Throughout the 34-year history of WEEI operating in the sports talk format, no professional team in the Boston metropolitan area has secured more league championships than the New England Patriots. Led by quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick, the franchise secured titles six times since the turn of the century. Tight end Jermaine Wiggins played a key role in helping the organization win its first championship in 2001, including catching a pass that led to a game-winning field goal in the waning seconds. While he no longer suits up on the gridiron, Wiggins continues having a presence in the marketplace discussing the team throughout the year on The Greg Hill Show.
Wiggins has been a member of the station since 2019 and assimilated into the morning drive program alongside its titular host, conveying his personal perspective and opinions to the listening audience. In addition, he participated in interviews with Belichick, who continued working as the head coach and general manager of the Patriots until his departure in 2023 and eventually landing as head coach of the University of North Carolina football team this past winter.
“It’s a unique thing when you have Bill on for so long and everything’s kind of been close to the vest. As a player who played for him, knowing that it was like, ‘Don’t let any outside distractions affect what we’re trying to do,’ and then you kind of see Bill in this new world, this new light of him dating somebody much younger,” Wiggins explained. “He’s kind of [had] this new way of how he’s approaching things.”
Rather than avoiding the topic, Wiggins and his colleagues at WEEI have discussed the events and implications it could have moving forward. There have been various reports about the relationship between Belichick, 73, and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson, thus eliciting further discussion and intrigue into the situation.
Hudson has reportedly been managing his personal brand and had a role in his CBS News Sunday Morning interview promoting his book. Wiggins is the only member of The Greg Hill Show able to provide firsthand perspective from a former player, enhancing the conversations and bolstering the overall attention.
“Being that morning show where we blend those two worlds, I think there are a lot of people that want to talk about that, want to hear our opinions about it, want to give their opinions about it,” Wiggins articulated, “That’s why you kind of talk about it even though it might not be still Boston-related, but he coached for the Patriots for 20-plus years.”
Keeping Up With the Success of Boston Sports
Boston has had its share of celebratory parades in recent years, celebrating seven league championships spread across the Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins. On top of that, the four teams have combined for 67 playoff appearances since 2000, an ongoing stretch of prosperity and grandeur further propelling the New England region as a beacon of sorts for winning. While all of the professional sports franchises draw significant interest in the sprawling metropolis, Wiggins believes that Patriots football is effectively nonpareil in this regard.
“When they’re doing good and you’re having conversations about that, people are tuning in,” Wiggins said. “They want to know, ‘Can you win? What’s it look like? Is there another Super Bowl to add on to that?,’ so people are always into that element, and especially with the Patriots.”
Although there is no singular measurement universally recognized as the epitome of success, the sports media business has generally pointed to ratings as possessing a key part of the equation. Wiggins has aspirations of rendering the show as the top offering in the marketplace and is mired in an environment with more competitors than just sports talk radio stations. As someone who listened to The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1 and the Rickey Smiley Morning Show, he tries to bring aspects of entertainment into his own work on the airwaves while taking feedback from executives to bolster the ratings.
“I tend really not to concern myself with much that I can’t control,” Wiggins said. “I can’t control what corporate wants to do when it comes to saving money or I can’t control who has the meters or all that other stuff. All I can control is what I can control.”
Wiggins believes the diversity of voices on WEEI is part of what separates the station from the rest of the pack. Hill emanated from the rock format as the longtime morning show host at WAAF before the program moved to the sports talk station six years ago. Co-host Courtney Cox offers her own viewpoints related to teams and players while also bringing robust proficiency in pop culture news and conversation. Show producers Chris Curtis and Chris Scheim also lend their thoughts from the control room and help enhance the overall dialogue by further broadening the sonic milieu.
“I have the ability, [as] somebody who can kind of talk as the former athlete, what maybe some Black sports fans might listen to or like,” Wiggins explained, “Having the ability to have that kind of conversation or what it means to just be a Black man in America and what that relates into sports and different athletes.”
Taking the Play Calls and Executing
Wiggins views Hill as the proverbial quarterback of the show, facilitating the offensive attack by outlining roles and executing the playbook. Hill has vast previous experience having worked in radio for approximately 35 years and is the person who vouched for Wiggins to be part of the morning show in the first place, a vote of confidence for which he remains grateful.
