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Bob Costas: ‘I Love a Good Don La Greca Rant’

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Legendary broadcaster Bob Costas isn’t worried about the hot take era in broadcasting.

In an interview on The Michael Kay Show on Friday, Costas was asked about successful people in the business who’ve made a name for themselves shouting the loudest and not caring about being wrong.

Costas said he’s not worried about hot take artists and that what’s important is that truth and credibility.

“I don’t know if I worry about it, but I don’t approve of it,” he said. “You know, I think that there should be certain timeless elements. You and I may prefer, because of our age, to hold a newspaper in our hand with a cup of coffee in the morning. But it doesn’t really matter whether you get it on a laptop, your iPhone or on some device that they’ll invent in the next 10 minutes.”

“What does matter, though, is it truthful, is it credible, is it fair and is the quality of it something that appeals to someone with a sensibility beyond that of the dumbest kid in the back of the room in the sixth grade,” Costas added. “Those things should always matter no matter how the technology changes, no matter how the marketplace and the media landscape changes. Quality and credibility should matter.”

Costas went on to say that there’s a difference between someone who fires off uninformed hot takes and someone like co-host Don La Greca, who occasionally gets fired up and speaks passionately from an educated perspective. The latter helps the industry.

“You can be entertaining and loose and humorous and anecdotal,” he said. “And, you know, fire off an opinion. I love a good Don La Greca rant! I love it. But it comes from a base of knowledge. You can agree with it or disagree, and those who deal in ad hominem attacks – or those who can’t grasp the difference between irreverence and mean-spirited snark – I don’t think that in the big picture helps us out very much.”

Bob Costas spoke recently with BSM’s Derek Futterman and shared his opinion on a number of topics regarding the modern sports media. That included his opinions on the way sports conversations have changed and what the minimum standard should be.

“The essentials of the craft remain the same,” Costas said. “If you’re talking about sports talk radio; if you’re talking about the internet’s coverage of sports, that in some cases bears no resemblance to the notions that people of my generation had about credibility and quality of presentation. No one’s saying that sports coverage is masterpiece theater or something that should be taught at a Ph.D. class at Princeton [University], but it can be done more or less thoughtfully. It can be done more or less credibly, and we see wide variations now in how it’s done.”

Mike Breen: My Dream Was to Be a DJ at WPLJ

BSM Staff
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These days, WPLJ in New York City is a Christian station owned by the Educational Media Foundation. When Mike Breen was a kid in Yonkers though, it was one of the most influential rock stations in America and the man who is now known as the voice of the NBA wanted to be on the air there.

On the latest edition of Dan Le Batard’s South Beach Sessions podcast, Breen revealed that he always loved sports. His first introduction to broadcasting though came from a neighbor named Tony Minecola. He was a few years older than Breen and studying to be a radio broadcaster in college.

“He built a radio station in his basement and played disc jockey,” Breen told Le Batard. “’He had commercials, records, you know, everything. Like it was a real radio station, only it only went from one room to the next. That was what he was into, and that’s what he was going to college for. And we used to hang out in the basement all the time. And one day he says, ‘Hey, why don’t you come in? You want to you want to be the DJ for a little bit?’ And I’m like, okay, let me try it.’ And I fell in love with it.”

Mike Breen didn’t just fall in love with the idea of radio. He saw it as a viable career and knew exactly where he wanted it to take him.

“I enjoyed being on the air and talking. So my initial thought was, ‘I’m going to be a disc jockey.’ WPLJ was like the big rock station in New York back at that time, and I thought, ‘I’m going to be a DJ on WPLJ.’ That was my first goal.

Through the 70s and early 80s, WPLJ was an album rock station. Some of its most iconic on air personalities included Carol Miller, Pat St. John, Fr. Bill Ayers, and Mark Goodman, who was eventually one of MTV’s original VJs.

Breen said he loved the rock music of the time, especially Jethro Tull and Bruce Springsteen, but he realized that a broadcasting career could keep him close to sports too.

Obviously, he chose well. That is not to say that he couldn’t have been a great DJ if given the chance, but he went on to be the voice of the New York Knicks and has called more NBA Finals games than anyone else in history. 

WPLJ was out of the rock business by 1983 when it became a pop station.

1110 KFAB Adds Emery Songer as Afternoon Host

BNM Staff
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1110 KFAB Adds Emery Songer as Afternoon Host

1110 KFAB has added Emery Songer as the station’s new afternoon host.

Songer has previously worked as the morning show producer at 1040 WHO in Des Moines since 2018. Both stations are owned by iHeartMedia.

“I’m incredibly excited for this opportunity to be a part of Omaha and the KFAB team,” said Songer. “My wife and I can’t wait to be a part of the Omaha community and meet all the amazing people that make this city move.”

