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Heath Cline Out at 107.5 The Game in Columbia

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Heath Cline Out at 107.5 The Game in Columbia

Heath Cline is out after more than fifteen years at 107.5 The Game in Columbia, SC. Barrett Sports Media has learned that Cline has exited the Cumulus sports talker as of Wednesday morning.

Cline came to the station in 2007 after beginning his career in Florida.

In a statement posted on social media, Cline says that the two sides could not reach an agreement as they negotiated a new contract.

“Everyone there has been great to work with, and I’ll miss them. If you’re disappointed in this news, please don’t get angry with anyone there. It’s not their fault,” he wrote. “I spent almost 16 years doing drive time radio at 107.5, and am hugely appreciative for that opportunity.”

In addition to his colleagues, he also thanked listeners. He said the only reason he lasted for more than a decade and a half in the market is because people cared about and enjoyed his show.

The move does not leave Cline without a paycheck. He had recently taken over as executive producer of Dickey Broadcasting’s syndicated Chuck Oliver Show. He has also been a regular weekend and fill-in host on the company’s Atlanta sports talker 680 The Fan.

“We’ll see where things go, but I’m nothing but excited about what’s next,” he added. “Again, if you were a part of the last 16 years, thank you.”

CNN Eyeing Former New York Times CEO For Similar Role

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CNN Eyeing Former New York Times CEO For Similar Role

After the June departure of President and CEO Chris Licht, CNN has been without a sole leader. That could be changing.

Former New York Times and BBC CEO Mark Thompson is on the short list of candidates to replace Licht, according to a report from Seamfor’s Ben Smith.

Thompson departed the New York Times in 2020 after leading the organization for eight years. He previously worked as a producer for the BBC and Channel 4 in England.

The 66-year-old is viewed as a leading candidate by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav due to his experience as a television “turnaround artist”.

Earlier this year, Thompson was Knighted by King Charles for his services to British media.

After Warner Bros. Discovery announced Licht’s exit, Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley, Eric Sherling, and David Leavy were named as the organization’s current leadership group. Under their tutelage, the primetime lineup was revamped to now feature Abby Phillip and Laura Coates after the addition of Kaitlan Collins to the network’s 9:00 PM ET timeslot.

Keith Olbermann: Larry Elder Has Flamed Out of Everything He’s Tried

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Keith Olbermann: Larry Elder Has Flamed Out of Everything He’s Tried

Former talk radio host Larry Elder has claimed he’ll sue the Republican National Committee unless he’s included in the first debate. That threat made podcaster Keith Olbermann chuckle.

During his Countdown podcast Wednesday, the former cable news host took aim at Elder for his antics, labeling him a failure at everything he’s done in his professional career.

“There’s Larry Elder, who in the horror movie would be the first candidate laid low by the monster. In fact, he would be the first candidate laid low by the monster in a series of horror movies. He’s been humiliated in a Senate race in a governor’s race and on radio and television,” said Keith Olbermann.

“And as of last night, he said he was suing the Republican National Committee because it would not recognize Rasmussen Reports, which showed him above the polling threshold for inclusion in the debate,” continued Olbermann. “Rasmussen is the Trump-friendly pollster. So unreliable the RNC does not even accredit them, and Elder is the guy who’s actually just supposed to be on the stage to advocate for Trump in absentia. Anyway, Perry Johnson is also suing, he says, But he of course just wants a judge to make it mandatory that you go and Google who Perry Johnson is.”

Elder has claimed he has met the qualifications for participation in the debate, but was denied entry by the RNC. In return, he has given the organization a 3:00 PM ET deadline to include him before filing at complaint with the Federal Election Commission.

Remote Barstool Employees Facing Layoffs

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Remote Barstool Employees Facing Layoffs

Barstool was not in a good place financially when Dave Portnoy reacquired the company for $1. He says the he knows brighter days are ahead for the brand, but there could be some painful steps to get there. Those apparently include layoffs.

