ESPN host Mike Greenberg is a notorious fan of the New York Jets, and he has exhibited his elation on numerous occasions while on the air towards the team because of the acquisition of star quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Last night, Greenberg hosted a watch party from his home in New York City where the mood quickly turned from jubilation to despair. Rodgers suffered a torn left Achilles tendon on the fourth play of the game, officially ending his season and fluctuating the team’s championship odds as it seeks to snap a 12-year playoff drought. Although the Jets won the game anyway, the dramatic unfolding of events left Greenberg and many other fans of the team in a state of distress and disbelief.
Throughout the night, Greenberg’s wife shared several videos of him reacting to what had happened, including a video call with ESPN personality Pat McAfee. His daughter also posted an update about him pertaining to how he was taking the news in real time. As Rodgers received medical treatment and an X-ray, Jets fans held their breath over whether or not the star quarterback had avoided a serious injury. As it became more clear that it was likely an Achilles tendon injury, the football world recognized that its worst nightmare had come to fruition.
“It is time to get up with Aaron Rodgers,” Greenberg opened his program Tuesday on ESPN. “The star quarterback is down. Will he or his team get back? I can’t do this; I just can’t. Sydney, stop it; kill the music; kill the graphics [and] kill the video. I can’t pretend this is alright. I cannot pretend this is just a normal morning, [and] I cannot do the big voice.”
Greenberg was joined on set with Damien Woody, who was present at the watch party, along with Monday Night Countdown analyst Robert Griffin III. Conversation on the show centered around the injury and the future implications it could have on the team and league at large. Struggling to make it through the beginning of the show, Greenberg addressed how he felt about the entire situation since he knew it is something the audience would want to know.
“There is no way in the world I have processed this,” Greenberg said. “I understand that millions of things have happened yesterday in the world that, in the big picture, were more significant than this. But from a sports perspective, this is about as overwhelming as anything that could possibly happen.”
During his remarks, Greenberg ensured to note that there was a six to eight month stretch of anticipation and fantasizing of possibilities with the Jets, evinced by major media networks focusing large swaths of their coverage on Rodgers’ arrival. While there is no one factor to blame for the injury, he conveyed a cogent point that football is a violent and dangerous game where injuries are all but guaranteed to take place. As he has shrewdly done throughout his career on both television and radio, Greenberg sought to blend objectivity with subjectivity in describing his feelings about what happened.
“For it to come to an end like that that quickly, there’s no way I have fully taken in the magnitude of what actually happened on the fourth play last night,” Greenberg said, incredulously.
Chuck Todd achieved his low bar for success. I wish he would have reached higher. While saying goodbye to Meet the Press after 9 years of Sundays this week, the moderator reveled in the fact that he had not killed the longest-running television program in history. Saying that was his goal: lasting long enough to pass the baton. He has presided over the slow decline of MTP’s ratings, it’s now third in the Sunday morning race, averaging a mere 2.5 million viewers. And perhaps most importantly Todd presided over the broadcasts quicker, more thorough decline in viewer respect.
Todd became a punchline among political and media critics, even comedians. It was Trevor Noah who mocked him to his face at the recent White House Correspondents Dinner, otherwise known as the “nerd prom”. Rhetorically asking Todd, who was in the audience, “How is it going Chuck?” And then joked, “I’d ask a follow-up, but Chuck doesn’t know what that is.”
Todd’s tenure at the helm symbolized what is wrong with today’s journalism from The New York Times to CNN and NBC. As the Columbia Journalism Review summed up in marking the passing of Chuck Todd, he represents “both sidesism, false equivalence” and I would add a compulsion not to offend, even when the audience is being offended by a guest who refuses to answer the question.
Todd’s chief competitors — George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week and CBS Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan — are much more willing to keep asking an important question until it is actually answered.
