ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit has been named one of three members of the Class of 2023 for the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.
On January 1st, 2024, Herbstreit is slated to call his 16th Rose Bowl, surpassing the legendary Keith Jackson for most appearances at “The Grandaddy of Them All”.
Herbstreit worked on the coverage of the game on ABC from 2007 to 2010 and has worked on 11 of the past 13 broadcasts of the game.
The Rose Bowl Hall of Fame was established in 1989 to pay tribute to individuals who have contributed to the history and excitement of the legendary bowl game.
Joining Herbstreit in the Class of 2023 are former Washington offensive lineman Lincoln Kennedy and former Columbia quarterback Cliff Montgomery who used a hidden-ball trick to win the 1934 Rose Bowl over Stanford 7-0.
Shortly after The Walt Disney Company released financial results for individual divisions under its strategic reorganization – which revealed $2.9 billion in profit for ESPN – the sports network revealed additional information about its yearly performance. The network’s 2022-2023 fiscal year runs from October through September and resulted in the largest overall viewership in four fiscal years.
Moreover, viewership within the persons 18-49 demographic was up 5% on the year, with the network reporting its largest gains in the third quarter.
The viewership data is provided by Nielsen Media Research, which also revealed that the network’s total day audience experienced a 2% rise in the year. ESPN amassed an average of 721,000 viewers with nearly 40% of the audience coming from the P18-49 demographic above.
ESPN retained its position as the No. 1 sports network by average audience, and also ranks as the No. 3 network overall on cable television. The network’s sports viewership share, which excludes ESPN on ABC or its other cable networks, is 31.5%, an increase over the previous two fiscal years.
The network’s streaming platform – ESPN+ – garnered an 11% rise in unique viewers year-over-year and also experienced a 15% increase in minutes viewed. Digital platforms accrued 111 million monthly unique visitors, equating to growth of 4% from the last fiscal year. Additionally, these figures surpass the closest competitor by 49%, reaffirming the network’s commitment and innovation in this space.
On social media, ESPN recently became the most-followed brand on TikTok and is up 25% with its engagements year-over-year. Across multiple platforms – including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok – ESPN procured 8.7 billion social media engagements, marking its 24th straight month of being No. 1 in the category.
Aside from its coverage of live sports, the network is closing in on the conclusion of its second month under a new daytime programming lineup. The Pat McAfee Show collected record-setting viewership on digital and linear platforms, while First Take recently attained its 14th consecutive month of YoY viewership growth.
These figures come at a time when Disney is looking for a strategic partner to purchase a minority equity stake in ESPN, concurrent with the development of a direct-to-consumer platform under the project name “Flagship.”
Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo walked back on his promise to retire on the spot if the Arizona Diamondbacks won the sixth and seventh games of the National League Championship Series (NLCS) on the road against the Philadelphia Phillies. Yet he will not be getting off the hook so easily, beginning a day of ignominy on The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday morning. Russo agreed to a punishment after he claimed his promise was a “throwaway line” for radio and when Stern emphasized that he would need to do something to make up for the broken agreement.
“Mad Dog lost his mind,” Stern expressed. “I’m a radio guy, and so is Mad Dog, and I know when you’re on the air sometimes, you want to please people and make things fun and interesting, but he f****ng went over the line because he was trying to make things fun and interesting.”
As the program ruminated over potential punishments that could make up for the lack of retirement, Stern surmised that Russo should come on his show in Manhattan, dress in a bikini and walk down a New York City street with a sign that was refined to read, “I’m a liar and a dope.” After deliberation, he agreed to the punishment and will also make a charitable donation to an organization chosen by the Diamondbacks organization.
When Russo made his appearance on ESPN’s First Take, co-hosts Stephen A. Smith and Molly Qerim expressed that he will need to provide recompense for his broken promise. Russo began the show operating a camera before making his way to the desk and taking his seat where he was faced with an onslaught of commentary.
“How nervous were you watching the game?,” Qerim asked Russo.
“I was nervous – very nervous,” Russo replied. “I sure was [stressed], but remember, that was a radio thing; it wasn’t necessarily a TV thing.”
Smith immediately chimed in upon Russo claiming the bit was exclusive to radio, conveying that “Mad Dog” transcends the radio medium. Furthermore, he explained that the popular “What Are You Mad About?” segment exists because of his hosting style on the air and notable rants about different topics.
“This is what we’re going to do on behalf of the Diamondbacks,” Smith said. “This show is going to be dedicated to the Diamondbacks shutting you up since you threatened to retire. So you can speak, but you know what you will be doing? You will be running errands throughout the show today.”
Russo, incredulous that Smith and Qerim were going to direct what he does on the show, reaffirmed that he feels there is a difference between radio and television. Even so, both hosts believed he deserved to be punished and had him perform a number of ordinary tasks on the air, including removing the plastic off of a drink for Smith.
“Excuse me, this isn’t up for debate,” Qerim said after Russo tried to explain himself.
“Zip it, you don’t get to debate this anymore,” added Smith. “The Diamondbacks won.”
After 15 years at the iHeartMedia station, KXNO Program Director Andrew Downs has announced his exit.