Will Burge, a podcast host that worked remotely from Cleveland, was amongst the first let go. In a social media post, he said that he is out. Other content creators ave been let go as well. The people losing their jobs are the ones that are not at Barstool headquarters daily.

“Dave bought the company back. Barstool’s back to being what it is when it’s at its best—and that’s a reality show. To be part of the reality show, you gotta be in one of the offices,” Burge said. “So obviously, it doesn’t make sense to have a remote employee who is not a part of the main product that Barstool is pushing at this point.”

Burge added that he came on board when the company was owned by Penn and it was looking to expand into more markets with legal gambling. He understands that things are different now and he has no hard feelings about the decision.

Barstool brought in nearly $81 million in revenue in the first six months of this year. Still, that resulted in a net loss of $16.1 million for Penn Entertainment, who paid a total of $551 million for ownership of the brand.

That was not news to Dave Portnoy when the opportunity to buy Barstool back from Penn presented itself. 

“It may be rough for a couple months getting things back to where we’re not getting f***ing smoked, but I think I could make this a good place to work,” he said in a video explaining his vision for the company moving forward.

92% of Sports Bettors Are Loyal Sports Radio Listeners

BSM Staff
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92% of Sports Bettors Are Loyal Sports Radio Listeners

Sportsbooks matter to sports radio for two key reasons. First, they invest a lot of advertising dollars in the format. Secondly, the audience frequently turns to them to bet on games.

Nielsen Scarborough recently hosted a deep dive webinar that studied the radio consumption of sports bettors in Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Phoenix. The results were very good for the sports radio format.

The study showed that 20% of sports bettors consume 13 or more hours of sports talk radio every week. More than nine in ten of them listen to sports talk during weekday prime hours (6A-7P). 

Afternoon drive time is particularly important to sports bettors. Content between 3 and 7 pm locally was heard by 71% of gamblers.

More than half of the respondents said they consumed sports radio while in their car. Around 25% said they prefer to listen at home.

The study also provided insight on who is using sports radio amongst bettors. In Philadelphia specifically, Scarborough found that the average age of sports bettors that listen to sports radio is 42, which is 8 years below the average age of a radio user in the market. The average listener in Philadelphia the bets on sports is likely a white man with an income north of $100,000. He also likely uses more than one sportsbook app to place his bets.

Larry Elder Threatens to Sue RNC Over Debate Snub

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Larry Elder Threatens to Sue RNC Over Debate Snub

Former talk radio host Larry Elder says he plans to sue the Republican National Committee after he was not included as a participant in the first Presidential debate.

During an interview with AM 970 The Answer’s Joe Piscopo, Elder said “I’m going to do everything I can to get up there”, including a potential temporary injunction to stop the debate from happening.

According to the list of requirements for debate participants, the RNC mandated that a candidate must have at least 40,000 individual donors, with 200 in 20 different states. Additionally, to meet the qualifications, candidates had to be polling at at least 1% in three major polls. However, the RNC told Elder’s campaign that his polling numbers in the Rasmussen poll were invalidated due to its relationship with former President Donald Trump.

Larry Elder has since claimed that if the RNC does not reverse its decision to not include him by 3:00 PM ET today, he will file a complaint with the Federal Elections Committee “for a violation of debate rules and illegal campaign contributions”.

“FEC rules governing debates are clear that rules must be clearly stated to all candidates in advance and equally applied,” Elder wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter. “The FEC could deem the RNC’s and FOX News’ free national TV airtime and free promotional activities to SELECT candidates as ‘ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION TO CANDIDATES’ — with the premise being that, free national TV airtime comes with an extraordinary real-dollar value to candidates who are arbitrarily allowed onto the stage under a certain set of rules — while other candidates are arbitrarily kept off the stage through a different set of rules. Fines for this violation could total hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Fred Toucher: Sunday Ticket Subscription Will Change My Role on Toucher & Rich

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Fred Toucher: Sunday Ticket Subscription Will Change My Role on Toucher & Rich

Ahead of kickoff for the 2023 National Football League’s regular season, football fans around the country are making the decision whether or not to sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket, which is on YouTube TV for the first time. The out-of-market sports package had been available exclusively through DIRECTV since its launch in 1994. Google and the NFL agreed to a seven-year deal reportedly worth just over $2 billion per season, and there have been a litany of promotions for users to sign up.

