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Tiki Barber Walks Out Of WFAN Studio During Argument With Joe Benigno

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Tiki Barber Walks Out Of WFAN Studio During Argument With Joe Benigno

WFAN host Tiki Barber found himself opposite station legend Joe Benigno in a debate about the New York Jets on Monday, and by the end of it Barber had to leave the studio to calm down.

It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks for the Jets and their fans. Since Aaron Rodgers suffered a season-ending injury on the fourth play of the first game, the Jets went to Dallas and got beat pretty handedly by the Cowboys in Week 2 and then never really kept pace with the Patriots at MetLife Stadium on Sunday.

In an appearance on Evan & Tiki, Benigno took Barber to task for his analysis of the Jets and defense of quarterback Zach Wilson, saying Tiki couldn’t properly analyze the team’s play considering he is a beloved former member of the New York Giants and that he was calling a different game for CBS at the same time.

“All I know is this, yesterday you were in Washington with the Commanders and the Bills were you not?” Benigno asked. Barber responded he was. “OK. So don’t give me this nonsense how you’re analyzing Zach Wilson. I don’t want to hear it! It’s BS, Tik! He stinks!”

Barber, miffed at Benigno’s assertion, responded saying he was turning his mic off before you can see him on the SNY simulcast mouthing, “That’s bullshit and you know it.” He then stands up and proceeds to walk off camera and presumably out of the studio.

Co-host Evan Roberts moments later mentioned to Joe that he annoyed Tiki with what he said, and Benigno, an avid Jets fan, clarified that his comments weren’t meant to be a shot at Barber. Joe is clearly as frustrated about Wilson and the Jets as are plenty of other fans.

“I’m not annoyed at Tiki, but I’m annoyed at the whole freaking situation bro,” Benigno said.

Roberts did come to Barber’s defense in a way saying that Tiki is watching all the games even after completing his own CBS assignment.

“I don’t think he hates our team,” Roberts said.

Benigno did apologize further and that he would find a way to get in touch with him later to smooth things over.

“I don’t mean to take it out on him,” he said. “But I’ve had enough.”

Beasley Flips 2 Sports Stations to New Podcast Radio Format

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Beasley Flips 2 Sports Stations to New Podcast Radio Format

Two sports talk stations owned by Beasley Media Group have flipped in favor of a new podcast radio format according to Inside Radio.

Under a partnership with KMG Networks and operating under the Podcast Radio U.S. banner, Podcast Radio Detroit has launched on the former home of The Roar on 93.5 while Podcast Radio Carolinas occupies the frequency at 94.7 that previously aired FOX Sports Charlotte.

The podcast radio format will air some of the top podcasts in the U.S. and the world and is available to stations and groups on a network/barter basis.

“Podcast Radio is an idea that [CEO] Caroline Beasley and our team have been thinking about and researching for years and we’re excited to be the first to launch this format in the United States,” Beasley Media Group chief content officer Justin Chase. “This concept has been highly successful for Gerry [Edwards, Founder & CEO of Podcast Radio] and his team in the United Kingdom, and we believe our audience will fall in love with the Podcast Radio U.S. version we present on our stations.”

Brandon Stokley: Sean Payton Wouldn’t Do to National Media What he Does to Locals

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Brandon Stokley: Sean Payton Wouldn’t Do to National Media What he Does to Locals

The Denver Broncos got completely dismantled by the Miami Dolphins on Sunday, giving up 70 points a week after blowing a big lead and losing to the Washington Commanders at home. Broncos head coach Sean Payton clearly wasn’t in the mood to deal with many questions from the media afterwards, lashing out at a local reporter who tried to get Payton to expound on the historical significance of the loss.

On Stokely & Josh on 104.3 The Fan on Monday, hosts Brandon Stokely and Josh Dover took issue with Payton’s handling of questions from local media.

“You can be upset, and I understand why you would be upset,” Dover said. “I want you to stand up there and be angry. You should’ve been angry after that game.”

Dover called Payton’s interaction with the reporter childish, which echoed ESPN’s Ryan Clark on Get Up that same morning. Josh felt like Payton owed more to himself, the team and the press corps to not be so harsh.