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, Downs declared it was his decision to depart the Des Moines sports station.
“I’ve made the difficult decision to leave KXnO after 15 years,” wrote Downs. “I’ll be forever grateful for the people I worked with and those who listened.”
I’ve made the difficult decision to leave KXnO after 15 years.
I’ll be forever grateful for the people I worked with and those who listened.
It’s time to try something else, I just don’t know what that is yet…if you have an idea you can reach me at AndrewCDowns@gmail.com!
Downs has served as the station’s Program Director since 2016. He originally joined the station in 2008 as a Producer. He has continued to serve in that producer role for the station’s midday show featuring Keith Murphy and Andy Fales.
During a round of layoffs in 2020, Fales and Murphy were axed by iHeartMedia. However, due to advertiser and community pushback, the pair were re-instated. Ultimately, the station received an FM signal on 106.3 FM in addition to its 1460 AM signal due to the strong reaction from the Des Moines community.
Fans of Bomani Jones got a nice surprise this week. The feed for his podcast, which had sat dormant for months, suddenly alerted subscribers that a new episode of The Right Time was waiting for them.
Jones exited ESPN earlier this year. His contract was not renewed as part of the cost-cutting measures across all of Disney’s divisions. His show is now part of the Wave Sports + Entertainment portfolio.
Wave Sports + Entertainment may not have the sort of ubiquitous name in sports media that ESPN does, but thanks to Paul George and the Kelce Brothers, the company has proven its worth in the podcast space. That is what Jones was looking for as he weighed his options for The Right Time‘s next chapter.
In this conversation, Jones talks about how to build a podcast that blends sports and other topics, why Wave Sports + Entertainment is the right partner at this point, and how sports talk is filling a void for middle-aged Black audiences.
Demetri Ravanos: Wave Sports + Entertainment is a very different animal for you. You are coming from ESPN, the quintessential entity in sports media. Now, you are going to a place where you are the lone media member as opposed to an athlete trying to either transition or start something new. So how do you fit in with the Wave Sports + Entertainment portfolio?
Bomani Jones: Yeah, that’s a good question that, to be honest, you ought to ask the Wave people. I hadn’t even thought it out that far. Part of that for me, and I think that this is kind of what’s different about doing a podcast versus being on TV or radio or all that stuff, is that I’ll always look at podcasts individually as just kind of like their own worlds of sorts, right? There are certainly some ways and places where I give thought to a larger brand and how I fit or something like that, but with Wave, my question primarily just was, “Okay, what can you do to help me grow this podcast that’s already successful?”
I think that maybe if I was starting from zero, we’d be talking about something else, but I’ve always thought myself – and partially as a function of the places that I’ve worked – but I’ve thought a podcast is something that the individual talent and everybody surrounding it, they’re going to be the ones that make it into whatever it is, and they’re going to have to do a lot of the building in that regard. With Wave, what’s so impressive about them is their ability to take what it is that you’re doing and then optimize it for all the means of distribution and everything else.
Now to the beginning of your question, it is a little interesting that in this brief time that I’ve been away, one of the big stories that’s popped up is this whole Travis Kelce and Tay Tay thing. I guess we’re coworkers. You know, that can’t be anything that I worry too much about because I don’t know how much they’re supposed to worry about me, but yeah, that is a little bit different, I have to say.
DR: It does seem like there is a class of podcasts or maybe it’s just a standard boilerplate go-to slogan whenever somebody is launching a sports podcast that it is going to be “a melting pot of sports and culture.” I wonder why it is that you think you are better at it than anyone else trying to start this thing. There is no shortage of them, and you have had a long history of success in this space.
BJ: I think the thing for me is, at least in terms of journalism, is I was doing the “and” before I did the sports and I was doing the “sports and…” at Page 2, which is probably the best “sports and” thing anybody has ever come up with. I’m also there at the same time as [Bill] Simmons and his brand of “sports and” I could never quite do, you know what I mean?
The thing that I feel like I’ve gotten better now at this point in my career is this “sports and,” it ain’t let’s call it Hall & Oates, right? It’s Simon & Garfunkel; it’s Gladys Knight & the Pips. Sports has got to be out front. I firmly believe that because people got to know they’re coming to get something out of this. I think for a lot of people, the attempt at sports and pop culture ultimately becomes more about self-gratification than really getting to the audience.
The other thing that I think gets tricky when you do “sports and” stuff is you’ve got to get people who want to hear your sports and people who want to hear your end game. They’re probably not going to show up just to get “the and” if they don’t like the sports. They’re probably not going to show up to get the sports if they don’t like the “and,” because they’ll go get somebody that does the sports that they like. It doesn’t matter what the other stuff is. What matters is if they like it. You have to learn to be judicious about these things and understand what exactly it is that people come to you and people come to your podcast for.
What I have been able to do over the last, and this sounds crazy, 23 years of working this job is that the people who are coming for an opt-in product from me, by and large, are people who know me and thereby are people who trust me. They are willing to hear some of these things that I want to talk about. It takes time to earn the trust in all those places, and so this very long answer to get back to the top of it. I think the thing that helps me is with the pop culture stuff – I developed an independent reputation for being somebody who talked about pop culture; I developed an independent reputation for being somebody who talked about current events, and I had an independent reputation for talking about sports. I dabble, I guess, in some ways in the first two now and I am in the third more, but the truth is, I’ve done all of those in such a fashion that when I’m now dabbling in them, I’m dabbling into expertise as opposed to simply dabbling into interest.