And perhaps, the best lesson in what not to do, versus what to do was displayed on his own sister network MSNBC. The interview subject was the “shiny object” of the political world Vivek Ramaswamy. While Chuck Todd did his usual poor job of challenging the Republican primary candidate, his colleague on MSNBC, Mehdi Hasan, came prepared with a list of questions and previous quotes by Ramaswamy which served to impale the tech-bro with his own tweets and sentences.
When the anti-affirmative action candidate excused his acceptance of a $50,000 scholarship intended to educate poverty-level immigrants with an “I didn’t have the money then” lie, Hasan waved his tax returns from that year showing the candidate made more than $600,000. It was a beautiful moment, not to be duplicated on MSNBC’s parent network.
And just to remind us what we will be missing on Sundays without Chuck, he gave us one to remember on his final program. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) was the final guest interview.
While Todd asked him questions about Mitch McConnel’s frozen stare at two recent press appearances, Cassidy, an MD vouched for his ability to continue as Senate Minority Leader, while managing to equate President Joe Biden’s age issues in as a false equivalency.
If Biden had gone into a daze in front of cameras for minutes at a time, Fox and the GOP would be a non-stop “resign” chorus. Biden tripping over a sandbag or an Air Force One step is not nearly equivalent, but Chuck Todd did not point that out in any form.
I worked with and competed against Todd during my time first at NBC and then at the White House as an ABC News correspondent. He was pleasant enough, but not feared by his competitors. In fact, he came off the same way he does on television. Arrogant and pretending to know something his colleagues did not.
I can’t remember any story Chuck Todd broke, he was never awarded any recognition by the White House Correspondent’s Association. He prided himself on being a Washington insider, and that is his legacy at MTP. An insider who cared more about not offending those in politics, rather than holding them accountable.
There are others whom NBC should have chosen to replace him. Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow come to mind immediately. They are practiced at holding political talking points and those who refuse to stray from them to account. Jake Tapper has his moments as well. I don’t think they were asked.
NBC is likely afraid of the GOP pushback their elevations to what used to be the premiere network public affairs program would have caused. Plus Maddow routinely has a bigger audience for her once-a-week performance art of a show on Mondays.
Todd’s replacement, Kristen Welker has a clean slate as she starts her turn “in the chair”. Unfortunately, she did not start well, appearing across from Todd Sunday to praise his work and promise to carry on in his spirit.
One can only hope she was merely being polite, otherwise, the venerable Sunday morning program will not outlast her.
When New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers went down four plays into his season debut after what an MRI later found to be a complete tear of his left Achilles tendon, the entire game plan of the broadcast had to shift. Nearly all of the media coverage leading up to the contest was focused on Rodgers and the impact he would have, but it then had to change over to discuss backup quarterback Zach Wilson and the future implications at hand. The matchup ended on an overtime punt return by rookie Xavier Gipson in his NFL debut, giving the Jets a dramatic victory viewed as somewhat pyrrhic in scope.
Richard Deitsch of The Athletic spoke with ESPN’s Monday Night Football play-by-play announcer, Joe Buck, as he was leaving MetLife Stadium at the conclusion of the game. Buck and his broadcast partner Troy Aikman officially made history on Monday night as the longest-tenured announcing booth in NFL history, starting their 22nd season together and second year on ESPN. The duo officially passed Pat Summerall and John Madden, calling more than 300 regular-season games and six Super Bowls together.
“You just can never give up on a game, and we ended up with a thrilling overtime win for the home team on a punt,” Buck said. “I mean, that’s as good as it gets. You always get reminded, and we happen to be now reminded in Week 1 of our 22nd season together, that you’re doing the audience a disservice to give up on a game.”
The injury to Rodgers sucked much of the excitement out of MetLife Stadium, and it resulted in Buck starting to focus more on the Jets’ top-tier defense. While there were likely many people watching the game just to see Rodgers, those who decided to continue viewing the contest needed to be informed about the rest of the action. As a former quarterback, Aikman was able to spotlight the situation as well, but everyone involved in the production knew that it was their responsibility to do justice to the game. It was a hallmark of their chemistry and one of the reasons why they are widely regarded as one of the best broadcast booths in all of professional sports.