Despite trying to put it off for a long time, Fred Toucher is finally giving in and plans to sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket in the near future. As a fan of the New York Jets and Detroit Lions, the Boston sports radio host is preparing for the upcoming season and will navigate through the onboarding process for the lucrative package.

“I know they had an early bird special that I didn’t take advantage of,” Toucher said Wednesday on 98.5 The Sports Hub. “There are games – I don’t know if I’d watch them anyway – they’re good games, some of them, that I’m just not going to see. I will get the YouTube Sunday Ticket because I like out-of-market teams.”

Toucher watches a considerable amount of NFL action for the show each week and knows he can more effectively tell the story of the matchup by watching the game in its entirety instead of highlights. He also recognizes that access to every NFL game could change what is expected of him from Toucher & Rich listeners.

“Jon [Wallach] is selling out this year and not getting it because he’s just going to stay completely localized,” Toucher said. “Whenever it comes to Jon talking about any game that wasn’t on TV locally, you can’t listen to him.”

Toucher plans to watch every snap new quarterback Aaron Rodgers takes with the Jets this season, his first away from the Green Bay Packers in his 18-year NFL career. Since he hosts shows in Boston, he will also tune in to the New England Patriots to ensure he can effectively carry out his job.

“Now the responsibility completely falls on me,” Toucher said. “When the Jets are in the Super Bowl, you guys are going to be sitting here scrambling going, ‘What the hell’s going on?,’ and I’m going to have to be like, ‘Dude, you didn’t see Week 3? You didn’t sit there from the beginning to end of Week 3?’”

While NFL Sunday Ticket includes out-of-market games on linear television, it does not include any of the Peacock or ESPN+ exclusive contests. Earlier in the year, the NFL announced that Peacock would be the exclusive home of a playoff game in the Wild Card round. Fans of the local teams will be able to see the action on networks to be determined, but other football fans will need to watch through NBCUniversal’s streaming service.

“If they made it to where you actually had to spend money to watch a playoff game, that’s pretty low,” Rich Shertenlieb said. “I don’t see them doing that, [and] I could see the backlash biting them in the ass.”

Gregg Giannotti: Boomer & Gio Had To Sound Familiar Without Sounding Like Craig Carton

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Gregg Giannotti became Boomer Esiason’s new partner beginning in January 2018 on what is now Boomer and Gio on WFAN. Joining an established show is tricky. However, Giannotti decided to let the existing crew members take the reins early while he settled into the role. 

Giannotti was a guest on the Rise And Schein podcast with Adam Schein this week and said that once he joined the show, he understood he couldn’t make it about himself even though people told him to take advantage of this giant opportunity. 

“People would tell me this is your shot, it’s got to be you, it’s your show, be yourself, take it over, it’s a huge opportunity. You never want to look back on this and say you weren’t yourself. I’ll be myself, but you have to be the version of yourself that works in that environment. In the beginning, I had to sit back a little bit and have everyone get comfortable with me. Then, slowly, slowly sort of build my own house and renovated the house that was already there.”

In the beginning, the one thing that Giannotti was very conscious of was not trying to sound like Carton, but still have a similar sound to the pre-existing show. 

“It took a long time and in the beginning if you listen back, you can tell it was a different sounding show, but I was conscious of making sure that we weren’t so jarring to the listener when we started,” he said.

Giannotti told Schein that he was still getting to know Boomer Esiason when the show started. Esiason wanted to make it clear from day 1 that they were a team and building something together.

