Have you heard Kendrick’s Lamar’s GNX yet? It’s a solid late entry into the best album of the year discussion. My favorite track is probably “Squabble Up,” which features a sample, but for a few days, I was stumped on trying to figure out where I had first heard it.
After three days it hit me. It is a slowed down version of a song that played a prominent role on the Dan Le Batard Show. I was a little shocked it took so long to figure out, because there was a time when everyday between 9 a.m. and noon, I had that show on. Even if I wasn’t actively listening, it was on in the background. Now, it’s probably been 18 months since I even checked in on it.
Why is that? What changed about what used to be my favorite show on the radio? The answer is not really anything. I think that is worth thinking about.
I once had a PD perfectly explain why talent loved Le Batard and programmers hated it. To hosts, the show sounded like rebellion. To people in charge of cultivating a sound and a product, it sounded like chaos.
Rebellion was definitely a big part of the show’s appeal in 2013, when I first discovered it. In my rock radio days, my morning show was “over programmed”. I had a PD that wanted to meet every day, a GM that thought he should be a part of programming conversations, and a consultant that didn’t understand why we wouldn’t just do what his client in Buffalo was doing, so would routinely ask to see our rundown. Then I got to sports radio and intentionally was very buttoned up because I had imposter syndrome.
The Dan Le Batard Show was just out there winging it and it was cool.
It’s the same attitude that let Howard Stern cut through the noise of so many copycats in the 90s. It’s why Dan Patrick had a totally different appeal than the rest of the early 2000s ESPN Radio lineup.
Rebellion is good, but rebellion is fleeting. There is a reason the original Star Wars trilogy ends with the Rebel Alliance defeating the Empire. If it had gone on any longer, our freedom fighters would lose their appeal. We would either become bored with them or we would see them with nothing to rebel against. That would erase everything we loved about them.
Howard Stern received an obscene amount of money from SiriusXM. Dan Patrick left ESPN and still managed to be the most influential voice on sports radio for decades. Their fights were over, so they evolved.
It doesn’t mean they completely abandoned their identities. Listen to the way Stern talks about the radio industry. Look at the way he still gets under the skin of people that disagree with him but have spent their entire careers trying to be him. His show is different now because he has changed a lot, but he is still a shit-stirrer.
Patrick embraced the fact that he and his audience are older now. He aged with them. Rather than insist he is something he isn’t, Patrick now routinely acknowledges when he is out of touch, but this is the same guy that wore his visitor’s badge on camera when Scott Van Pelt invited him on SportsCenter in 2015. He still wants Bristol to know how he feels about the people in charge.
As I have thought about “Squabble Up” and the Dan Le Batard Show the last few days, I went back and re-read a piece I wrote last year about Le Batard. I said the show doesn’t sound like a revolution anymore. I wrote “Raging against the machine from inside the machine seems bold. Raging against a machine that your audience believes you have already defeated, or at least put in your rearview, seems kinda silly.”
So, how is this column different from that one?
Well, as I have marinated on this, it dawns on me that Dan Le Batard and his crew are grappling with a problem a lot of people on radio, television and podcasts do at this stage of their career: Is the rebellion still happening? And if it is, are we fighting the right way?
Last year, I pointed fingers and called out flaws. This year, I want to be a little more empathetic, because growing on air is hard. You have to put yourself under a microscope constantly.
Stern’s detractors make fun of him talking about therapy a lot, but I truly believe it helped him realize that there was nothing left for Stern 1.0 to accomplish. Opie and Anthony were pretty successful in the shock jock world too, but as they aged, they didn’t change. They were married to rebellion despite the fact that there was nothing to rebel against. I think it’s a big part of why they flamed out.
At his best, I think Dan Le Batard still has plenty to offer, and I hope we get to hear it. To get there, though, everyone involved has to ask tough questions of themselves and maybe make some uncomfortable decisions about the way the show works.
Rebellion may be what they rode to their initial success, but is there any momentum left on that wave for them? If there isn’t, what is the pivot that feels authentic? Stern figured out the answer to that question. Patrick did it too. Now it’s Le Batard’s turn, and maybe it is your turn too.
If your professional journey were a sentence, revolution isn’t supposed to be a period. It’s supposed to be a semicolon. Evolution is supposed to follow it. If it doesn’t, everything will feel incomplete.
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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.