“You’re the adult in the room. You got to stand up there and take it,” Dover said. “You kept Russell Wilson in the game to take it for four full quarters, right? So why don’t you do the same thing you’re asking your 22 starters to do? You stand up there, you take it like a man, and you tell everybody what went wrong and you answer all the crappy questions that you don’t think you should have to answer.”

Stokely agreed that Payton needed to show some maturity in that situation. But he thought it was further evidence that Payton views the local media covering the team as a lower class compared to national writers and team reporters.

“He’s treated the local media differently,” Stokely said. “You don’t get passes when you come in and you try to change everything and you treat the local media one way but the national media another way. You’re their best friend. They can have full access, whatever they want, whatever they need they got. Local media now, we’ve been relegated and all of a sudden everything looks different than in the past. And the performance was awful.”

Stokely added that Payton has held local media in a different regard ever since he was hired to be the Broncos head coach. He felt like had it not been a local reporter asking that same question, Payton would have acted differently.

“You don’t need to fire back at the reporter like that,” he said. “It’s uncalled for, it’s unnecessary, but I can promise you this. If that was a national reporter, if that was Seth Wickersham or Jarrett Bell, he wouldn’t have answered it like that. I can promise you that. And that’s what pisses me off. And I’m still a Sean Payton fan, but he’s pissing me off a little bit with this stuff. He is.”

Rich Eisen: NFL Can’t be Happy Taylor Swift Overshadowed Super Bowl Halftime Show

BSM Staff
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The sports and entertainment world was buzzing on Sunday as music superstar Taylor Swift was at the Kansas City Chiefs game supporting Travis Kelce.

Kelce and Swift are presumed to be dating or in the dating phase of their relationship. Taylor was with Kelce’s mother, friends and family in a private suite at Arrowhead Stadium and the two were seen leaving the stadium together that evening.

Rich Eisen talked about it on The Rich Eisen Show on Monday. He found it interesting that the Swift story completely overshadowed the league announcing that Usher would be the halftime performer at the Super Bowl in February.

Eisen said the last thing the league employees tasked with putting together the Super Bowl halftime show together probably wanted was arguably the most popular musician in the world showing up at a game the same day you announce the halftime performer.

“The only group of people who were actually upset about this yesterday have to be those in the NFL front office who are in charge of making the announcement of who’s performing at the Super Bowl halftime show,” Eisen said. “Because Usher was announced yesterday, and that wasn’t even on anybody’s radar screen about big time musical performing acts and the NFL. It was all about what was going on in Arrowhead.”

“It’s even filtered into Bill Belichick’s world!” he added.

The Patriots coach was asked in his weekly appearance on WEEI on Monday about Kelce and Swift as a couple. Belichick has admitted he’s a Swiftie, and he said of Kelce that if he managed to date Taylor it would be his biggest catch yet.

Pat McAfee: My Show ‘Being in the Middle’ of College Football Feud ‘is so Dumb’

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When ESPN brought The Pat McAfee Show onto the network, it was done to appeal to a younger audience, but it was also done, at least in part, because McAfee makes news. The show proved again on Saturday night that it has a way of finding itself in the middle of football conversations.

On Friday’s show, producer Ty Schmit interviewed former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz. Schmit, who has been asked by McAfee many times to do his Holtz impersonation on the show, talked to the former coach in full character. Not only was he doing a Holtz impersonation, he was also wearing a full costume, which included a prosthetic face.

During the segment, the real Holtz, a former ESPN analyst, said that Ohio State has a history of being too soft under head coach Ryan Day and that is how they have lost the games they have. He predicted that would be the reason Notre Dame would win on Saturday night.’

Following Ohio State’s last second victory, Day addressed the former Notre Dame coach saying “I’d like to know where Lou Holtz is right now. What he said about our team, what he said about our team, I cannot believe.”

McAfee admitted that he immediately started texting friends associated with Ohio State.

“I texted everybody I know from Ohio State,” he said on his show Monday. “I was like, I f***ing love Ryan Day. I love the fact that he was like, ‘I will hit an old man. I do not care. What this guy said is out of pocket.’”

McAfee added that the real Lou Holtz, who is 86, joked about having dementia and not really knowing what he was saying. He added that he wonders if Day knows that Holtz made his comments to another man who was in a Lou Holtz costume.

“Us being in the middle of that whole thing is so dumb,” he said.

Schmit admitted that it was hard to believe the moment is real. 