DR: You and I had a conversation a while back. I had just gotten back from doing some radio fill-in stuff in South Carolina and I said to you that I was kind of shocked by the amount of Black voices on the phones when I took calls. It was overwhelmingly more than any time before. You had a really interesting theory about it being the lack of a classic rock format for guys in their 40s and 50s at this point who grew up listening to rap. I wonder if you think that is just benefiting sports radio or maybe that is benefiting podcasts too with Black audiences.
BJ: I think it’s benefiting podcasts and I think the numbers bear out. It’s really benefiting YouTube, which is a place where Black people over-represent in that sample. But this is kind of the flipside of all the rap from our youth that we were defending. It’s not that easy to listen to it in the car with your kids, so you don’t really have those stations. I think Atlanta has a classic rap format. I honestly don’t know of any other city that does. So once you get to your grown man station in life as a Black man, where do you go? I know in Raleigh they were telling me that when they went from the AM to the FM dial, suddenly they heard a lot more Black people on phones.
It’s always been a thing with ESPN. ESPN programming has a much higher Black viewership than most television shows do. When you think about it, how many other places on television are you tuning in and Black people are the stars? That’s what happens with sports.
Now, what I think is interesting though, in terms of format, especially when you start talking about places in the South where you just have fewer options, that’s where you really start hearing more and more Black people get on to phones for sports talk. That’s also a function of sports talk’s growth outside of urban areas. You ain’t getting that many of those calls in the afternoon up here on WFAN right now. It’s a really weird sort of quirk. I think it may be partially cultural in the sense that I think that in the South in particular, Black culture and white culture are far closer to each other, both in proximity and just kind of what their substances are. But you turn on the radio in these cities where one of the host’s name ends in a Y? You know, “John and Sully” or something like that, You know what I mean? No, Black people ain’t calling them. We’re not having nearly as much overlap in those spaces.
Even once you’re just talking about the cultural elements of it, you start talking about coming up north and the people are more likely to be Catholic. The ancestors, I guess you got your Mayflower types certainly, but up here it’s much more a discussion of immigrant culture. When you get to the South, everybody’s going back generations and generations still in the United States. They’re all coming from the same direction.
DR: You and I talked recently and you said that what was appealing about Wave Sports + Entertainment is that this is what they do. Podcasts are not a division of a much larger company. The same could be said for Meadowlark Media, and I think there are a lot of people who would wonder, if that is what you were looking for, why you would not prioritize past relationships as you were trying to figure out what your future is after ESPN.
BJ: Yeah, I think the question that I would ask people in response to that is, “So what exactly does that do for me?” I don’t mean that snidely or rudely, but I think that people with the assumption that I would wind up going to work for Meadowlark are operating under the premise of what my relationship has been with Dan Le Batard. What about me implies to you that I make business decisions based on something that personal? You just can’t, that’s not how things work. You can’t do that.
So in 2022, when my contract was expiring with ESPN, I talked to Meadowlark. I’ll let you know, we were pretty deep in talks with them, but in the end, I wound up in a situation where I was doing Game Theory for HBO, and Game Theory was the single most important thing to me. Every other decision that I was going to make, both personally and professionally, is going to be made with Game Theory in mind. I thought that it would be best for me to not be doing a start-up television show and also trying to restart a podcast with a new staff and producer at a company that itself was a start-up. I just thought that that was too much.
It didn’t even really come up this last time that my deal was up and I was trying to find a place to be. The way that Dan sells things, you know, “It’s work, it’s family.” It ain’t really how life works. But, you know, that’s him and the way that he does things. I think that people who really love Dan and who enjoy the things that I did with him, they would love to see me go work there and be part of this thing that they already love. I could totally see how that would be the best thing for them. I just don’t know how those people would necessarily explain how it would be the best thing for me.
DR: Is there a part of you that worries if you go back to do anything with that collection of people, there’s always going to be a segment of the audience that is going to see you and Dan together and think of you as the sidekick?
BJ: Yeah, the sidekick thing with Dan is very interesting because on Highly Questionable, if you go and watch it, there’s very clearly a sidekick and it’s his father, right? But it was this weird thing because his father is at once the sidekick and also the centerpiece. It was a really good thing because ego stuff typically comes up when people do television shows together and who plays what role. But it’s really helpful to have this cuddly old man in between and everybody can be like, “No, he’s the real star of the show.” Then none of that other stuff ever comes up. But that show, it wasn’t mine. That’s something that I know when I worked with Dan that he struggled to understand. I didn’t mean this in a bad way, but “It’s your dad. It’s your city.” Like when I would come in to do radio in the same studio where he did his radio show, and it’s just covered wall to wall with Dan Le Batard Show stuff, it’s his and that’s cool.
I never saw myself as a sidekick, however there was a hierarchy. He is Dan Le Batard. They built the studio because he’s Dan Le Batard, all of those things.
