When Bomani Jones departed ESPN after his second tenure with the company, he was leaving with valuable intellectual property negotiated in a previous agreement. Jones had anchored The Right Time since March 2015, a radio show that was eventually transformed into a distinctive podcast, and while he wanted to stay with ESPN, he also perceived the advantages of branching out and working with a new entity. Amid his search for a new home, he recognized that his needs were not very significant and that he had forged a respected brand of his own, presenting companies with a show yielding its own RSS feed and a dedicated audience.
In the end, Wave Sports and Entertainment made the most sense for Jones when he joined in 2023 to satisfy what he was looking for and continue creating a show exploring the intersection of sports, pop culture and society. Focusing on delivering stellar content and garnering personal recommendation as means of audience expansion, he has crafted a program that has maintained trajectory in a media ecosystem replete with optionality coupled with limited attention spans.
“ESPN is a television company primarily and everything else they do is kind of secondary,” Jones said. “I would argue that Wave has greater expertise at a show like mine than ESPN would have. I don’t know the numbers, so I can’t say whether it checks out directly in that way, but I felt very good about Wave’s ability to take what we were doing and build it and, if nothing else, do a better job of selling it to advertisers.”
Jones realizes that his situation contrasts with others who are trying to create shows from scratch who cannot offer a fortified product supported by credibility with a diminished risk of abated listenership. Whereas some podcast ventures can render themselves incorrigible in remedying inconsistencies or other business deficiencies, Jones showcased a distinguished track record and demonstrated commitment to success.
“I don’t know how easy it is for less established people to walk in and say, ‘I want to start a podcast, but I want to retain the IP,’” Jones opined. “These big companies, the way they make their money is by owning your IP. That’s what they do, so you have to wind up in a situation where you have an advantage of some type that that allows you to get it back, but if you can get it, it is very, very important.”
When It’s ‘The Right Time’ to Ride with Wave
Jones believes that he has ended up in a place that works better for him and recognizes the infrastructure Wave Sports and Entertainment has built that assists with his endeavor. Through his work with the enterprise, he has gained trust of its understanding in technology, social media and ensuring episodes are published on schedule while finding different audiences on YouTube compared to the audio feeds.
“For example, celebrity interviews are a real big deal right now, and I can try to do that, but I know the audience I’ve built over time, I’m probably going to lose them, and I don’t want to do that,” Jones said. “It’s a bit old fashioned, but quality control, I think, is the best thing that you can do to build your audience.”
With the backing of the digital team at Wave Sports and Entertainment, Jones focuses on cultivating engaging content, always approaching episodes of the show prepared but never rehearsed. Despite exploring a variety of topics, he does not use notes or write things down heading into a show. On the contrary, he considers what he is going to say in real time and trusts that he will be able to organize his thoughts when the microphone turns on.
“The biggest thing for me is that it will be informative, it will be direct, it will be honest, I think it’ll be pretty funny at times, and what I hope it is, above all else, is communal,” Jones said. “I want something where if I do a live event from this podcast, the people who are there will be able to hang out with each other because they have this thing in common. I don’t need to be the center of attention as much as I am kind of a central node around which a community is built.”
Jones is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University where he studied economics, and he proceeded to obtain a Master’s degree in politics, economics and business from Claremont Graduate University and another Master’s degree in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Early in his career, he started writing as a music and pop culture critic, gaining expertise in subject areas outside of sports but with some facets of tangential relation.
“I am able to talk about those things with a knowledge and a dexterity that people can recognize while also having perspectives that people are probably not going to find anywhere else,” Jones explained, referencing his studies in politics and economics. “What works for me on those things is that I’m good at it, and I think that what is often misunderstood by people is a desire to talk about broader issues does not mean you’re good at talking about them, and it certainly does not mean you are obligated to talk about them.”
While Jones formerly hosted sports talk radio programming, he has not given considerable thought to what has occurred in the format in a long time, nor have people told him about what goes on within the space. As a result, he implies that much of the audience has relocated to the podcasting domain, something in which he feels the hosts try to please their people rather than strangers. Over the years, there has been some criticism of shows that use hot takes, and Jones feels that if the model has genuinely changed, it will mean that the opt-in product has won out over the other options.
“A lot of the hot-take stuff is about getting the attention of strangers, but I don’t think it gets attention in a way that makes people want to come back,” Jones said. “It just catches their attention for that moment, and it becomes important to serve people in a way that makes them want to come back. I think podcasts [are] not nearly as conducive to hate listening in the way that radio is. That’s what Twitter is for – to consume content from people you hate.”
Finding Your Place in an Ever-Changing Media Landscape
In reviewing the state of larger media companies, Jones feels they are not giving out as many jobs and has detected an alteration in talent acquisition. Even though individual talents have built their own identities free from traditional corporate structures, he struggles with the idea of a brand since he thinks about it as a capitalistic kind of venture.
“We need to adapt our language around the idea that you need to give people something that they love, not just something that they use,” Jones said. “Something that has a story behind it that they can appreciate and that they can support. And what’s happening with so many of these companies now, they are checking your follower count and all of these other things to see if they’ll look at you in the first place. These companies are no longer in the business of making stars. They’re trying to find somebody they think is already a star and jump on board with what you’ve already done.”
Collaborating with Wave Sports and Entertainment, Jones releases three episodes of The Right Time per week, all of which have slightly different layouts in terms of the overall format. Monday editions of the show are reserved for comments where he speaks independently and can extrapolate nuances within several different topics. The week ends with Domonique Foxworth appearing as a guest, someone who Jones contends helps him reach an audience by mere association and is excellent on the program. Wednesday episodes, however, feature friends of the show who work with Jones and propound commentaries and perspectives germane to the discussion.
“How well you get along with me is going to determine whether or not you are a good guest,” Jones said, “Those guests are able to bring things out of me from their personalities or me coming to where they are allows me to show something that I might not necessarily be able to show by myself or maybe think of something that I wouldn’t think of by myself.”
Focusing on the Future
Although Jones owns the intellectual property for the show, he is focused on coming up with stellar content instead of trying to formulate the most lucrative product. Once an episode is complete, he reviews the quality of the show and demarcates the opinions of those who have been there the longest rather than becoming submerged in data analysis. Furthermore, he promotes the offering through television appearances, guest spots on other podcasts and uses social media solely for this purpose as well.
“Your success or failure on radio or on television, like ESPN for example, is how successful you are with people who don’t love you,’” Jones said. “Your success with a podcast is going to be about how many people love you, and so you might as well lean in on giving them more on a podcast because for them to go out of their way to opt in to what you’re doing, they need to feel that personal attachment to it.”
When Jones considers his future in the sports media business, he feels that he has done everything he wanted when getting started, including hosting a late-night sports and comedy show with HBO. As he works to keep cutting through in the podcasting space, Jones has aspirations to direct a documentary and has a few ideas for potential topics, along with writing a book at some point. For now though, he is immersed in the journey corollary to The Right Time, granting the audience access to his erudite viewpoints and reasons to keep tuning in.
“I’m now at the place of I have made a nice living for myself, I have ticked off a lot of the kind of day-to-day working goals,” Jones said, “and now it’s time for me to kind of be more ambitious and look toward bigger things.”
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Derek Futterman is a former associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. Find him on X @derekfutterman.
