Attendees at the BSM Summit in Chicago last month saw this in their program and on the big screen. Followers of our YouTube page, may have seen the video. But thousands who read us each day aren’t aware, so it’s time to fill you in. On Thursday night September 4th, Barrett Media will celebrate 10-years in business by hosting ‘The Barrett Bash‘.
This event will be invite-only. Invitations will start going out later this afternoon by email to one thousand media industry people. Those buying tickets to the 2025 BNM Summit automatically earn an invite to the event. We know some won’t be able to make it, but we expect a few hundred advertising, digital, music, news, and sports media folks to join us. ‘The Barrett Bash‘ will take place in the heart of Times Square from 5p-8p ET at 1604 Broadway. Our venue for this event is awesome.
I should mention that this is a FREE event. It includes food and drinks, music, prizes, and a few surprises. Given that our audience is comprised of influential people on-air, behind the scenes, and inside executive circles, expect a lot of networking too. If you work in sports media, have no fear, you’ll be able to attend, celebrate, and make it home in time for the NFL season opener between the Cowboys and Eagles.
Stephanie Eads is working on sponsorships to feature businesses who support the industry and our role in promoting it. Sponsorships will include on-site branding and activations, and inclusion in newsletters and a month-long content series we have planned in September to support our anniversary. Interested groups can email Stephanie at Stephanie@BarrettMedia.com to learn more.
I’m also planning a few toasts and announcements at the show, and hope to add a live acoustic musical performance. I’ve started that process with a few label contacts and industry friends, but am open to suggestions. Music friends can share ideas at Jason@BarrettMedia.com. I’m also hoping to add a host for the event as well.
I knew entering 2025 that this would be a special year. You only have one 10-year anniversary. Lasting ten years in any business is hard. 50% of businesses don’t make it past the five-year mark. When I started this journey, I put everything I had into it. As former A’s executive Lew Wolfe once said (Brandon Tierney hated it lol), there was no Plan B.
I left San Francisco in 2015 and traded a quarter million dollars per year for zero. Most wouldn’t do that but I did it to get home to NY to gain custody of my son. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. If I hadn’t done it, I’d have missed out on his teenage and early adult years, left him in an undesirable situation, and never have launched this brand. When people say ‘everything happens for a reason’, trust me, it’s true. I couldn’t have written this script if I tried.
When Barrett Media launched, there was no staff, newsletters, conferences, advertisers, consulting clients, or even a sharp looking website. I had to build it by myself. My goal was simple, land a few consulting clients to earn enough to raise my son.
I’ve worked 70-hour weeks for years, but during the first one, I went ten months without making a dime. As crazy as it sounds though, I knew I was on to something. My drive and vision have always been my greatest strengths, so I embraced the challenge and hard work. What I didn’t like was having to file and communicate with an unemployment office the first few months. It was depressing because I’ve never relied on help, I always found a way. There were many times where I questioned if I this was the right path.
Stephanie Eads has often told people that back then we were the real-life version of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’. Gina (Steph) worked the diner all-day, while Tommy (Me) worked on the docks (aka the downstairs home office). As the story goes, we were down on our luck and it was tough. When you watch ‘The Barrett Bash‘ promo video, I hope that stays in your head.
As luck would have it, two clients came aboard simultaneously before the end of year one. One of them I still work with today. More soon followed, and now, I’m blessed to help many who I admire and respect. I’ve been fortunate to participate in meetings and business conversations with people and companies I never expected to talk with. Even situations that looked bleak at the time, produced wins in the craziest of ways. One in particular took place in Nashville at the NAB Show in 2016.
Dan Mason advised me to forego the NAB party and head to the hotel bar if I wanted to meet executives. His suggestion was spot on. What I didn’t expect was that the conversation would go well enough that one exec felt comfortable enough to allow me to pay his bar tab. The $100 in my wallet, quickly became $20, and with my flight taking place later that night and still needing to eat and pay for a ride to the airport, I started planning to use a cash advance on my credit card.
I headed back to my hotel, and as I walked past the slot machines, something told me ‘you only have $20, which is like having $0 so just sit down at this machine, and risk it.’ I did just that, and on the first spin, I won $400. My credit card advance was no longer needed, my meal and ride were covered, and one-week later, the executive whose tab I picked up, connected me with one of his people to consult a key market.