Now, if I had come in 2022 and decided to work there, what would have been more likely was that we would have used this show The Right Time as kind of its own tentpole and hopefully, the plan would then be to build out a network of sorts underneath The Right Time. In the Le Batard AF, I am neither A nor F in the way that I wanted to go about that. I admit that was very important to me for the reason that you describe.
I’m kind of past the point in my career where I want to position myself in a way that looks like sidekick stuff. So I think that part is totally fair, but at the same time, I really don’t know the numbers that closely on his end, but I’m assuming that his operation is a bigger one than mine is. So, his show being a bigger one and me being there with my own thing that isn’t as big? That’s okay. I can live with that. I was at ESPN and my show wasn’t as big as Zach Lowe’s. That’s fine, not a problem. That’s kind of survival of the fittest.
I don’t think with the way that Meadowlark does things now, that there would be a place for me. Everything now seems to be treated as an offshoot of The Dan Le Batard Show now. That, I absolutely would not go for, but let me be clear. That also was not offered to me. So I’m not pretending like I turned it down.
DR: You said one thing in there that I want to wrap on. You mentioned that at the time you did not think going to an upstart network while having Game Theory would have been the best thing for you. Obviously, you wish Game Theorywas still on, but the fact that it is not on the air anymore, did that allow you to take more chances as you tried to figure out what you were going to do next?
BJ: I would say the opposite. Me taking chances on where to go with the podcast is much more of a function of my previous employers not renewing my contract there. Once your old job says you don’t work there no more, the risk is there.
But also I don’t see Wave at all as being risky. I would even make the argument that for a podcast, working at ESPN would be far riskier. It would be much riskier for Paul George to take his podcast to ESPN than it would be for me to take what I’m doing and bring it to Wave. This isn’t just about ESPN. This is about most of these large companies. I’ll give you an example. After I get off the phone with you, we’re going to do a rehearsal show. I’m going back and forth with Sean Yoo, who’s my new producer, and we’re talking about some stuff and he’s like, “Hey, we got a tweet that we’re putting out. The social team wants you to quote tweet that. And if you check that e-mail I sent you, we’ve got the schedule.”
I checked it and it’s a spreadsheet in a Google Doc of what the schedule is and the planning for what to do with the social channels as we break this show out and introduce it to some new people because we’re slapping a new coat of paint on it and all of that stuff, right? That doesn’t happen in the same ways, at least in my experience, at the big companies. For the big companies, it’s like, “Hey, man, they got this thing called podcasting that the kids are doing. We should probably get into that. So we need to send some things out on social” then you bring that person who just doesn’t have anything to do and then it goes from there. I’m working now with people who are much more native to the space, who have a much more organic knowledge of these things, and can strategize much more.
What I’ve always felt like, no matter where I’ve been, no matter where I’ve done, it’s my job to come up with something good. It’s your job to get people to consume it. If I come up with something and you put it in front of people and they reject it, then that’s my fault. Okay? But with a podcast, I know I’m going to give you a good podcast. I know that 100%. And from what I’ve seen from Wave and people they have worked with previously, I know they’re going to be able to take the social channels and take all these other things and get this out here to more people probably than I was capable of getting out to when I worked at ESPN.
So no, this to me is the opposite of a risk. This is taking a product that has been built over the course of five years, bringing the subscriber base that we have that we’ve built in and now supercharging it. I think that the more likely outcome here is that this now goes farther than it ever has and it goes to places that I probably didn’t think were possible at some point.
I’m taking the podcast and it’s going to a place and the place is then going to do whatever that place does with the podcast. But in terms of leaving ESPN, if you wanted to make the argument that I took a step down of sorts when they decided to cancel High Noon, that’s perfectly fair. It’s not even hard to get around that. But for the podcast. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All that matters about the podcast is whether or not the people you work for are the best equipped to get it out to as many ears as possible to allow them to make a decision as to whether or not this is something they want to be part of their regular lives. And I think in that direction, I probably took a step up.
To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at tim@ptpmarketing.com or 513-702-5072.
Following the conclusion of a sporting event, some fans usually choose to congregate outside of the venue with the hopes of snagging a picture or an autograph from their favorite players. One day after a Washington Bullets basketball game, there were many children aiming to greet their heroes. As one of the players emerged from the arena, he noticed a child extending a pen and paper in his direction, hoping for the stationery to be adorned with his coveted signature. Instead, the player knocked both items out of the child’s hand and kept walking to the team bus, an impudent act commentator James Brown watched as it unfolded from afar.
Visibly shaken and despondent, the young fan was suddenly greeted by Hall of Fame forward Wes Unseld, a traditionally affable and benevolent individual. Unseld, who had seen what occurred, sat the child on his knee and provided his autograph and gear while restoring the child’s confidence and morale. As he performed this act of magnanimity, he informed team officials that the team bus, which was sitting idle and preparing to depart, would need to remain as such and wait for as long as it took.
Being in the vicinity of this illustration of proper decorum prompted Brown to make a conscious reaffirmation related to his own self-efficacy and inherent values.