“To be together in this business that can be high-pressure and strange at times [with] back-stabbing and infighting and all the stuff that goes on in a broadcast booth or in a TV production, we’ve never had any of it,” Buck explained. “Maybe that’s getting a little annoying hearing that all the time, but it is true.”
Buck made a call on the final play of the game that is receiving plaudits across the football landscape, specifically highlighting that there were no flags in sight as Gipson sprinted towards the end zone to seal the win. Afterwards, he let the crowd tell the rest of the story, leading into Scott Van Pelt’s Monday Night Postgame show and special edition of SportsCenter.
“When I’m home watching games, I just want to know that,” Buck said of his decision to mention the lack of flags. “I’m going to be wrong one of these times and there’s going to be a flag under somebody’s shoe, but I feel like it’s just a good detail to throw in because people are used to seeing a lot of flags on special teams plays. So if you throw that in there, it lets people know that if he gets into the end zone, this thing’s over.”
When Dan Patrick worked at ESPN starting in 1999, he became one of the faces of the network appearing with Keith Olbermann on SportsCenter. The duo’s edition of the flagship program came to be known as the “Big Show,” and it was a staple of sports coverage at the time. Another edition of the program was led by Rich Eisen and the late-Stuart Scott, and they exhibited consistent rapport and a strong chemistry on the air that helped define the show. While all of the SportsCenter anchors were, in theory, on the same team, there was a level of competition evident within the building that manifested itself in different ways.
In a recent appearance on the Macrodosing podcast through Barstool Sports, Patrick recalled a story about playing pick-up basketball against Stuart Scott. Knowing that Scott was an inherent competitor having played against him before, Patrick decided to run up and down the floor to work up a sweat. As soon as he started doing this, Scott began to defend him and it led to a contentious interaction.
“He’s forearming me and bodying me; the whole thing,” Patrick recalled. “Here I was being a dick on the floor and I was like, ‘Okay, now you’ve got me. I’m going to be this competitive guy,’ and I said, ‘I’m dribbling [with] my left hand.’ He’s down on the floor like a Duke basketball player slapping the floor and I said, ‘Where do you want me to f****ng score on you?’
Patrick directly opposed Scott and moved down the baseline to attempt a layup, but was undercut and knocked to the floor on his back by the defender. The play resulted in an injury and the other SportsCenter anchors suggested he go to the hospital. After a respite in the bleachers, he returned to the floor at the top of the key and made a shot before exiting the gym. From there, he went to the emergency room and discovered that he had suffered a chipped vertebra. Nonetheless, he went back to the studios to anchor SportsCenter that night and told Scott there was no animosity between them over what had happened. The entire ordeal, Patrick said, encapsulated the type of relationship they had.
“I don’t know if we liked each other,” Patrick said. “We respected each other. Well, Stuart wanted my job.”
Scott was diagnosed with appendiceal cancer in 2007 and entered remission twice before he ultimately lost the battle against the disease in 2015. In the year before his passing, he was honored with the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the ESPYs and gave a memorable speech that inspired the audience to stay persistent and never give up on their dreams. Patrick, who was hosting his own nationally syndicated radio program at the time, requested an interview with Scott but was turned down because he was simply not up for it. The public relations representative, however, ensured to tell Patrick that Scott wanted to remind him that he knocked him down during the basketball incident.
“Even as he’s dying, he’s still competing, and I’m like, ‘Yep, he did,’” Patrick said. “Here I am telling P.R. at ESPN, ‘Yeah, but I scored.’…. With all of the things that we maybe didn’t agree on, we agreed that we were going to compete with each other. He made me better, and I hope I made him better.”
Nancy Mace is willing to talk to anybody. That is evident by the media schedule that is in front of her. It includes several appearances for the South Carolina Republican on outlets largely considered to be more liberal.
“I see you this morning on CNN and then you’re coming back in 2 weeks to do The View,” Sid Rosenberg joked during a conversation with the congresswoman Tuesday morning on WABC. “Are you sure you’re a Republican?”