“He wants us to be authentic, and that’s the thing about a great host or who makes a great host is understanding each individual and how they’re different and then allowing them to be able to drive it so we don’t go completely off the rails,” Wiggins said, “That takes a lot of hard work from a guy like Greg who is a leader.”
There are athletes today though who have decided to forsake traditional media companies and create content through independent ventures, but Wiggins decided against following this formula and aspires to continue supporting his family. Despite Audacy recently emerging from Ch. 11 bankruptcy and becoming a private company, along with subsequent alterations to its corporate leadership and layoffs to streamline its resources, Wiggins values being part of the company.
“If you’re starting something from the bottom – it’s like anything else, any business – there’s going to be a lot of risk that’s involved in that, and there’s going to be times where financially, it might be a little bit harder,” Wiggins said. “It might be different than somebody like [Jason] Kelce, who just retired and had a couple big contracts. He can kind of take time and that other thing, but at the end of the day, I got mouths to feed.”
In considering his own approach, Wiggins views his radio style to barbershop talk that is incontrovertibly genuine and contains fluctuating wit. Rather than attending broadcasting school before or after his eight-year NFL playing career, he instead grasped the craft by learning from others and considering acumen and input from established industry professionals.
“I try to get as much knowledge as I can from a lot of different people, be a sponge, and then I just add it into the way I do it,” Wiggins said. “I don’t change who I am. If we were hanging out at a bar, what you hear on the radio would be the same person.”
Wiggins attributes Hill to being the person who delegates between sports discussion and other external topics into the rundown. In recognizing that he has the ability to bring the show to where he feels it needs to exist, Wiggins acknowledged that he follows along and also makes suggestions ahead of each new show. Whereas some people assume that the work does not span beyond the four-hour program, the reality is that the tasks are nonstop in staying informed and sharing content.
“I never want to pigeonhole myself as just like, ‘Oh, I only talk football,’ because that’s not what you do in the real world,” Wiggins said. “We just didn’t go in the locker room and talk about football and Xs and Os. That was part of it, but we were talking about music and pop culture and movies and all of that.”
Part of effectuating broad appeal and an unrelenting presence in the media ecosystem amid a proliferation in content optionality is through digital domains. Wiggins acknowledged that Cox has strong knowledge surrounding social media and assists in the content and timing of different posts. A byproduct of such, however, is potentially amassing more criticism, but rather than loathing negative feedback in general, he is receptive to what comes in his direction as long as people are listening.
“Everybody that likes you, there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like you, and you just go to go out there and have fun, and sh*t, life is too short to be worrying about what people say,” Wiggins explained. “Just go out there and enjoy it.”
Being Boston Strong Due to the Demand of the Audience
Sports has embedded itself as a key part of the culture in the New England region for many years, but the marketplace has interest in topics that circulate nationally as well. From the latest developments surrounding quarterback Aaron Rodgers to the career of superstar forward LeBron James, Wiggins understands there is appeal in discussing big-picture topics. Yet the foundation of The Greg Hill Show is rooted in local sports, and he is confident in Audacy Boston market manager Mike Thomas and WEEI brand manager Ken Laird in leading the enterprise forward.
“I played for Belichick, I played for Parcells – to play for guys that have unbelievable track records and then work for guys that have unbelievable track records because all it does is make me better at what I do,” Wiggins said. “…I try to take as much advice as I can from all those guys to help me be better.”
Moving forward in the sports talk radio format, Wiggins is enthusiastic about the future and operating amid a sphere in which he detects continued growth. Listeners have augmented accessibility in consuming the program through the Audacy app or streaming live on the WEEI YouTube channel, something that could help increase the total addressable market for the show. Wiggins discerns a great thing about radio is in the longevity it affords professionals, and he intends to continue trying to be the best he can, embracing the competition to stand alone at the subliminal apex of the profession.
“There’s always going to be people out there that are going to want to tune in because you can only listen to ‘Not Like Us’ by Kendrick Lamar so many times on, whether it’s the HOT 97s in New York or V103s,” Wiggins said. “You can only listen to the song so many times, and you’re like, ‘Alright, I need something different,’ and I think you’re starting to see a lot of people, not just gravitating towards [the fact that] they love the format of hearing people’s opinions on whatever it is, so that’s the thing I look forward to.”
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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.