“I said, ‘If I ever am in a position to be an influence on somebody, I would want to be a positive influence like that,’” Brown said. “Again, to be real clear, as a man of faith, I try to do that as well too from a standpoint of unifying and finding the good in people to talk about those things.”
From the beginning of his career, Brown has tried to serve as an exemplary role model for industry professionals and sports fans. He has proven to be an adept commentator both in sports and news media, holding true to journalistic tenets amid a cyclonic content ecosystem, while also giving back to the community. For his work in both respects, Brown will be honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Broadcasters, the organization’s highest honor, at Wednesday night’s NAB Marconi Radio Awards.
When Brown was informed that he would be this year’s honoree, he was incredulous and wanted to double-check that the message was not transmitted to him in error. Upon confirmation, he thought back on his journey to reach this point, a winding road of twists and turns that required adaptability, and how a common thread through it all was utilizing his platform for good.
During his formative years in the business, Brown decided to ask a colleague if he would be able to blend philanthropic elements within his platform if he became successful enough. In response, he was informed that he would likely not experience such fortune in his career, an assertion with potential to disquiet and fluster prospective rising stars. Instead of succumbing to the pessimistic melancholy foreboding suppositious failure, Brown adopted the opposite mindset and stayed true to the fundamentals of the craft.
“I felt in my heart it could be the case,” Brown said. “This is validation that it was because I would not have ever thought I would ever have been considered for something like this when I look at the people who have received this award.”
We're thrilled to announce that Hall of Fame CBS sportscaster James Brown (@JBsportscaster) is the 2023 recipient of the NAB Distinguished Service Award! We look forward to honoring him during @NABShow New York. pic.twitter.com/33sghxm7yj
— National Association of Broadcasters (@nabtweets) August 28, 2023
Throughout his career, which has spanned parts of five decades, Brown always possessed a keen interest in penetrating beyond the nuances of the game itself. Yet he never thought he would be on the sidelines covering the action, instead pursuing a career as a professional basketball player. Under the mentorship of Hall-of-Fame high school basketball coach Morgan Wootten, Brown became a two-time high school All-American and received 200 athletic scholarships from universities around the country.
Nonetheless, he chose to attend Harvard University to study government while continuing his career on the hardwood sans bursary. He assumed that the institutional erudition would better position him for long-term success and felt that when it was amalgamated with accolades as a basketball player, he could thrive as an entrepreneur.
Brown was drafted both in the NBA by the Atlanta Hawks but did not end up making the team. As a result, he began working as a sales manager at Xerox and had no thoughts about pursuing media until he was invited to a television show.
While there, Brown informed of a forthcoming opening as a color commentator on Washington Bullets games. After auditioning, he was granted the job for away contests, filling the role of Mike Riordan, and continued his work with Xerox in the process.
Most professionals in sports media are subject to criticism from viewers, colleagues, and competitors alike. With advances in mediated communication, filtering these critiques and cultivating a network of trusted sources can prove fundamental for maintaining stability and confidence. Brown, however, did not run away from these critiques; rather, he utilized them to improve as he continued broadcasting games and occasionally filled in on play-by-play announcing duties. After his first year with the Bullets, he had lunch with William Taaffe, a columnist for The Washington Star, and asked for uncensored, genuine feedback about his commentary.
“He said, ‘JB, you clearly know the game. You just need to eliminate the five-dollar words in your Harvard education and talk to everyday people in simple terms and explain what it is and have fun,’ and he was right,” Brown said. “It harkened back to a lesson my English teacher told me in high school which was essentially, ‘Keep it simple. Explain it in language that everybody could understand.’”
When CBS Sports snatched part of the television rights to the NCAA in a four-year deal with ABC, then-owned by American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, worth a collective $264 million, the network was looking for extra announcers. The company reached out to Brown after executives heard him commentate a game and informed him that he would need to expand his skillset if he wanted to work in media on a full-time basis.
While he was a skilled color commentator, CBS Sports executive producer Ted Shaker expressed that the superstar professional athletes would likely fill the analyst roles upon their retirement. As a result, he implored Brown to learn how to work as a play-by-play announcer, reporter, and studio host, and he subsequently gave him opportunities to hone his craft.
Brown had worked as a studio anchor for both WJLA-TV and WDVM-TV while continuing assignments with CBS Sports, including college basketball, NBA, and NFL games. As it pertained to the NFL on CBS, he called matchups with a variety of analysts starting in 1987, including Dan Jiggetts, Gary Fencik, Ken Stabler, and Randy Cross. Having emanated from the analyst role, he always worked with his partners to ensure they would be able to convey their firsthand, esoteric perspectives amid the presentation.
“[I had to] understand it well enough to be able to ask the intelligent questions to capitalize on the expertise that the analysts, being singular or plural with whom I was working, to elicit from them the best in preparing the audience for what they were about to see on TV,” Brown said, “and to watch it knowledgeably so as to, again, ask the right questions to make them shine.”
CBS ceased broadcasts of NFL games after NBC acquired the AFC rights and FOX snagged the NFC rights, transactions that totaled almost $2.5 billion. When FOX Sports acquired the property, the company was looking to establish credibility and signed CBS commentators John Madden, Pat Summerall, and Terry Bradshaw to lucrative contracts.