She countered saying that Rosenberg, who she calls a friend, was not the only one to question her sanity.
“My mom is with you, Sid,” She said. “She’s like, ‘I’m sorry. She’s like, are you crazy?’.”
Mace’s position is that Republicans have to win over the audiences of shows and networks that usually disagree with them in order to make the necessary gains to win elections in 2024. Rosenberg agreed it was a smart strategy but said it would be hard to stay calm and share rational ideas when “those animals Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin” are interrupting her.
Then, he pivoted to his promotion of Mace. He wanted to make sure she knew that he had mentioned her as a potential running mate in a recent interview with former President and 2024 candidate Donald Trump.
“Yeah, numero uno, and I cannot thank you enough, which is why I love you so much,” Mace responded. “Love WABC and love your show so much. You’ve been so good to us. You get it. I mean, you get where the country needs to go.”
When Rosenberg spoke with the former president earlier this month, he insisted that Trump should pick a female running mate in 2024. Mace was his first choice, but he also mentioned former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kerri Lake, former Hawaii representative Tusli Gabbard, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Norm.
Minutes after New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers took the field to make his debut with the team in front of a packed and energized crowd at MetLife Stadium, the sentiment turned to one of concern and dread when he went down with an injury. Four plays into the game, the 39-year-old quarterback went down with an injury to his ankle that an MRI confirmed was a complete tear of his left Achilles tendon, ending his season. Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were on the call for Monday Night Football, balancing the Rodgers development with the game at hand.
The Jets are scheduled to play in prime time five more times this season, and all of the attention around the league was spotlighted on Rodgers and the team as they sought to turn their Super Bowl aspirations into a reality. While “Gang Green” ultimately won the game on an overtime punt return by rookie Xavier Gipson in his NFL debut, all of the conversation surrounding the contest pertained to the status of No. 8.
Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti, much like most other media outlets in the New York metropolitan area and beyond, have been talking about the impact of Rodgers and the Jets more than ever leading into this season. With all signs pointing to a prolonged absence, there are people imploring the team to make a move at quarterback rather than starting Zach Wilson, who has struggled in his first two seasons in the NFL.
Being that all of the attention was focused on Rodgers – so much so that Peyton Manning admitted that he had nothing to talk about on the ManningCast if he was out – the injury will have far-reaching implications both on the football field and for sports media outlets alike.
“He was the toast of the town here, and 99% of the media attention was focused on the Jets,” Esiason said Tuesday morning on WFAN. “Everything from Hard Knocks to everybody and their mother interviewing him, including us.”
When Rodgers was taken out of the game, there was no immediate word regarding the severity of his injury. Upon emerging from the medical tent after several minutes, he was seated on a cart and taken into the tunnel for X-rays, which came back negative. Rodgers had an MRI on Tuesday morning that confirmed the team’s worst fears of a season-ending Achilles injury.
“It was the biggest story in the NFL that ended four plays in,” Giannotti said. “Because of the hope and what could have been, this is up there at the top of the list of the biggest Jets disasters.”
As a former quarterback, Esiason wishes he was able to suit up for the Jets and help lead the team to a Super Bowl, and revealed that he was barely able to sleep over the news last night. During the game though, Esiason was watching the traditional broadcast on ESPN and commended Monday Night Football analyst Troy Aikman for adequately describing the differences in game planning between a veteran quarterback such as Rodgers and a novice one in Wilson.
“I’ve been here for 17 years,” Esiason said. “There’s been a lot of crap that’s happened. This one makes me sick.”
Giannotti is notorious for being a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, but being in the New York marketplace meant that he was covering Rodgers and the Jets. While he was on the air, he conveyed a despondent sensibility and still had a sense of incredulousness towards whether or not the instance truly occurred. Unfortunately for Giannotti and football fans, the instance was more than merely a bad dream, but very much a realistic worst-case scenario and rendered Tuesday’s program into the catharsis of extreme shock and distress.
