Welcome to a brand new series on BSM titled Meet The Podcasters. From today through the end of November, we’ll be showcasing different personalities from the industry’s top brands, highlighting their approach to content, and the success they’re having in the podcasting space.
Our friends at Point-To-Point Marketing (PTP), suggested this series to Barrett Sports Media to highlight the great work so many podcasters are doing. “From a hard-hitting investigative podcast series about human rights and sports impact on those rights,” commented Tim Bronsil, CEO of PTP, “to fantasy or betting podcasts to the hot take on the day’s news, there are plenty of well-produced pieces of content that need to find an audience. That’s where we come in through customized audience development solutions. A conversation costs nothing and we’d love to talk about promoting your show.”
If you’re unfamiliar with PTP, take a minute to learn more by visiting their website or by contacting Tim Bronsil at tim@ptpmarketing.com or 513-702-5072. PTP is in its 25th year of business working with many of the biggest audio brands in the world. They’ve helped many grow audiences for podcast titles over the past five years through comprehensive marketing campaigns. Many have been customized to satisfy the goals of the podcast as well as the available audience. Using social, digital, and search marketing, they’ve had their greatest successes identifying passionate sports fans who also love podcasts.
For our first installment, we’re visiting with New York broadcasting icon Mike Francesa. Mike certainly needs no introduction to the sports media crowd, given his years of success on WFAN. He helped pave the way for everything sports radio would become, and has made a successful transition into podcasting with BetRivers through The Mike Francesa Podcast. The show is available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube and most podcasting platforms.
New York teams are still at the very heart of Mike’s content, but every day, new people are finding his material in the digital world. We talked about reaching different audiences, the people he has influenced, and the control he has never had to give up. Enjoy!
Demetri Ravanos: Tell me a little bit about what the shorter runtime of a podcast does for you compared to what you used to do on the radio. How does that impact the quality of each show you put out?
Mike Francesa: Well, they’re completely different. The radio show was five and a half hours long. I don’t know if you’re talking about one of the one-man shows or Mike & The Mad Dog, but it was five and a half hours long. It had phone calls. Now, the way we interact is through emails. We tell them to email and they send in their questions and I’ll answer them. That’s basically what I do when I interact with the audience.
The [podcasts] are taped as is. We don’t change them or edit them, but it gives BetRivers a chance to work them into the form they want as far as putting it where they want to put it strategically and do what they want to do with it. Then we’ll put out these one-minute blurbs and everything else which involves editing after I send them the podcast. Basically, we sit down and do a podcast. Whether we have a guest or it’s just me, we do it usually in the 30 to 40-minute range. Once it’s done, I send it to my producer, and they edit it and take it away. Then the BetRivers team puts their finishing touches on it and away we go.
DR: I want to circle back on the emails because I have a question about that, but I did want to ask you in terms of the way you go about reacting to something that is big in the moment. What is the arrangement there between you and BetRivers?
MF: I do the podcast when I want. I do them whenever I want. So if I want to do a podcast 10 minutes from now, I can do one. If there’s something I want to react to, I just get my producer on the line and we go.
The only one that is scheduled is we definitely do one that is going to be up by 12pm on Fridays for Football Fridays. That will be done most times early Friday morning and then it’s usually out by 12 or 1 in the afternoon. That’s pretty much every week because it’s such a big one and an important one. Otherwise, it’s me reacting to what happens after the games or it’s just me reacting during the week.
I’m always going to do more than I’m supposed to do. I do more than I’m contracted to do. It’s just my way. I have carte blanche, whenever I want to do as many as I want to do. The form is up to me. The timing is up to me. It’s all up to me.
DR: How much do you talk about numbers with the folks at BetRivers – whichever ones they prioritize?
MF: That’s what they’re in business for. That’s why they employ me. So clearly, that’s a big issue and they’ve been very happy with the numbers I’ve produced. I think they’ve been even surprised by the numbers I produce.
They also look at it a little differently than other people might. They’re looking at it for people to sign up for their business. So they might say to me “We had X number of people download the Bet Rivers app based on this podcast.” That’s a big deal for them. That’s a very big deal for them, and that’s what they’re very conscious of.