FOX Sports was originally going to have Bradshaw work as both an analyst and host for its studio coverage with Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson. Network chairman David Hill conceptualized the studio team discussing the game as if they were friends conversing at a sports bar. At the suggestion of division president Ed Goren, Hill hired Brown to host the show without an audition, and he stressed the importance of standing out and being distinct. The program, known as FOX NFL Sunday, would be a blend of information and entertainment, following the mantra of “sugarcoating the education pill.”
“I remember one time we started off our football show, and it was probably a little pedantic; a little bit mundane,” Brown recalled. “[Hill] came out of the control room in a huff and a puff. He stood in front of the desk of the four of us, and he looked at us and he simply said, ‘You’re boring me!,’ and he turned around and went back in the control room. We took it up another notch from that point forward in terms of the energy level and enthusiasm and the frivolity, which separated that broadcast from others, and we were back on track.”
Brown remained with FOX for 11 years, during which he expanded his responsibilities to include hosting NHL studio programming and occasionally filled in on the MLB pregame and postgame shows. In lieu of live game broadcasts, he also added hosting duties for The World’s Funniest!, a comedic reality show that showcased amusing clips for entertainment purposes. Moreover, he contributed to Real Sports on HBO, hosted news magazine program America’s Black Forum, and worked with The Sporting News to host his own radio show.
Brown had previously hosted a three-hour midday show on WTEM since the station’s inception in 1992, but the two sides parted ways as his network television responsibilities amplified. The audio platform kept him fluid in the parlance of other sports while also fostering professional relationships around the industry. Since his show was not solely football-focused, Brown was able to discuss a wide variety of sports and report on human interest stories, affording contextualization of occurrences on the field.
When CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus contacted Brown to see if he would be interested in returning to the network, he asked him to make contributions to the news side of the property as well. While he had a passion for storytelling in both formats, he asked to deliver excellence on the sports side first and would take on a role in news later if needed. As a result, he replaced Greg Gumbel on The NFL Today studio program, commuting to New York City to host the show with studio analysts including Bill Cowher and Boomer Esiason. A few years later, he added Inside the NFL to his slate of responsibilities and hosted the program until its recent move to The CW Network.
“My aim was to pull out of them the best of what they brought to the table and, where possible, to inject a little levity and humor without forcing it to make it extemporaneous so that it showed that we truly were just doing things organically, not trying to force it to copycat what they were doing over at FOX,” Brown said. “If we were journalistically sound, showing that we were a group that genuinely liked each other, and, oh yes, we could still have some fun, but present all of the basic information to set the stage; set the table for the audience to watch that game through the lens of these experts, then we’ve done our job.”
In hosting the studio program, Brown carries an unselfish attitude and recognizes that the show is about the team rather than one person. Although the cast has changed since his debut with the additions of Nate Burleson, Phil Simms, and J.J. Watt, he understands how to position his colleagues to adequately extrapolate their perspectives. There are times when he will eschew the 10-second lead-up to a commercial because he can discern one of the analysts trying to chime into the conversation, focusing on the quality of the discussion more than individual promulgation.
“I will defer to them to get that point in to let them know I’m mindful of this, and we are a team-oriented group, and therefore let me allow them the opportunity to get that significant nugget in, and I may only have three to five seconds to say, ‘We’ll be back with more of the State Farm Postgame Show after this,’” Brown explained. “That is an indication to them that I recognize their value; I’m willing to sacrifice so they can give something that hopefully is going to elevate the broadcast and separate us from the competition.”
Over the course of the game itself, it is up to the studio team to react to the action in real time and adapt as necessary. Outside of a sudden injury or change in status, unexpected news items that emerge before the games largely occur beforehand. Contrarily, all developments occur during the slate of game action once the opening kickoff takes place, requiring everyone to remain nimble and malleable at all times. The studio team regularly provides updates from the other action around the league, something that is partially in the purview of Brown.
“Before I used to do the highlights fully myself because you’ve only got eight to maybe 10 seconds to do that, but a way of keeping them engaged and in tune is to do it with the analyst,” Brown said. “My job then is to put a headline on that highlight that we’re about to shoot in to the various markets – a la the RedZone – to keep everyone abreast of what’s going on…. ‘A record in the making,’ and then boom, we’ll go into a lot with that.”
Prior to CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus retiring from the business in April 2024, the network will present the television broadcast for Super Bowl LVIII, marking the 22nd time it has televised “The Big Game” in its illustrious history. Brown is expected to host pregame coverage of the championship matchup coming off record multiplatform viewership of the game.
Even though the audience will likely be large, his approach will remain consistent in conveying information to the viewer in a genuine manner, highlighting the key storylines of the game without coming off as pompous or imperious. As he goes live in front of a legion of football fans, Brown will heed advice he received from John Madden while play-by-play announcing by making sure that he is duly prepared with a bucket full of information.
“We always wanted to rely on the game itself being competitive and exciting – that’s what the people are tuning in to see; that’s what we got the most fun out of,” Brown explained, “but in a blowout scenario; if the stadium was experiencing some kind of an electrical problem [or] weather-related delays, we had to have as much information as possible to prime the audience for the telecast.”