It’s those type of stories from the past decade that make the present special. I’ve got plenty more, which I’ll save for another time. We’ve beaten the odds so far and have built a quality brand. In the past five years alone, we’ve delivered over twenty million in traffic, which for a niche site like ours, is awesome. We continue to grow and invest, and I’m damn proud of what we’ve done.
For years I’ve preached the importance of celebrating success because so many of us forget about the wins and obsess over the losses. If I didn’t take time to reflect and appreciate where we were, how far we’ve come, and who has read us, promoted us, invested in us, and contributed for us, I’d be a hypocrite.
I try to be open and honest with our audience because I believe that’s vital in creating connections and partnerships. I’ve also hired others to showcase different perspectives and experiences. To most though, we’re an email that appears in your inbox or a post that you see on social media. You don’t think much about what it means when you click to read our stories or share what our writers have written, but for us, it means everything. It confirms that the work we’re doing matters, and that our partners can be seen by others. Sharing my passion and knowledge, and helping others is why I do this, but it only works if people enjoy and value it.
Though I’ll be proud of reaching the ten year milestone in September, what we’ve done provides no assurances for tomorrow. I run our business each day taking nothing for granted, and I never stop learning. We operate in a world where it’s harder than ever to get people to invest in us let alone read and share our content. Advertising revenues keep shrinking in traditional media, and for B2B brands like ours, it’s even tougher. Social media dislikes promotion of links that take people away from their platforms. Email is more cluttered than ever, making it a challenge to be opened and clicked. And Search is being impacted by AI, while programmatic advertising for publishers declines.
If you look at what we’re up against, it’s very much the David vs. Goliath story. Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Google see less value in us than they do larger corporations. I don’t blame them. It’s not their job to worry about whether or not we succeed. Increasing profits is their concern, and we don’t help them as much.
Fortunately, I didn’t build Barrett Media dependent on traffic, programmatic advertising, social media follower counts or beating other trade sites. I don’t believe in tearing others down to lift us up. My focus is on learning and educating the right audience through a mixture of quality content, pertinent information, and valuable events. The more we can inform, challenge, celebrate, connect and inspire media professionals, the more they’ll read our work, tell others, attend our events, support us, and establish relationships with our partners and others to grow their businesses.
By no means have we figured it all out. But we have survived a pandemic, and been able to support 6 FT staffers and 15 contributors. We’ve moved into newer areas (news and music) too, increased events and partnerships, and are still lucky enough to work with amazing consulting clients.
The next decade will provide its fair share of challenges, but we have no plans of slowing down. Sports and news media coverage remains a key focus, but we’re also diving deeper into building bonds across music radio and the record industry. Being valued by professionals from all three areas along with the advertising industry is a priority. We’ll have plenty of time to look ahead but before we do that, we’re going to enjoy a night looking back. We’re excited to do that with many of you who’ve helped us reach this point. The Barrett Bash will be a blast, and I look forward to celebrating with you.
2025 Barrett News Media Summit
The 2025 BNM Summit presented by Newsmax will have its next announcement Wednesday morning. Glenn Beck, Chris Ruddy, Sid Rosenberg, Mark Simone, Mike Gallagher and Erick Erickson are already confirmed to speak at this year’s show. Those looking to attend can save money on tickets through June 30th by visiting BNMSummit.com. Tickets are $224.99 currently but increase to $324.99 on July 1st. A reminder, those purchasing tickets get an automatic invite to ‘The Barrett Bash‘ as well.
Quick Hits
- Congratulations to TNT on a special run with the NBA. The final signoff by Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller, Stan Van Gundy and Allie LaForce was perfect. Shaq’s F-bomb, the crew thanking the behind the scenes folks who helped the show succeed, and the emotion in Ernie Johnson’s voice as he said farewell was heartwarming. I watched and laughed at tons of old moments this weekend from Inside the NBA including Shaq’s 1-2-3, Chuck’s churro’s, the shot at Galveston, the steam room bracelet, milking that baby thing, Shaq’s crash into the Christmas tree, and Shaq getting tangled. ESPN has a strong TV lineup and they are about to add the best sports television show past and present. There’s no better team than Ernie, Shaq, Kenny and Charles.