“I’ve never felt like this about a team that I didn’t grow up rooting for,” Giannotti said. “I’ve never been this emotionally affected by that. This story was going to take over the city; it was going to take over sports. It was the biggest story in football, and we had a front-row seat for it.”
Joe Scarborough says Donald Trump has gone to “war with FOX News.” It is a position he never thought that he would see a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States take.
“Fox News, they’ll get by,” he said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “But I’m just saying, when you have a Republican Party that is that splintered, with Donald Trump dividing it right down the middle, it doesn’t bode well for next year.”
Jonathan Lemire, Scarborough’s MSNBC colleague, agreed with the power the network has held with Republican voters and pointed out that it hasn’t always had a smooth relationship with Donald Trump.
“That’s a risky bet to make. We know what power they have wielded for such a long time. And it’s true. They were supportive, eventually, of Trump in 2016. They were all in on 2020, and they’ve kind of gone back and forth here like he has.”
Scarborough said that the “risky bet” could be what costs Trump the nomination. Lemire agreed, noting that despite some of his supporters turning on the network, FOX News still remains the most influential news source for the audience likely to vote in the Republican Primaries.
“If he’s turning off some Republicans, if he doesn’t get that full-throated endorsement of Fox News next time around, that could — to your point, Joe — absolutely come back and hurt him,” Lemire said.
The Walt Disney Company, ESPN and the National Football League will bring fans a new alternate presentation when the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars play the first of five international games throughout the 2023 regular season. The hit Pixar movie, “Toy Story,” will be the setting for the real-time broadcast, which will take place within the universe. Geared towards younger fans, the broadcast will be based in “Andy’s Room” and feature Toy Story staples such as Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Bo Peep among other characters. The game will be exclusively available through streaming services Disney+ and ESPN+, along with through the league’s NFL+ platform.
Falcons and Jaguars players will be animated and replicate motion from the game itself using the NFL’s Next Gen Stats Player Tracking technology. All other aspects of the contest – including graphics, the scoreboard and celebrations – will occur within the Toy Story setting. Additionally, the broadcasters – which will consist of Drew Carter on play-by-play, Booger McFarland on color commentary and 12-year-old Pepper Persley reporting – will be fully animated utilizing motion-capture technology.
Real-life players will contribute to the presentation through pre-recorded segments and interviews, and there will also be demonstrations meant to convey different parts of the game of football to the audience. Moreover, the halftime show will feature Duke Caboom attempting a motorcycle jump, sure to keep viewers entertained.
The game will be available for replay upon the conclusion of the contest and can be watched in over 95 markets around the world. All of the action begins on Sunday, Oct. 1 at 9:30 a.m. EST/6:30 a.m. PST on Disney+, ESPN+ and the NFL+ platform.
This broadcast marks the latest innovation in ESPN’s alternate broadcast history and utilizes the Disney portfolio to cultivate a unique brand offering. Later in the year, CBS Sports will team up with Paramount Global subsidiary Nickelodeon to present an alternate-themed telecast of Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Nev., marking the first-ever alternate championship presentation.
The traditional broadcast of the game is also exclusive to ESPN+ and will feature the secondary NFL on ESPN broadcast team of Chris Fowler, Dan Orlovsky, Louis Riddick and Laura Rutledge on the call. On the next night, Joe Buck, Troy Aikman and Lisa Salters present the traditional Monday Night Football broadcast on ESPN as the Seattle Seahawks visit MetLife Stadium to take on the New York Giants.
Syndicated radio host Erick Erickson said the media has resorted to dismissing former President Obama to prop up President Joe Biden.
“If you are a long-time listener of this program, you will recall the trip I took to Washington in September or October of 2022,” he said. “I was doing some press gaggles with press members trying to assess the lay of the land and how things would play out for the GOP.”
During the trip, Erickson said there was growing concern among the Democrat party that Joe Biden was a political liability. He noted multiple press members for various media outlets told him that The New York Times was working on a story that portrayed Biden negatively.