Brown’s current contract with CBS guarantees a set number of fill-in anchor responsibilities on the CBS Evening News throughout the year, allowing him to make contributions in both genres under the CBS brand. Throughout his second stint with the company, he has also had a chance to present stories for 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and CBS Sunday Morning among other properties in the news division.
“Whenever we have our news Zooms to go over the stories for the day, etc., they’ll usually start off and ask me, ‘How do you do such and such?,’” Brown said. “Well, I am a substitute anchor there, but my attitude is still always one of, ‘You guys have got a well-oiled ship here. All I want to do is to make sure that I am complementing all of the work that you do by doing my job excellently on the air.’”
Although Brown has not studied the intricacies of the evolving sports media landscape, he feels that some parts of the industry are a microcosm for larger societal issues related to derision. Through his charity endeavors with organizations such as GENYOUth, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the Ron & Joy Paul Kidney Center at The George Washington University, Brown aims to bring people closer together and keeps the spirit of congeniality and altruism alive with every broadcast.
“I don’t care how trite it may sound but, ‘A house divided cannot stand,’” Brown said. “We ought to be looking for common ground and that which encourages each other. That is something that I absolutely speak about in the opportunities I’ve been given.”
As Brown prepares to take the stage in New York City on Wednesday night, he harkens back to advice bestowed on him from Morgan Wootten, his high school basketball coach. Before Brown was set to speak before a group of young people, he expressed a sentiment of fear and confusion about what he was going to say. In response, his coach communicated a message with the sanguinity and proficiency that guided his teams towards five national champions and 22 D.C. titles. Providing the assist to his longtime forward both in the game on the hardwood and in the game of life helped shape him into the person he is today, venerated and worthy of this acclaimed industry honor.
“He says, ‘JB, there is no such thing as new fundamentals. Fundamentals are tried and true – they’re basic. You can dress it up, but you make sure that they understand you need to master the fundamentals,’” Brown remembered being told. “Yes, bring your personality to it – don’t try to copy someone else. [It is an] old, tired expression, but it bears repeating, ‘If you try to be somebody else, you’re only going to be the second-best, but you’re going to be the first-best you.’ Be you and deliver it with excellence, remaining focused on the fundamentals.”
I am 52 years old. I was born before personal computers, and I didn’t send an email until my senior year in college. This began a lifelong pattern of being behind the technological curve. I was late to Facebook, late to Twitter, half dead when I even opened an Instagram account, and even closer to my grave with TikTok.
And I post on almost none of them with regularity.
One official post on TikTok. It was a dance with my teenage daughter and her friend – 1,200 views! Usually, Instagram and Facebook are simple re-hashes of a Twitter/X post. You see, I don’t even push something out to all three automatically.
In all seriousness, I have never been one for self-promotion, and that’s how I’ve always viewed social media. “Look at me! Look at me!” Also, I like people who have a niche and run with it. What’s my niche? Middle-aged male hot takes on anything from politics and sports to movies? Ummm, dime a dozen.
If I post a lot, I may get myself in trouble. You know, say something stupid. When it comes to video, I don’t really know how to edit on my phone, and I’ve also convinced myself that I don’t have the time.
Being holier than thou has worked for a long time. Being busier than thou has been an effective procrastination tool. And being dumber than thou probably needs to stop.
So, I’ve decided to pick one and try to commit to consistently posting something. Will it help grow my audience? Doubtful. But it might. And it’s time to try.
The ultimate question now: Which one should it be? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? TikTok? I am not ready for Reddit — it kind of scares me because I think smart people are there — and in a world where everything outside of my Reddit theory seems dumb, Snapchat just strikes me as really dumb.
In terms of metrics, Facebook has a nearly 3 billion user reach, but it feels much smaller. According to Statista, Instagram has about 2 billion, while with X, we don’t really know; but let’s say 500 million, which is actually 250 million less than Snapchat. See, we’re so dumb.
I have not decided if there is a niche on TikTok that could work for me. I could do a video of my daily visit with the food truck guy and add in a news nugget. Food Truck Tommy! He feeds us every day – a 70-something ball of energy who regularly says if he ever gets in a fight and loses, there will be two losers (think about it). To be honest, he’s such a character, Tommy should have his own account, so recording him feels like cheating.
Maybe I will show my lunch for breakfast meal and give people a nugget of info to start the day. Perhaps, I will just talk for a few seconds and see what happens. Just be me is another option.
Oy, this is stressing me out.
Facebook always has been personal for me – seeing what friends are up to, selling my Red Sox tickets, and messaging people when I travel near them. I post less than once or twice a month, and I’d like to keep it that way. Right now, my feed is hockey fights, puppies and fall sports pictures – I’m good with that.
Instagram is where young seems to meet old(er), but I don’t really like it or know how to use it effectively. I was ridiculed yesterday by simply asking, “What is a story?” You can’t expand actual pictures, and I don’t really understand why people prefer it over a Facebook (Just ‘cause your parents are on FB?).
Is a picture and a caption or a short video going to grow my audience? Is a video on Instagram better than one on TikTok? Do I need to be funny?
Forget about Threads or Truth Social as my head may actually explode.