- John Mamola‘s column on Friday about Ryan Clark and the PIVOT was an important read. I don’t know Ryan but I’ve enjoyed his conversations with guests, especially Nick Saban. But Mamola was right about his recent mistakes and the damage they’ve done. The RG3 mess was a terrible look, but throwing your co-host (Channing Crowder) under a bus, audio disappearing from WQAM, and then sharing in a tweet that your show won’t serve viewers at the expense of those who appear is even more perplexing. When you tell the public that you’re creating a safe-space for guests and will edit conversations if the guests don’t like how they’re presented, you’re giving them no reason to trust you. If they’re not the priority and watch the content less, what exactly is the point of the show?
- Taylor Swift changed the game when she re-recorded her old songs and albums, fighting back against her former manager and record label. On Friday, her long fight to regain control of her original records ended in victory. If there’s one thing to learn from her situation, sometimes you have to rewrite the rules and make bold decisions to regain control of your life and work. This applies to any business, but especially to those working under contracts in any area of the media industry. If you don’t own your name, content, social media accounts, etc. your value is instantly lower. Keep that in mind moving forward.
- Speaking of bold, if you’re not paying attention to what the All-American Rejects are doing with their pop-up house party shows, start. These types of opportunities exist in every business but especially in media. The difference, the Rejects came up with a great idea and created a plan to bring it to life. Now they’re reaping the rewards of that creativity and decision making. People are talking everywhere about it. Congrats to Megan Kraemer (AAR’s manager) and the band on combining great vision with strong execution.
- I was a casual fan of Country music but since CRS it’s been on my radar more. ‘Amen‘ by Jelly Roll and Shaboozey has received a lot of play inside the Barrett household lately. So too has Bottle Rockets by Scotty McCreery with Hootie & the Blowfish. The one tune though stuck most in my head is ‘Happens to Me‘ by Russell Dickerson. Raffaella Braun, that bridge and chorus is freaking catchy. Guess I’ll have to take in a concert or two this summer at Bethel Woods.
- Congrats to Tom Sullivan and Tony Kruse on wrapping up their news/talk radio careers. Additional congrats to David Samson on his new deal with Meadowlark Media, and Scott Hanson on returning to NFL Redzone.
- When you’re a known commodity as a talent, you’re going to appear in meme form at some point. I started noticing a number of them appear on my timeline lately involving Dave Ramsey. They’re fantastic and reinforce that Dave Ramsey is who you call for business advice. This one below is my personal favorite.
- Connoisseur Media CEO Jeff Warshaw is suing the Soros Fund Group. The suit claims that a broken prior arrangement included a provision that could’ve Warshaw CEO of Audacy. I don’t know Jeff personally but have heard him speak a few times at events. He’s sharp. I’ve also talked to employees who rave about him. How would he have led one of radio’s largest operations? I’m not sure, but it would’ve been interesting. I’ve yet to hear anyone else use the F-word in public speaking situations better than Mr. Warshaw.
- If you want to hear something insightful, take a listen to Gary Vaynerchuk‘s thoughts on AI. I listened last week to Gary’s podcast. His perspective on utilizing video and how to get the most out of it for $50 was especially interesting.
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.
Jason Barrett is the Founder and CEO of Barrett Media. The company launched in September 2015 and has provided consulting services to America’s top audio and video brands, while simultaneously covering the media industry at BarrettMedia.com, becoming a daily destination for media professionals. Prior to Barrett Media, Jason built and programmed 95.7 The Game in San Francisco, and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He was also the first sports programmer for SportsTalk 950 in Philadelphia, which later became 97.5 The Fanatic. Barrett also led 590 The Fan KFNS in St. Louis, and ESPN 1340/1390 in Poughkeepsie, NY, and worked on-air and behind the scenes at 101.5 WPDH, WTBQ 1110AM, and WPYX 106.5. He also spent two years at ESPN Radio in Bristol, CT producing ‘The Dan Patrick Show’ and ‘GameNight’. JB can be reached on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or by email at Jason@BarrettMedia.com.