He will begin on Monday, June 26th. The afternoon show will be heard from 2:00-6:00 PM.

“Emery will continue KFAB’s nearly 100-year-old tradition of on-air personalities who are passionate about connecting with the community we serve,” said 1110 KFAB Program Director Scott Voorhees. “It’s not about hammering an agenda; it’s about entertaining and relevant conversations of interest to Omaha/Council Bluffs and the surrounding area.”

Mike Florio: Chris Simms Isn’t Desensitized to Internet Criticism

BSM Staff
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Mike Florio: Chris Simms Isn’t Desensitized to Internet Criticism

Chris Simms caught some heat this week while discussing the death of Miami Dolphins fan Eric Carmona. Carmona was the brain behind the Tuanon viral videos, which featured him in a Dolphin mask attacking critics of Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. Simms was one of his frequent targets.

Carmona was killed in a motorcycle accident last week. He leaves behind a wife and four children. He was just 30 years old.

Mike Florio brought the story up on Pro Football Talk Live, because Tagovailoa himself donated $10,000 to a GoFundMe campaign to support Carmona’s family. Simms responded by noting that Carmona was a frequent critic of his.

Florio pushed back saying that trolling is better than being ignored. People are passionate about their teams and if they are passionate about attacking you for criticizing their teams, it means you matter to them.

“This is a deep subject and I think it’s societal and I won’t go into it because I’m only going to get myself in trouble,” Simms responded. “We’re also setting an example like, ‘Hey here’s money to a guy who was very negative too.’ That’s all I’m saying.”

On Friday, Florio made his weekly appearance on WQAM in Miami. Morning show host Joe Rose asked Florio what Simms was thinking with those comments.

“I don’t know. That’s a question for Chris, and you could invite him on and he could talk about that,” Florio answered. “And I’m not trying to be flippant by saying that. I understand the way he feels from my perspective.”

He did try to explain the point he was making to Simms in saying that being trolled is better than being ignored. He reminded Rose that there is a thick skin required to having the kind of jobs they do.

“Chris takes a lot of crap. I take a lot of crap. I’ve been doing it a lot longer than Chris, and I think sometimes Chris just kind of reaches the end of the rope. He doesn’t actively participate in Twitter. He has one of the producers at NBC that primarily updates his account. So I don’t think he’s become as desensitized to it as I have over the years.”

Simms caught heat earlier this week from another fan base. Joe DeCamara and Jon Ritchie of the WIP Morning Show ripped the NBC analyst for ranking Jalen Hurts as the seventh best QB in the league.

New CNN Leadership Team: ‘We Understand How Unesttling Changes Can Be’

BNM Staff
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New CNN Leadership Team: ‘We Understand How Unesttling Changes Can Be’

After the abrupt departure of CNN CEO Chris Licht earlier this week, those tasked with leading the organization in the interim have shared with staffers their understanding of the current climate.

In an email from the interim leadership team — which consists of Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley, Eric Sherling, and David Leavy — the group shared in a memo to staffers that they are “humbled by the task” ahead of them, while noting it can be an unsettling time for employees.

“We understand how disorienting and unsettling it can be when we become the news and these recent changes can be difficult to navigate, both personally and professionally,” the group of executives wrote. “So, we want to take a moment to thank you for the talent and dedication you have continued to bring to work every day.”

The group added that they are “committed to making this period as smooth as possible”.

Licht’s exit comes at an unfortunate time, as the network is already in preparation for the 2024 Republican presidential primary race and subsequent presidential election.

Joe Pags: Viewers Would Give CNN Another Try if John Catsimatidis Bought It

BNM Staff
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Joe Pags: Viewers Would Give CNN Another Try if John Catsimatidis Bought It

77 WABC owner John Catsimatidis has publicly shared he’d be interested in purchasing CNN, and would only command a $1 yearly salary to have the opportunity to operate the station. Joe Pags believes it could be exactly what the network needs.

During a conversation with Catsimatidis Thursday evening, Pags shared that his listeners had simply written off CNN.

“Early on in the program, I mentioned that you were making an offer for CNN. I opened up my phone lines, and they melted down,” said Pags. “I asked my listeners: Would you give CNN another chance? Now, John, my listeners don’t wanna give CNN another chance.

“But when I asked them that question and I told them who you were and the offer that you were making, they — to a person — said ‘Yeah, I’ll give them another try’. So people are willing to come back. People are willing to see what you would do.”

Pags then asked if there was a realistic possibility that Catsimatidis could purchase the network from Warner Bros. Discovery.

“I think it’s real. I think it could happen, but we need some common sense to preside,” Catsimatidis said.