“I was laughing until I thought I was going to pass out on Saturday night,” he said.

Michael Berry: People Are Sick of Having Stories ‘Crammed Down Their Throats’

BNM Staff
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Michael Berry: People Are Sick of Having Stories ‘Crammed Down Their Throats’

Syndicated radio host Michael Berry has shared his thoughts that the average American is sick of having certain stories pushed day after day.

During The Michael Berry Show Monday, the Houston-based host argued that people had turned against University of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders not because of his action or his team’s loss this weekend, but rather because they’re simply tired of hearing about him.

“I think people get tired of the media saying, ‘Oh, this is the top story. Let’s just cram this down their throat until they vomit back on us and they just can’t stand it any longer,” Berry said.

He continued by noting that he’s concerned a similar situation will take place with viral “Rich Men North of Richmond” singer Oliver Anthony.

“The media couldn’t decide ‘Do we hate this guy? Or do we ride this wave?’ But once they decided ‘We’re going to ride this wave, it became all Oliver Anthony, all day long’. And my fear for him, and for a movement he had begun, is that it’s burning too bright. It’s going to burn out. You can’t — overnight — go that hot and sustain it because too many things are coming at you too fast.”

ESPN Reportedly Leaving Seaport Studios in New York, Possible Move in LA too

BSM Staff
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ESPN Reportedly Leaving Seaport Studios in New York, Possible Move in LA too

ESPN is making some changes in New York. Puck News reports that the famous Seaport Studio will be empty soon as the network relocates its New York City operations to Hudson Square.

The South Street Seaport studios have been open since 2018. It is currently home to Get Up, First Take, Around the Horn, and NBA Countdown. In the past, it hosted High Noon and Sunday NFL Countdown as well.

The Walt Disney Company owns the property where the new studios will be housed. Puck reports the relocation is likely to happen “no later than fiscal 2025.”

The Puck report also states that ESPN could be on the move in Los Angeles too. On the West Coast, the network currently is housed in LA Live, outside of Crypto.com Arena. No details were offered on those plans.

Ken Carman Explains Why He Won’t Mention Contract in Deshaun Watson Criticism

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Conversations about Deshaun Watson are very rarely just about the Browns’ quarterback’s performance. Last week, Mina Kimes said on Pablo Torre Finds Out that it would be hard to talk about him if he were playing better because of the sexual misconduct allegations against him. On 92.3 The Fan on Monday morning, Ken Carman added a subject that Watson makes it easier to avoid when he plays well.

“I don’t like saying $230 million quarterback and I’m doing my damndest not to,” the morning show host said.

The Cleveland Browns traded five draft picks to the Houston Texans for Deshaun Watson, including three first-rounders. Then, the team signed its new quarterback to a fully-guaranteed contract worth over $230 million.

Carman says any coverage of Watson that mentions his contract tends to happen only when he and the team play poorly. It feels unfair, because the Browns’ problems are about more than just a quarterback.

“If this contract and the salary is such a storyline, why can’t we know what the coaches make?” he said. “Could you imagine the criticism of Kevin Stefanski last year if we knew he made X amount of millions of dollars? Like if we turn it on and they go, ‘Whoa! Kevin Stefanski is making $10 million a year. Wait a minute. You’re getting paid $10 million a year to go seven and ten? So you got paid $1,000,000 a loss?’ Like, that’s the type of thing that we would say.”

The hit that the Browns are taking to their salary cap is often cited as why Watson’s contract is worth scrutiny. Carman disagrees. Whether or not the contract limits the team’s ability to compete, it isn’t the biggest cost.

“You got the boots put to you anyway because you don’t have the draft picks,” he said. “It’s the three first-round picks that the investment is. That’s what’s real in my world. The money does not matter.”

John Skipper: ‘Hollywood Strikes Will Not Impact NBA Media Rights Negotiations’

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John Skipper: ‘Hollywood Strikes Will Not Impact NBA Media Rights Negotiations’

Media rights for national television packages for the National Basketball Association are set to expire following the 2024-25 season, with negotiations expected to begin in the new year, which could occur amid Hollywood strikes. The NBA’s exclusive negotiating 45-day window with its current rights holders – The Walt Disney Company (ABC/ESPN) and Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT/TBS/NBA TV) – opens on March 9, 2024 before the rights can be taken to the open market.

