shared that there’s one aspect listeners still crave, which is a gigantic advantage for sports radio.
“Well, I think that there is no substitute for immediacy. A word that we use all the time on all of my shows is ‘urgency,'” Greenberg said. “‘Does it feel urgent? Could this be urgent?’ Podcasts are wonderful. I listen to them all the time. But there’s one thing a podcast has a very hard time being, and that’s urgent. I think there is and will always be a place for live programming of all kinds, television, radio, etc.
“The obvious biggest thing that has happened in radio is that radio for many, many years was where people would hear new music, discover music, listen to music. There are so many alternatives to that now. So that is where, I think, it will struggle. But there will never be a substitute for the immediacy of a live program. Podcasts can’t have the same level of interaction with their audience that radio does. The idea that it’s actually happening right now makes it more exciting to me than dialing up one that was done last Tuesday at 8:00 A.M.”
He also added that working with people who are younger than him, and also seeing the next generation of talent — like Mike Golic Jr. — come up through the ranks has helped him stay cognizant of what does and does not matter to the audience.
“I’m old enough to remember when the evening news was the evening news, and now what people describe as news is really just people yelling at each other all the time. We’ve seen a culture shift that’s probably true of every generation. If there’s one thing I’ve never wanted to be, it’s the person sitting on the side talking about how much better things used to be. The world isn’t going to stop moving forward,” said Greenberg. “You’re either going to move with it, and evolve and adapt with it, or you’re going to get left behind.”