“It would begin once the election was over, and the bloodbath had been seen for the Democrats to push Joe Biden out,” he said. “He would be a one-term president. That never happened. The Democrats did far better in the midterm election than people thought. Part of it was abortion, but a lot of it was, contrary to what a lot of Trump supporters say was the defend democracy thing.”
Erick Erickson added that President Biden runs ads during 60 Minutes after NFL Sunday more than a year after the 2024 presidential election, which doesn’t bode well for his party.
Rich Eisen never thought he would be managing employees, dealing with time cards and figuring out how to reach the bottom line on a yearly basis. The longtime television host always had a better score on the reading section of the SAT than mathematics, and he did not study business operations or management while in college. As the modern media ecosystem has changed, Eisen has taken ownership of his intellectual property and developed it with sustained growth and adaptability.
Eisen recently agreed to a new deal with Cumulus Media that has its podcast network distribute, market and monetize ongoing and upcoming podcasts within the new “Rich Eisen Podcast Network.” Through his company, Rich Eisen Productions, the veteran television host is aiming to grow his audience and cultivate a vast portfolio of offerings appealing to different niches of the marketplace. Had he resigned to ‘No’ as an answer, however, there is a chance that none of it would have come to fruition and that he would solely be working under the auspices of a large television network.
It can all be traced back to when Eisen had a conversation with NFL Network President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Bornstein in 2011 shortly before the start of the National Football League lockout. The capricious state of the media industry and his own aspirations catalyzed him to ask about penetrating beyond the scope of solely hosting NFL Total Access to explore new ways to disseminate his voice.
Working just outside of Hollywood, Eisen recognized that he was surrounded by pop culture and celebrities. Moreover, he observed that people watched sports programming for reasons other than learning new information, leading him to pitch a podcast that would amalgamate these topics. Bornstein answered by asking Eisen, the network’s first employee, how much the production would cost. “It will cost you nothing,” Eisen said to Bornstein, who replied, “Then why are you even asking me? Go ahead, do it.”
Landing a position to anchor the coveted daily ESPN flagship program, SportsCenter, was Eisen’s dream from the time he started studying communications at the University of Michigan. On the side, he periodically performed stand-up comedy and imitated some of his favorite sports announcers, including Howard Cosell, the renowned voice of Monday Night Football.
Eisen worked with Chris Berman when he initially landed at ESPN. Then, he was assigned to anchor the show with Stuart Scott. Having joined the network three years earlier, Scott quickly stood out because of his unrivaled delivery and cache with the audience. While they came to be known as a routine pairing – along with the “Big Show” of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann – Eisen was never formally told that he and Scott would appear together within the larger lineup.
Eisen never thought he would depart ESPN; that is, until SportsCenter began to change. As consumers gained the ability to discover live scores and watch highlights in real time, the philosophy of the show centered on divulging more about why something happened as opposed to what occurred.
“The role of a SportsCenter anchor changed, and it changed to more of a role of moderator between two analysts coming on to argue about why their opinion about what happened was correct, and I didn’t like it,” Eisen said. “I didn’t enjoy it.”
Upon requesting consideration for other projects within the company, including Good Morning America, he was told that he would be doing more editions of SportsCenter and be limited in his other work.
The offer to host the debate show Cold Pizza was enticing because it would be taking place from New York City, Eisen’s home marketplace. After meeting with those behind the concept though, he was not sold and declined the offer. Simultaneously, Eisen was receiving interest from Bornstein, his former ESPN boss, to join NFL Network and host NFL Total Access.
“When ESPN told me we were done and leaked it to USA Today three days before the end of my contract, I kind of got a very hardball lesson in our business and went with NFL Network,” Eisen said. “….The NFL was only growing in popularity at the time [and] I could work on a show that was definitely going to employ more pop culture than just the NFL.”
