The NFL is brilliant at marketing. No one can deny it. And sports radio reaps the rewards of the NFL’s marketing genius. The latest example is this week’s NFL schedule release.
The league has basically turned a spreadsheet into a multi-week build-up, including a drip, drip, drip of leaked games this week, culminating in Thursday night’s highly anticipated schedule release.
That build-up gives Sports Talk Radio days of content during the lead-up to Thursday night, while the Thursday night announcement leads to days of reaction and analysis. The NFL is getting millions of dollars in free promotion from how they handle the schedule release.
In news/talk, the only comparable event is a major November election, which only happens every other year. It’s the only thing on the calendar that we are guaranteed to be looking ahead to, but what else are we missing?
The Anticipation Gap
Sports are creating moments, with far more “What will happen?” conversations that are easy to digest and draw audience reaction to. News/talk sometimes gets stuck in too much of a “What just happened?” reactionary mode.
Now, while the national news cycle can’t, and shouldn’t, drive the content of every local news/talk show, President Trump has been excellent at giving news/talk the opportunity to be more forward-looking, rather than just reactionary — although he’s excellent at that too, for better or worse. Did we do enough as a format building up to the President’s trip to China? Or did we leave something on the table with more reaction than preview, build-up, speculation, and hype?
But for the most part, outside of Election Day, there are very few tentpole moments that are built, teased, and anticipated days or weeks in advance.
However, the material exists. We just need to find it and be prepared for it, because the institutions themselves aren’t going to hype it up. For example, take a big vote in your local city council. Most of the time, your local councilmembers don’t want you to know about these votes. They thrive off of voting in darkness, and when the outrage comes, it’s too little, too late.
So in fairness, news/talk doesn’t have a marketing monster like the NFL begging you to talk about their decisions. It’s the opposite in local government. So while it’s harder, it’s doable, and can build anticipation, bring information, and be entertainment on the air.
Finding Your Tentpole Moments
Elsewhere, opportunities may include Congressional deadlines, Supreme Court rulings, economic reports, and major policy rollouts. All of these come with timelines. Are we building the hype and explaining that well? Or are we falling short? Are we treating these like events?
More often than not, there’s no countdown or speculation ecosystem. Instead, they’re covered as updates.
The NFL — and as a result, sports talk — understands something that news/talk often overlooks: anticipation is content. In fact, it might be the most valuable content there is.
Sports radio doesn’t just benefit from the schedule release because of what it is. It benefits from everything it creates: prediction shows, schedule breakdowns, win/loss projections, travel debates, and prime-time reactions. One announcement fuels days of programming.
There’s no reason news/talk can’t do the same. And none of this requires the format changing what it is. It’s just staying one step ahead — as programmers, hosts, and producers — of what is coming down the pipeline from your local communities to Washington, D.C.
You won’t have the gift of an organization like the NFL handing it to you on a silver platter, but with a little digging and preparation, it sets you up for a greater ability to create more anticipatory content, rather than reactionary.
Now, the harder part will be making this content compelling to a large percentage of the audience. Sports are easier to digest. How do we make our content more forward-looking while also being more fun, digestible, and relatable?
The starting point? All of these decisions we discuss likely impact people’s lives far more than a Week 7 matchup between the Cowboys and Eagles. That seems like a pretty good place to start.
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the Vice President of News/Talk for Cumulus Media, while also hosting “Mundo in the Morning” and programming KCMO Talk Radio in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on X @PeteMundo.