DR: I heard you one time on the podcast mention that the comfort level that leagues now have with gambling is the biggest shift that you’ve ever seen in sports in your career. Would you say the same about sports media?
MF: Oh, it’s night and day, let’s be honest. Just look at the leagues. There was nothing they detested more than gambling talk. They didn’t want it. With the NFL, you couldn’t mention point spreads. When I worked on The NFL Today, you were not allowed to mention points. They didn’t want any part of it. Baseball detested it too. Now they’re welcomed with open arms. They promote it. They’re their partners. They’re making money from it. So the bottom line is it’s a complete about-face. It’s the biggest about-face that we’ve ever seen in sports.
DR: I promised I’d circle back on the emails. How much screening are you doing before you decide which ones make the show?
MF: Zero. I run through them, and I don’t drop any out.
My producer will send me X number and I will, on purpose, not read them before I go on. I want to react to them spontaneously.
I try to treat them like I would a caller. I was always able to interact and discuss anything that anyone wanted to discuss, so I never worried about that. I also never said, “You can only talk about this topic now”. We never did that. We didn’t care. [Callers] would know nothing was out of bounds. Now, we might sometimes put it on a plate. If the Yankees were the issue, we might want to be all about the Yankees right then in that hour, but we didn’t discuss with the callers what they were going to discuss in any way. We didn’t try to frame them and we didn’t try to make sure we knew the answer to the question five people down the line. We didn’t do anything like that, so I don’t do that now.
DR: The reason that I ask is because about a month ago when all the changes were happening at WFAN, you mentioned that there is nothing for you to gain from commenting on what happens day to day at your former radio station. You said you wish everybody well and that was the end of it. But I noticed that you’ll still read those emails with those questions when they come through.
MF: Every time there’s a change at FAN, every time something happens at FAN, and a lot of times even in between, I am asked to comment on it. I have refused to comment in any way and I will continue to do that because if I say something wonderful, people are going to think, “Oh, he’s just saying that because that’s his home.” And if I rip them then it’s front-page news for days. I don’t see any purpose in it. No one’s going to like my answer no matter what it is.
DR: I’m surprised that those questions still sort of make it into the emails that make it onto the show sometimes.
MF: I don’t even get that many because they know I won’t answer. I get regular reporters calling me all the time. Like whenever there’s a change in the lineup or anything, I get countless calls asking me to comment on it. I refuse. It’s not that I’m looking to take anybody out at the knees. If you have a young broadcaster there and I hammer him, that’s not going to be good for his career. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hurt anybody. So I won’t do that.
DR: I want to talk about some of your relationships with other guys that have done really well in the digital space. Whether it’s Bill Simmons, Dave Portnoy, Desus & Mero, who I know you’ve been on with before. Have you picked their brains about what works in the digital space for a sports audience?
MF: I don’t talk to any of them about business, but I’ve known them all for so long, the first two especially. I’ve known Portnoy a very long time too. As a matter of fact, my son interned at Barstool for him. Now he’s only sixteen, so it wasn’t an official internship because he wasn’t in college. But he loves Barstool. He wanted to work there this summer. So, I called Dave and Dave gave him a position this summer and he loved it.
I even went to Barstool one day and did the shows. I did that because Harrison was there and I promised him I’d do one day there with him this summer. I guess it was about a week ago, maybe a little longer, I went up and did a bunch of the shows and had a lot of fun with the guys. I didn’t know a lot of them. I haven’t paid attention to Barstool.
I mean, I know Big Cat and I saw him when I was there because he happened to be in town. I actually met him through A-Rod two years ago. I didn’t know a lot of the other younger guys, but a lot of those guys grew up listening to me. So for them, they get a kick out of interviewing me about all this stuff because Mike & The Mad Dog was a very big part of of developing people who are now in this industry.
Bill on the other hand I’ve known for a very long time. He was always a very big Mike & The Mad Dog guy to the point where he used to do Mike & The Mad Dog parodies for a whole day. We’ve had Bill on our show and he and I have talked many times about doing something together.
We actually talked even a couple of years ago about doing something but it just never came about. I never talked to Barstool about anything for me, but Bill and I did talk about doing something about three or four years ago. It just went by the boards. It never happened.