From the time Eisen joined NFL Network in 2003, the league has flourished. Two decades later, the league is in the first year of new national media rights deals that generates more than $12 billion annually across linear and digital platforms, and is coming off a Super Bowl that set viewership records. Yet a preponderance of the league is based on storylines and entertainment value, which is why Eisen knew that in order to take the next step in his career, he would need to find a way to fuse sports with other genres.
“There’s a reason why the NFL stops America’s greatest sporting event – an exported sporting event – for a rock concert essentially in the middle of it and nobody bats an eyelash,” Eisen said. “As a matter of fact, more people talk about the halftime show than sometimes what happens in the Super Bowl itself. I just thought to myself, ‘More and more people are attuned to talking about movies, TV, books [and] music when they’re coming to the table for sports conversation.’”
Eisen uses his platform to benefit good causes, one of which is the distinctive “Run Rich Run” charitable endeavor. The entire ordeal began in 2005 after he was challenged to run the 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine in a full suit and tie by running back Terrell Davis. Eleven years later, NFL Network executive Sarah Swanson suggested to Eisen that he should transform the event to benefit charity, and it was a proposition he could simply not turn down, resulting in more than $5 million raised over the past eight years. In the year after it became tied to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Eisen posted his best time of 5.94 seconds, a mark he will try to top next year in Indianapolis.
“My children were very young when this first started and I just thought to myself what a nightmare these families are going through when they get the worst call,” Eisen said. “….It was an absolute simple choice to do this, and I’m so thrilled. I’m a lucky guy to have the opportunity to do this for so many families.”
Once the NFL lockout commenced in 2011, Eisen was asked to take his podcast to NFL Network for a weekly show, which featured interviews with personalities from sports and entertainment. A few years later, Eisen received a call from DIRECTV’s Audience Network to ask if he would be interested in broadcasting the show on the outlet and simulcasting it on radio. He was offered the slot following Dan Patrick, someone Eisen looked up to growing up, and ultimately decided to take his program there and on the NFL Now digital platform. The Rich Eisen Show was simulcast on FOX Sports Radio starting in 2014, creating consistency in that he would be following Patrick both on television and radio.
When AT&T completed its acquisition of Time Warner Inc. in 2018, it sought to build a vast content portfolio and broad means of distribution. Audience Network shuttered to focus on marketing efforts for the HBO Max over-the-top (OTT) streaming service and rendered Eisen without a television home.
Shortly thereafter, iHeartMedia subsidiary Premiere Networks, which distributes FOX Sports Radio to affiliates, doubled down on its commitment to Colin Cowherd’s show and dropped Eisen’s program. Patrick found out about the television news on the same day, but he had approximately 300 radio affiliates, whereas Eisen was left with none.
“I decided this wasn’t going to be the way this was going to end,” Eisen articulated. “I thought to myself, ‘I don’t have an MBA, but what I do have is a degree in this business for 20-something years and a crew that was insanely talented.’”
Eisen funded the show himself for a while and broadcast on YouTube immediately after the NFL Scouting Combine with no presence on traditional television or radio. The show was being run off a laptop where a producer would cue elements using the keyboard and load graphics emailed by designers from home. Eisen’s program was eventually picked up by NBC Sports Network for a two-month run and continued airing on Peacock and SiriusXM’s NBC Sports Audio channel. Cumulus/Westwood One assisted with the distribution of the show starting in December 2020, beginning a synergistic, mutually-beneficial partnership between both parties.
“How lucky can somebody be in a moment where you feel unlucky?,” Eisen asked. “That motivates me every day…. If I’m not motivated and I’m not coming in shot out of a cannon, then something’s wrong.”
The program left Peacock and NBC Sports Audio in 2022 to join the Roku Channel. The show continues to broadcast on SiriusXM satellite radio and on 61 local affiliates, in addition to being distributed as a podcast through Audacy’s platform and the Cumulus Podcast Network. Through his production company, Eisen owns his intellectual property.
“The best idea wins, but it’s very infrequent that it can come from management that may not know you or your product or anything like that when you are working in a more traditional setup,” Eisen said. “That’s why it’s important to own it because you know best and you should trust your instincts if you can.”