“No one really knew what was going on behind the scenes, so Boomer really wanted this foundation of trust in the beginning and I felt it and it felt real. Even when things weren’t going exactly the way I wanted them to early, he always had my back through that. If Mark Chernoff was all over me for one thing or another, I can always count on Boomer to give me a slap on the ass and tell me ‘it’s okay man, we’re good, don’t worry about it.’”

Chris Fowler Signs Contract Extension With ESPN

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Chris Fowler has inked a multi-year contract extension with ESPN, expanding his role with the network to call five NFL games in addition to working as the lead voice of Saturday Night Football. Moreover, Fowler will continue calling the College Football Playoff National Championship Game coming up on his tenth year on the broadcast and work as the lead voice of the network’s Grand Slam tennis coverage.

Throughout the 2023 NFL regular season, ESPN will present five Monday night doubleheaders starting in Week 2 when the New Orleans Saints visit the Carolina Panthers. Fowler will be joined by Dan Orlovsky, Louis Riddick and Laura Rutledge on the broadcast, which begins at 7:15 p.m. EST on ESPN. This pattern continues in Week 3, 14 and 18, the latter of which will have its matchups and corresponding networks determined at a later date.

During Week 4, Fowler and his commentary partners will call the Atlanta Falcons’ game against the Jacksonville Jaguars from Wembley Stadium in London, England. The matchup will be exclusively on ESPN+ and is part of five international games on the docket throughout the season. Fowler is stepping into the secondary broadcast booth for Steve Levy, who recently reached his 30th year with the network and preceded Buck as the lead voice of Monday Night Football. Levy continues to call play-by-play and lead the outlet’s National Hockey League studio coverage while also anchoring SportsCenter.

In addition to his football roles, Fowler is calling the upcoming U.S. Open Tennis Championships from Flushing, N.Y., which commences on Aug. 28. He was reportedly looking for a raise from the “Worldwide Leader” upon being marked safe from the talent layoffs, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post.

Fowler has worked at ESPN since 1986 when he was a host and reporter for Scholastic Sports America. He has also hosted coverage of the Triple Crown, X Games and FIFA World Cup and anchored on-site coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four. Prior to moving to the broadcast booth, Fowler hosted College GameDay for 24 years, helping establish the program into a sports institution alongside Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit.

The announcement comes following news earlier this week that ESPN senior vice president of production, Lee Fitting, has departed the network. Fitting was responsible for overseeing marquee properties including College GameDay and Monday Night Football, and his exit adds a layer of uncertainty to the future of the network’s football coverage.

Mike Gallagher: Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Both Want to Hurt Fox News

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Mike Gallagher: Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Both Want to Hurt Fox News

The first 2024 Republican Presidential debate will be held tonight, and former President Donald Trump will be noticeably absent. Radio host Mike Gallagher believes Trump’s partnership with Tucker Carlson is a calculated move from both sides.

Instead of participating in the first debate, the former President will sit down for a one-on-one interview with Carlson that will reportedly publish to X, formerly Twitter, at the same time as the debate.

During The Mike Gallagher Show, the Salem Radio Network host argued Trump’s snub of the debate is simply a message to Fox News.

“There’s a whole backstory about who he’s sticking it to by not showing up. He’s really sticking it to Fox News. He’s furious at Fox News,” Gallagher said. “They’ve been wooing him. Bret Baier, — there’s been a lot of reporting about Bret Baier personally calling the President multiple times, begging him to do the debate. (Trump) had dinner with Suzanne Scott and one of the other executives recently, I think at Bedminster. They’re wooing him, they’re all wanting him there. They all want him on that stage.”

Gallagher continued by noting that Trump found a willing ally in his quest to damage the conservative cable network in its former host Tucker Carlson.

“And so what he does and incidentally, is more backstory behind the curtains here,” he said. “Tucker Carlson is embroiled right now in a very nasty legal battle with Fox News. They’re still paying him. They fired him, inexplicably. And to this day, I don’t think anybody’s got a good explanation of why they let him go.”

The debate will air on Fox News from 9:00-11:00 PM ET tonight from Milwaukee. Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will co-moderate the event.

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