Numerous sports media entities have reported interest in the league, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and NBC Sports as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver could look to triple the aggregate fee for games. The league is in the midst of a nine-year deal worth a collective $23.4 billion with the two broadcast entities and has positioned itself for an increase through a new In-Season Tournament, rules regulating load management and additional media incentives.

Linear platforms, combined with sports talk radio and digital outlets have burgeoned coverage of the league to new heights. Superstars such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo regularly dominate sports conversation in various locales, and the Association has embedded itself in the culture both domestically and abroad. The NBA is expanding globally, holding several international contests each year and marketing its teams, players and personnel in new ways, leveraging its position as the predominant basketball product for augmented fees.

While there seems to be an end in sight for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) after almost 150 days out of work, companies making bids for the Association project the holdout to stymie certain revenue streams. Warner Bros. Discovery could take a hit between $300 million and $500 million, while The Walt Disney Company shares dropped a collective 14% amid losses of more than $4 million per day. 

“This will have zero impact – the strike – on what the NBA gets paid for their rights,” Meadowlark Media co-founder and CEO John Skipper opined on Skipper & Samson. Skipper was part of negotiating the current deal and sees the value the league has in that there are more people interested in broadcasting the games than there are game packages themselves. Because of this, the NBA should have leverage in its negotiations with both traditional and digital outlets.

Conversely, former baseball executive David Samson affirmed that the Hollywood strikes will likely have an impact on negotiations because of the power it grants legacy media in negotiations. Zaslav, as surmised by Samson, will use these strikes as an excuse to justify a diminished fee increase, something he feels will be countered by the NBA with the question of why the company inked its Inside the NBA commentators to 10-year extensions.

“He’ll say back, ‘Well actually, we’ll repurpose them the way we’ve already started to repurpose Barkley,’” Samson articulated. “So I think that the strike actually gives leverage to Warner Bros. Discovery in its negotiation with the NBA.”

David Zaslav, the chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Discovery publicly stated that the entity will not overpay for the NBA and said it does not need the property. Negotiating through the media is a bad idea, according to Skipper, who was previously involved in these negotiations while serving as the president of ESPN. He came to that conclusion after ESPN lost the rights to the National Hockey League after the 2004-05 lockout, a property it did not reacquire until the 2021-22 season.

“In this industry, I never found it anything but deleterious to my discussions with the leagues if I said anything publicly other than, ‘We love this league; we want to renew our rights,’ which we said all the time,” expressed Skipper. “I even said it when I didn’t love the league and didn’t want the rights because, as you know, the second-best outcome of any negotiation is that somebody else pays way more money than they think they have to [in order] to get rights.”

Since the demand outweighs the supply, Skipper does not think that anything going on in the world of entertainment and late night television will affect how much networks will end up paying for the NBA. The league will continue to have every intention of proliferating its earnings derived from media rights, and he thinks it will be successful in its quest to do so.

“He is going to get a very big increase,” Skipper said, referring to Commissioner Silver, “and the writers’ strike is not going to have any effect on that increase, in my opinion.”

Jamie Erdahl: Being a Sideline Reporter ‘is Not About You’

BSM Staff
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Jamie Erdahl: Being a Sideline Reporter ‘is Not About You’

Jamie Erdahl shines brightly each morning on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football. She is a guest this week on the Front Office Sports Today podcast and told Michael McCarthy that her basketball career at St. Olaf College helped prepare her for her role in broadcasting.

McCarthy described her role on GMFB as “a point guard.” Erdahl said the comparison is apt, because any good point guard has to know what will make their team succeed.

“I like when other people look their best and sound their best and feel like they are in the best spot to be their best version on television,” she said.

Erdahl added that she also learned a lot from her years working for CBS. She was a sideline reporter for the network’s NFL broadcasts as well as the weekly SEC on CBS game. She said the role taught her to be selfless on television.

“Being a sideline reporter, it is not about you,” she said. “You are telling somebody else’s story. My job is to set Nick Saban up in a way to give the best answer possible, frankly, in saying the least amount of things as possible, in my opinion. I think the best questions sometimes are the quickest.”

She added that learning what your colleagues need also matters. She noted that how she poses a question to each of her GMFB co-stars is different because she wants each of them at their most comfortable.

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