DR: As you talk about all these guys that grew up influenced by Mike & The Mad Dog, are you ever surprised to hear somebody say that they were influenced by you based on what it is they’re doing now? Like, can you see in your head the connection from Mike & The Mad Dog to some of Barstool’s content?
MF: I’ve heard it my whole life. People who are fans will come up to me and say, “Hey, I was in the back seat. My dad had it on. I was eight years old. I was nine years old. I was ten years old.” I hear that every day and I hear it from guys in the business. Plus, if you look at WFAN, a lot of these guys were my board ops or my producer. A lot of them came through our show. So, you know, I’ve watched most of these guys grow up.
I didn’t have a habit of interfering with the other shows very much. I really tried to stay away from the other shows as far as when I had my show and just pay attention to my show. I know people think I had a lot to do with what went on at the station, but I think that was a little overblown at times. I didn’t get as involved as everyone thinks I did.
But, a lot of these guys have come through the ranks like Sal Licata. He was one of my board ops. You can go all the way back to when Ian Eagle worked for us. You can go down the line. There’s a million guys that worked for us through the years who are all in broadcasting now.
DR: Being in the podcasting space now, does your content and its success feel more in your control than it did on radio?
MF: No, I felt I always had that control. [WFAN] never interfered with the content of the program. They never told us to do something. They never told us not to do something. We were completely in charge, whether it was me by myself or Dog and myself, we were completely in charge of content. We never even discussed with anybody what we were going to do for a given show, so I’ve always had complete control. I have complete control now. I had complete control then. I wouldn’t be able to work any other way. If I had somebody telling me what to do or what to think, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that.
DR: You’re a legend in the minds of so many and yet being in the digital space, so many new people are discovering you all the time. That has to be something fun to see happening at this point in your career.
MF: Someone brought that up to me recently about “Do you try to cultivate new fans?” I said, “Honestly, I don’t. I just try to be myself and react the same way I’ve always reacted to what goes on.”
I do sports. I don’t do guy talk. There are times when I’ll talk about the stock market, I’ll talk about business, I’ll talk about politics, I’ll talk about different things in the news, but for the most part, I do sports. I’m a sports guy. I’m not doing sex. I’m not doing scatological stuff. I don’t do any of that stuff. I never did. If young guys appreciate that, that’s fine.
You know, one thing that happens, and clearly it happened to me, your audience grows older with you. If you’re lucky enough to have a big audience, your audience gets older with you. There’s no question that there was a time when we started out where our core audience was 25 to 35, and then our core audience was 35 to 45, and then our core audience was probably 45 to 55. So the bottom line is, where our mass audience was, it’s probably right that it gets older with you. You still get some of the young guys, but you don’t get as many. Some of them you don’t connect to. Some of it’s changed and that’s the way it works, which is why I think you have to have a shelf life.
I never wanted to do anything except be on top. I was always very ratings-conscious and very business-conscious of the show. I never would have been comfortable with a show that wasn’t a ratings success. I never had a show that wasn’t a ratings success and wasn’t a big ratings success. So the bottom line was, if I stayed long enough and said, I don’t care about the ratings and I was, instead of finishing first, finish eighth or ninth, I couldn’t live with that. I wouldn’t have been happy with that.
Now, I don’t know if I did the show every day, would I still be the first? I don’t know. I might not connect with the people.
I think the demographics are completely wrong, and I’ve argued this in front of broadcasting people and advertising people. I think they are so missing the boat, it’s ridiculous. Everything is 25-54, except they forget the fact that the world has changed. 30-year-olds are still home. 28-year-olds have no buying power. They come out of college with big student loans or their home is still under their parents’ roof because they can’t afford a house.
The world has changed, and guys who are 65 and in great shape are going to live to be 85 or 90. They have all kinds of buying power. They buy brand new cars, they take trips, they buy nice clothes, they buy nice watches, and nobody ever skews anything to them – not in programming and not in advertising. It is so stupid. It should have been changed from 25-54 to 25-64 or 32-64 because the world has changed and our country has changed with the advertising people. The people in our business will not change though and eventually they’ll get it. But they are missing the boat now. They are giving away huge amounts of buying power.