Eisen has amassed a sizable audience and platform that allows him to make announcements on his show, something he knows perturbs those who cover the media industry. In watching Pat McAfee building his own platform through YouTube and leading to a multi-year, multimillion dollar licensing deal with ESPN, Eisen sees the proliferation and maturation of the trend.
“Everything is content now,” Eisen said. “Opinions are content; life stories are content. Everyone’s walking around with a phone, turning it around on their face and taking videos just walking down a hallway – that’s content; that’s a show, boom. A lot of social media is shows about nothing, but it’s content.”
When Bryan Cranston joined Eisen’s program for an interview in 2016, he recalled a scene from Seinfeld where he took a hit of nitrous oxide before putting it on Jerry Seinfeld. Cranston, who was playing a dentist in the episode, improvised the scene on the spot after an electrician from atop a ladder on set suggested it to him during a break. Being able to equip an idea from unexpected sources can engender success, just as hosts adapting to the conversation within an interview can extrapolate concealed storylines. It creates enticing content that will keep people coming back for more, which is at the crux of what Eisen is building.
“There still will always be a commodity for an avuncular, down-to-earth, smart, witty, rounded individual who lets others on a television show or a radio show speak and have their say and pull back,” Eisen explained. “There will always be, I think, a home for that.”
The expansion of the “Rich Eisen Podcast Network” is a seminal moment for the longtime sports media host, who has several future projects in development as he aims to leverage his brand. One of the ways he will try and seek to do that is by isolating signature segments of his long-form program by creating short-form podcasts out of them, including OverReaction Monday with Chris Brockman.
“No other sport has major knee-jerk overreactions that some team is terrible or going to win it all based on one game quite like the NFL or football in general,” Eisen said. “It’s popular – why not take it and make it into a podcast?”
Eisen’s wife, Suzy Shuster, has frequently made appearances on his program and has decades of sideline reporting experience with major networks. Each time she would appear on the air with former Oakland Raiders chief executive officer Amy Trask, Eisen could tell that they had a strong chemistry and rapport. It implored him to ask if they would be interested in launching a podcast on the network, an idea both decided would be beneficial to them.
On Tuesdays throughout the NFL season, Shuster and Trask will release their podcast, titled What The Football, which will feature conversations with personnel and conversations about the sport. The creation of such a show and other future projects will be expedited through Eisen’s experiences he has culminated throughout his career in sports media and being part of the industry’s evolution.
“I kind of know what will make for a comfortable host setting because I’ve been in search of it and I know what makes me comfortable,” Eisen said. “It’s a talent-friendly, wide-open, free marketplace of ideas podcast network, and I think a person with a gift of gab and a sense of humor and humility and sense of self will succeed in the setting that I’m creating.”
Having worked with Cumulus/Westwood One on both his program and as the pregame and halftime host for syndicated Monday Night Football coverage, partnering with the company to sell advertising and distribute shows was a facile decision for Eisen. The trust that the entity has put in him from the time the survival of the show was more precarious and the concurrent return on investment are factors that have left a lasting impact.
“Everybody has been rowing in the same direction since I came abroad, and it’s only been an arrow pointed up,” Eisen said. “For them to also entrust me with the seat of Monday Night Football as well – I don’t take any of that for granted – and I’m not going to rest on a laurel either. To be able to create a podcast network with them is something I was always interested in and this time was right where I’ve kind of incubated ideas and show ideas through my daily program.”
As Eisen continues to grow his production company, he is focused on developing new content for scripted and non-scripted television in addition to podcasts and traditional media endeavors. While he worked as a host with an established audience early in his career, he decided to take a chance in leaving the “Worldwide Leader” and do things independently, a gamble that inspired him to pursue more entrepreneurial opportunities. Continuing to repurpose his brand and finding new avenues for content can be challenging, but he is inclined to keep running while standing out from the rest of the pack.