It’s all a big bowl of yuck to me, but since this column is often cathartic for me, I think I’ve arrived at an answer.
Drum roll, please …
I think it will be TikTok … because no one told me that it should be TikTok, and maybe I can find a niche. And of course, a side benefit is how much I love giving my personal data to China.
I have a very strong opinion on the moniker “News Radio”. There are very few “news radio” stations. The majority of “news radio” stations in reality are ultra-conservative radio stations that only talk about politics, which they consider “news”. There’s a difference.
I think “Sports Radio” is starting to wade into similar waters. It isn’t so much “sports radio”, depending on the market, as much as it is “NFL radio“.
I’m not naive enough to think anything other than the NFL is the most popular sport in America, and I certainly realize that it drives ratings not only on TV but on radio, too. But, man, there are other topics out there.
If you punch up a sports radio station at any given time, there’s a really good chance the hosts are talking about the NFL. And I get it, to a point. “Play the hits”, right?
But oftentimes, the hits are not the deep dives I hear so frequently. There are conversations and then there are dissertations, and I’m hearing a lot of really in-the-weeds football conversations on sports radio recently. If you’re using terminology diehard football fans might not understand, you’re alienating your audience. If you think your audience only cares about the NFL, you’re missing a gigantic segment of potential listeners. There are so many other things to discuss outside of whether or not your team should be a 3-4 or a 4-3 defense. When you start talking about cloud coverages, wham concepts, and how wide receivers aren’t built to run a 9 route, you’re missing the forest for the trees.
I know this is anecdotal, but I’ve shared in this space before about a friend of mine who had a cup of coffee in the NFL with the Detroit Lions. On a bachelor party in Michigan, we went to the bar/restaurant next to the house we were staying in. While there, a Lions fan recognized him, came over, and asked if he was who he was.
No one in our group thought “That’s a really dedicated fan! He knew who a practice squad tight end was!”. We all thought it was borderline psychotic behavior. And there’s a really good chance that if you’re spending significant portions of your radio show discussing anyone other than the quarterback, coaches, or players who are in the headlines for off-the-field reasons, you’re having borderline psychotic conversations on the air.
If you were to talk down to the local bar and listen to the conversations sports fans were having, I’m here to tell you they’re not talking about whether or not the left guard is up to snuff or not. It’s just not happening.
It’s not engaging, it’s repetitive, it’s not all that entertaining, and it’s not all that informative. You’re talking about what you want to talk about, and that’s fine, but you’re doing a disservice to your audience by only talking about the NFL.
Can we push ourselves to do better than “Hey, it’s Friday, so here are my NFL picks for the weekend” radio? Can program directors push their talent to not have the same conversations the show just before it had? Is it possible to watch, dissect, and be knowledgeable about another sport or topic? The answer to all three should be a resounding “Hell yes”.
Branch out. There’s more to sports — and sports radio — than the NFL.
The Arizona Diamondbacks have forced a Game 7 in the NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies, and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo is so certain the Phillies will win, he’s placing large wagers on his future.
During Mad Dog Unleashed Monday ahead of Game 6, Russo said if Arizona won both games, he’d step aside from his illustrious Hall of Fame radio career.
“I would not be stunned if they won tonight. I will be floored. Floored,” Mad Dog reiterated. “And I’ll say this right now — and (New York Daily News writer) Bob Raisman write it down — if they…win the series in seven games, I will retire on the spot.”
After making the declaration, Russo quickly reneged on the pledge, making a different bet.
“You know what? I’ll make it different. I’ll make it be painful for me. If they win the next two days, two weeks from today, I will work on the air and not go to Timmy’s first game as an assistant coach. That will be painful.”
Tim Russo, the son of the Radio Hall of Famer, is embarking on his first season as an assistant basketball coach at Northern Arizona University. He had previously served as a student assistant coach at the University of Tampa and a graduate assistant at UConn. On Monday, November 6th, NAU opens its regular season on the road at UConn.
Mad Dog said you would be able to tell or not whether he paid off his bet simply by whether or not he would be on the air that day.
Game 7 of the NLCS is scheduled for 8:07 PM ET on TBS.
New Jersey 101.5 has announced plans for a special town hall broadcast on the future of electric cars and the role green energy will play in the state’s future.
The town hall will explore the state’s plans to move away from fossil fuels and its intention to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.
The station’s Eric Scott will lead the discussion of “Flipping the Switch: Are You Ready?”.
“Will New Jersey really ban gas-powered stoves and cars? There is a lot of misinformation about the state Master Energy Plan,” Scott says. “This program will help New Jersey residents understand what the plan involves and if the goals set out by Gov. Phil Murphy are even attainable.”
Joining Scott on the panel includes New Jersey State Senator Vin Gopal, New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers President Jim Appleton, CharEVC CEO Pam Frnak, State Director of Environment New Jersey Doug O’Malley, and Deputy Chief of Government Affairs for the New Jersey Business & Industry Association Ray Cantor.
The special broadcast will happen on Thursday, October 26th at 7 PM. The broadcast will air not only on the FM radio signal, but also on the station’s website, YouTube channel, and its free app.
