Is the future of sports radio less sports talk? It sounds like a strange question, but a perfect storm has been brewing over the last few months. A few of the right stories have broken since the beginning of the year that has me wondering if it may be time to think about the path forward for sports radio in a world where radio is less relevant than it used to be.

Super Bowl week means a couple of things on this website. Sure, at least some of it is going to Radio Row to mingle, but the bigger event is the annual unveiling of the BSM Top 20 lists. The biggest sport in America is putting its best in the spotlight this week. We might as well do the same in our industry.

More than just sports fans are thinking about what is happening in Las Vegas this week. Super Bowl LVIII is the biggest event on America’s sports calendar in 2024, but it’s also a tent pole of American pop culture. That’s true of the game every year, but add Taylor Swift to the mix, and it just goes to a different level.

By now, you’ve almost certainly seen Colin Cowherd’s verbal right hook to the people that claim a few seconds of Swift on screen ruins an entire day of watching football for them. One of the best points he made in that monologue is that a football broadcast is not just football. Nowhere is that more true than at the Super Bowl. It’s something Rich Eisen has said for years – there is a rock n’ roll concert in the middle of the biggest game of every season.

That brings me to my question. We all can agree that as radio usage drops across all formats, sports is the one that offers the most upside to companies large and small, right? News/talk radio is all about Trump, Biden and whatever the hot national stories are, music radio is irrelevant in an age where we don’t have to sit through songs we hate to get to ones we like. Sports radio is built on timely opinions on local topics. Each station’s content is by and of its market. 

So, is the future of our format less about super-serving the super fan and more about being the market’s water cooler? Is it time to give hot talk another try with sports topics and hosts leading the charge?

I know the rocky history of the hot talk format. Ask anyone at CBS Radio between 2005 and 2008 how the Free FM experiment went. These days, there aren’t a lot of stations in the format outside of Florida, and even there, it’s not like every market has one.

Hot talk built on the likes of Opie & Anthony, Adam Carola and David Lee Roth had limited appeal because pure, uncut guy talk tends to have trouble penetrating the money demos in a meaningful way. You can say that the target audience is men 18-49, but when the format is built entirely on fart and d**k jokes, you cut out a huge chunk of the audience because kids are in the car.

What if we re-thought hot talk and sports talk at the same time? There is room for a format that is sometimes pure sports, but always sports-adjacent. The Ticket in Dallas is celebrating its 30th anniversary of mixing sports and entertainment. The Ticket in Detroit rose to prominence on the back of the idea that sports fans care about the games, but probably would rather listen to talk about movies and their favorite hosts’ personal lives than about when the right time is for the Tigers to call up their Triple-A closer.

There are countless shows that are not about sports, but about how sports fits into the hosts’ and other characters’ lives. You hear it on the local and national levels. It’s as simple as letting entertaining people go with their gut on what is entertaining. You never see Dan Patrick lose sight of why the listeners are there, but he knows that they have a relationship with him. His stories or a visit from Adam Sandler can hold their attention better than the minutiae of an NBA game on a Monday night in February. 

That is the crossover of sports talk and hot talk I see in our future – sports when the sports matter, but recognizing that not everything that happened in the game is compelling. 

Podcasts have helped people who once instantly dismissed the idea of talk radio realize that spoken word content can be entertaining. Let’s figure out how to lure some of those folks to our stations.

I often joke that broadcasting companies have a wheel they spin when they launch a sports station. It can be named The Ticket, The Fan, The Game or The Score. Maybe ESPN [insert city here] if they have the right affiliation, but that is it!

Have we ever considered that those names may put up a barrier to who will listen? I think a show like Parkins & Spiegel is tremendous. Danny and Matt have great chemistry. The entire crew is fun to listen to. I think most people who turn them on will like them, but I wonder how many people never turn them on because they hear the name “The Score” and are confident that the station isn’t for them because they aren’t really sports fans.

I’m not advocating for anything here. I happen to like stations that are lowercase sports and capital RADIO. I get it isn’t what every listener wants. 

I am simply asking if it’s time to rethink our format. As ears leave radio for digital, on-demand platforms, do we really think business as usual is the path to the brightest future?

You’ve heard it said a million times. Maybe it was Jason Barrett. Maybe it was a different consultant. Maybe it was a PD or GM. “Sports radio listeners come to this station for sports!”

It’s not wrong, but I think it discounts why anyone turns on any station, buys tickets for any concert or clicks start on any show on Netflix. The audience just wants to be entertained. If you’ve proven you can do that for them before, they tend to trust you can do it again. 

Thanks to my kids, I have spent the last year listening to A LOT of Taylor Swift, and you know what? I think she’s awesome. My favorite song happens to be “Style”. I like her best when she is doing fun, upbeat pop songs. That doesn’t mean I’m going to shut off the album she is going to drop in April the second I hear an acoustic guitar.

Taylor Swift has earned my loyalty. Her music is interesting and fun. I will give anything she does a chance. I think our listeners feel the same way about their favorite hosts and shows. We should embrace that.

Media changes. That should be the case, and it shouldn’t be a limited thing. It’s not just about technology. Tastes change, so hosts and formats should too.

Sometimes, our view of what a sports radio listener is can be too narrow. I think it is possible to respect them, deliver on what it is they expect, and still expand the boundaries of our format in a way that makes sports talk more welcoming for people who may not be all in on every single game.