Approaching The Summit is a series of special interviews created in partnership with Point to Point Marketing featuring speakers at the upcoming 2025 BSM Summit in Chicago, IL. Follow along with this series as prominent names surrounding the event coming up on May 8-9 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) inside the Edlis Neeson Theater and share their insights and expectations for what’s to come in the Windy City.
Laurence Holmes is the co-host of Spiegel & Holmes on 670 The Score in Chicago. A Chicago native, Holmes has worked for 670 The Score since 1998 working in a variety of roles from producer to sales to talent. He has also worked in television along with his roles at The Score at NBC 5 WMAQ and NBC Sports Chicago covering the Chicago Bears. Holmes also teaches at DePaul University as an adjunct professor of communication.
Holmes sat down with Barrett Media from his home office in Chicago.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.*
BSM Staff: The last time you attended the BSM Summit was the original Summit held in Chicago. What are you looking forward to most about this one coming up next week in Chicago?
Laurence Holmes: I always like being able to be around people in the industry to see the places where I can get better, or maybe understand things from a different perspective. My whole career I’ve pretty much been siloed from a radio standpoint at The Score. It’s nice to hear other people’s experiences and kind of compare and contrast.
BSM Staff: What kind of value does the Summit provide? How important do you think it is to get out of the office and network with as many people as you can while you’re at the Summit?
Laurence Holmes: The networking aspect is important. The knowledge acquisition aspect is really important, and also maybe putting a face with a name is important too.
You might have a feeling that you know a certain personality, but in a setting like this it gives a better representation than just the on air product of who that person is. Those things are important, but seeing how the sausage is made is always preferable. If you’re attending this, it makes you smarter about what the genre and the medium is.
BSM Staff: This is your second time speaking at the Summit. What do you hope that the attendees learn about Laurence Holmes or learn from that panel when they walk away from it?
Laurence Holmes: I’m pretty passionate about radio. It’s the reason why I keep doing it and the reason why I’m teaching, so I love this medium.
Considering that I started in 1998 to see where things are now are both exciting and terrifying, because there’s a ton of being asked to do more with less resources. There’s an excitement in that and there’s a challenge in it, and I look forward to the challenge every day.
What I hope is that people get a real sense of what it’s like, and how if we weren’t passionate about it, I don’t know if many of us would even be doing it. Seeing people who are passionate about what it is they do I think has value. To have a bunch of truth tellers up there too I think it is good, so that people can really get a sense of it.
If you’re just entering the industry or you’re thinking about entering the industry, you need to take these panels with on air talent really seriously. You might just think these are people who made it to the top or made it to the end.
Hearing the stories and the struggle and even like the day-to-day, I think it’s valuable for anyone so that they can make up their mind about what it is that they want to do, and how they might be able to change things for the better.
BSM Staff: As someone who has only attended the very first edition of the Summit years ago, I’m sure you’ve kept up with the headlines that come out of this Summit every year. How do you see from afar how this Summit has evolved over the years?
Laurence Holmes: It’s grown exponentially. There’s something really powerful to the idea of just doing something, and I think that was Jason’s (Barrett) idea.
Why don’t we try this and see how it goes. Then you see that there is a level of interest that’s so high in it, that more and more people want to get involved. To see how big it is and how it’s grown is really inspiring, and the fact that they’re still people who want to learn more about it I think it’s a testament to why it exists in the first place.
BSM Staff: You talked about doing more with less. That’s obviously a challenge that everybody in the industry is continuing to battle. Moving into the Summit, what are those challenges or maybe those biggest opportunities that you hope is discussed at the Summit?
Laurence Holmes: I hope that we talk about the medium as a whole. The thing is I’ve worked long enough in the industry to remember how sports radio was treated at the beginning. How it was looked down upon by some of the other genres of heritage media.
Now you see sports radio is one of the biggest drivers for any of these companies now. The idea that we are not getting the benefit financially, in my opinion, that some of the other genres of heritage media such as news talk, for example, got, and we continue to earn. We’re still making money as a genre and I think that needs to be respected.
That’s one of the things I do like about the conference. It puts a spotlight on not just the talent, but the amount of money that has been generated by talent and the programmers of these stations that it becomes hard to ignore. If you look inside of any of the radio companies, look to see where their money makers are.
When I first got to the industry, you could talk about the FM jocks back in the day, or the news readers you were making tons of money. Now look at where a lot of those companies stand, they are looking for more people that work in sports. They are looking for more sports stations because they know that those stations rate, and they know that those stations bill.
The sad part for me is I’m not sure that the people involved in the industry on the sports side have reaped the benefits of that like our predecessors did in other genres.
BSM Staff: You’ve worked in television. You have done a number of podcast ventures over the years on top of your work in radio. There’s going to be a lot of different subsets of sports media at the Summit between sports radio, television, digital media, and print media.
How do you see the Summit being as an opportunity where maybe the different subsets work together to produce opportunities to win together and all benefit?
Laurence Holmes: I’m ever hopeful that if the more everyone knows about what everyone else is doing, the easier it is for all of us to succeed.
If there’s more transparency than it gives a better roadmap, and people aren’t caught off guard or by surprise by what’s happening. I always hope what it ends up leading to is transparency and collaboration. An understanding that everyone has to be everything now. You can’t just say that your radio, you can’t just say that you’re print.
You got to be able to float between different disciplines inside of sports to be able to function and survive.
BSM Staff: Barrett Media announced that Mike North will be receiving the lifetime achievement award at the Summit. As someone that has worked at The Score as long as you have, what are your remembrances of what Mike North means to Chicago sports radio?
Laurence Holmes: At the time, I don’t think that anyone could have set the genre on fire the way that Mike North did. That was a different sound, even though I think it would be very easy for people to be like ‘oh he sounds like Mad Dog (Russo).’
He’s a very different sound. It was very Chicago, and that relatability catapulted him to a level of popularity that is hard to quantify. For a long time, Mike North was The Score, and for many people he still is. That’s the ruler that we are judged on.
I don’t even know at the time the ratings system was even fair enough to really relate how popular North and (Dan) Jiggetts was. In today’s market it would feel a lot more popular than what the numbers showed. His impact on the industry in Chicago, like you can’t say enough how big of a deal it was to have such a fire brand to jumpstart what was sports radio in Chicago.
Purchase your tickets to the 2025 BSM Summit here, and for more information BSMSummit.com
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
