Sports fans are predisposed to craving gossip. Think about the information we look to ESPN for every day – salaries, locker room relationships, who may be in danger of losing their job. That would all be considered gossip in every other walk of life.
There are times when things get a little more salacious. Just look at any bit of information we have learned about Bill Belichick since he was hired as the head coach at North Carolina. Nationally, everyone is talking about his love life. Locally, we’ve been fascinated by the idea that there is a succession plan to install his son Steve as the Tar Heels’ next head coach. It’s all classic TMZ or Page Six stuff.
You’ve no doubt heard the phrase that “sex sells.” It’s true in all forms of entertainment, including sports radio. Scores and stats will always be the lifeblood of what we do, but gossip is really good for our business.
We talk a lot about how sports radio can cast a wider net. We are a niche format after all.
No one is suggesting that a sports station’s afternoon host should be pulling content from the same prep sheet as a CHR station’s morning show, but gossip has a place on sports radio.
In fact, it may be our best tool for casting a wider net and attracting new listeners.
Remember Taylor Swift?
Very few entertainment properties captivate Americans the way the NFL does. Even at the peak of the brand’s popularity, Marvel movies didn’t have the cultural penetration that football enjoys.
Think about that and then remember that ratings for Kansas City Chiefs games went up when news of Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce became public. It wasn’t just Swifties that had never thought about football before coming to the sport. Even the people that would rather calculate quarterback ratings than listen to 1989 had opinions on the pop star, her relationship with the Chiefs’ tight end, and the way networks were talking about her.
No one took better advantage of the story and the conversation than Paul Allen. On his KFAN show, Allen declared that the door to the studio is open and there will be a mic available for Taylor Swift if she wanted to sit in with him on the radio call of the Chiefs’ visit to Minnesota.
Allen turned it into a week of content. He asked his bosses at iHeartMedia how they could make it work. He answered questions from the media about how serious the offer was. He heard from listeners that were angry at the very suggestion that a pop star, let alone a girlfriend of one of the opponents’ biggest stars, would be allowed to take over the Vikings’ radio broadcast.
Taylor and Travis created a runaway train. Allen couldn’t upend it, nor could he become the main character in the story, but he recognized a unique way he could connect it to himself and his audience and it probably did more for his show than any amount of conversation about how the Vikings and Chiefs matchup ever could have.
Private People Get Private Lives
Everyone has had an awkward encounter with someone they are interviewing. Maybe it’s because of something you say directly to them. Maybe it’s because of something you said about them that they either heard or heard about from people in their inner circle.
Remember in 2018 when Tom Brady sold an all-access documentary to Facebook called Tom vs. Time? He invited fans to see how he went about preparing for a new football season after turning 40. Since he was the biggest star in the history of Boston sports, naturally WEEI offered their opinions on the show each week.
That included Alex Reimer, who went on the station’s then morning show and called Brady’s daughter “an annoying little pissant.” Brady, who called into the morning show weekly, heard the comment and took hosts Kirk Minihane and Gerry Callahan to task over it.
Reimer got suspended. Certainly, his commentary was over the top and unwise, but it can be argued that the private lives of public figures are fair game. Particularly when those public figures are putting their private lives on TV…or the internet in that case.
Has the internet made everyone a public figure? Mary Kate Cornette, the Ole Miss student at the center of an internet rumor that dominated sports media for a couple of days back in March, might say that.
A rumor about her sex life turned into content for Barstool, for Pat McAfee, and so many others. Only one local radio personality got called out in Katie Strang’s story about the incident at The Athletic, 101 ESPN’s Doug Vaughn.
Sex sells and gossip is good for business, but you’ve gotta use your brain. When you’re in your 60s and you’re talking about a college freshman no one has ever heard of, you aren’t casting a wider net. You’re being a creep and turning off some of your own listeners.
It’s Okay To Be The Gossip!
Sometimes, a host finds themselves embroiled in a feud that gets others talking. Take Mike Bell for example. The 92.9 The Game host found himself in the middle of a Twitter beef with Trae Young, who didn’t like the way the afternoon drive co-host on the Atlanta Hawks’ flagship station was talking about him.
Bell wasn’t new to the business when this happened in 2023 and he was far from the first host to be in that situation. He knew exactly what to do. He kept the conflict going and then took it to the air. Being on in the afternoon meant that Bell’s colleagues at the station had all day to build up what it was that he was going to say when he and Carl Dukes finally came on the air.
Mike Bell didn’t mince words when he cracked the mic either. He had heard what his colleagues had to say and what their callers had to say. He had read comments from faceless Twitter handles all day long. None of it convinced him to back off. He came right out and said that the Hawks’ best player and biggest star didn’t like to be held accountable.
The conflict may have started with conversation about what Young was or wasn’t doing on the court, but it quickly turned into a he said/she said back and forth. Listeners are bound to be curious about what comes next.
It’s just like when Craig Carton returned to WFAN and he and Boomer Esiason were trading jabs back and forth. Good natured or not, there was intrigue to hear what two former partners were saying about each other. Same with ESPN New York rushing to get Chris Carlin on The Michael Kay Show after he was fired by WFAN.
If a host is good at what they do, their listeners feel a bond with them and they want to know all the dirt about those people that they never get to hear on the air.
Don’t let sports fans tell you they don’t care about gossip. We may call Adam Schefter and Shams Charania “insiders,” but they are no different than anyone working for TMZ. They cover a particular beat and they report what well-placed sources are telling them. If there is no official press release or signed contract to back it up, it really isn’t that much different from gossip.
Listeners can handle more than they say they can. They do and think about more than programmers and consultants sometimes give them credit for.
It doesn’t mean I think every sports radio show should go seeking out gossip, but when a gift like Taylor Swift dating Travis Kelce or Bill Belichick trying his damndest to ruin his football legacy for the benefit of a girlfriend young enough to be his granddaughter, don’t run from it. Cast a wide net and embrace it!
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Demetri Ravanos is a former columnist and editor for Barrett Media. He is the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host of 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.