Ryen Russillo: Media Will ‘Move The Goal Posts’ on Nikola Jokić When Denver Wins

BSM Staff
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Nikola Jokić, better known to NBA fans as “the “Joker,” and the Denver Nuggets are two wins away from securing the franchise’s first ever NBA championship. The team has been at the center of debate across major sports networks over the last several weeks. Those in and around Denver believe the team has not received enough attention to this point, especially when having Jokić, a two-time league MVP and five-time All-Star selection. Now that the entire country is being exposed to the generational talent, along with venerable teammates Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr., the Nuggets are gaining notoriety many argue their play should have merited long ago.

Yet the fact that Denver is far from other major locales, along with the fact that the team has never previously won a championship, has ostensibly penalized the organization in terms of garnering coverage.

“I’m not going to name names on this one, but it was a colleague who said something [like], ‘I’m speechless after somebody did something amazing,’” recalled Ryen Russillo, podcast host and commentator for The Ringer. “And then another colleague [said], ‘It’s your job to not be speechless,’ and I thought, ‘Woah.’ That back-and-forth made the rounds. We all get it – we all have to figure out new ways to say stuff, but sometimes you’re just speechless.”

There are implicit rules to effective sports television according to Russillo, especially debate shows. One is to stick to what works and to talk about players who will move the needle. The most recent example that draws parallels to Jokić is with Giannis Antetokounmpo, and how he rapidly gained legitimacy and plaudits when he led the Milwaukee Bucks to an NBA championship in 2021.

“If Denver ends up winning this thing, which I’d expect they will, all of a sudden the rules change,” Russillo said, “and we’re allowed to talk about [Jokić] in the way we always should have talked about him.”

Russillo previously hosted radio shows for ESPN. He and former NFL quarterback Danny Kannel hosted the Russillo Show together, but ended his time at ESPN hosting solo when Kannel was laid off. While he returned to the “Worldwide Leader” and ultimately co-hosted the SVP & Russillo podcast with Scott Van Pelt, he departed the company in August 2019 to join The Ringer. Russillo made remarks about his time with the company on a recent appearance with Bryan Curtis on The Press Box podcast.

“Especially when I worked at ESPN, I think half the time I was on the phone with NBA teams, it would be to hear them bitch about somebody else that said something at ESPN,” Russillo shared. “I’d remind them; I’d go, ‘Just so you know, I work with a lot of these people, and it’s hard to watch everything. I try to watch everything and it’s really hard. Just remember that not everybody up there that’s on TV is watching nearly as much [as] they may think they are.”

Both Russillo and Curtis know that if the Denver Nuggets are to win the NBA Finals, it will represent a “coronation” for Jokić to become a regular part of the vernacular. Russillo believes he will be legitimately considered as the best all-around player in the NBA, but stopping there will never be enough for shows based on attracting an audience.

“It’ll be, ‘Does he have a chance to be this?,’” Russillo surmised. “We move the goalposts on players… [and] you have to raise the stakes. Once everything becomes accepted, ‘accepted’ isn’t a good topic anymore. It has to be, ‘Could there potentially be pushback from this?,’ and that’s kind of the game.”

Buck Sexton: If Candidates Aren’t Coming On Our Show, They’re Not Serious

BNM Staff
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The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show is one of the largest radio programs in the nation. The show recently eclipsed the 500 affiliates mark. With that stature comes an expectation that conservative political candidates would want to appear on the show. Sexton argues that’s not always the case.

During Thursday’s show, Sexton mentioned that the program has begun working on landing interviews with as many prospective 2024 Republican presidential nominees.

“We are already reaching out to Mike Pence to try to get him to come on the show,” Sexton said. “Hopefully, we’ll get him in the next couple of weeks. We’ve already got Nikki Haley coming on next Tuesday. People have said ‘What about RFK Jr?’. I’ve said I’ve got to talk to him myself. We’re going to reach out again. We’ll have to have Vivek (Ramaswamy) again. You’re going to get to hear from everyone.”

Sexton then said the show would likely not feature an interview with former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson because “we do have to set some kind of a cap”. He then mentioned that former New Jersey governor Chris Christie would be someone the program would speak with.

“I think we should have Chris Christie coming on…the team just told me we’ve reached out to Chris Christie’s team several times. No response. Which, to me, says if you’re not gonna come on this show, you’re not really running as a Republican President. That’s my opinion. If you’re not going to go on the biggest radio shows in the country, as a Republican, I don’t think it’s fair to say that you’re serious.”

Skip Bayless: ‘I Get Cancelled Every Other Night on Twitter’

BSM Staff
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Skip Bayless has been in the sports media business for decades and he has gotten the chance to see firsthand how the industry has changed. When he started, there wasn’t much talk radio, no debate shows, and no internet for that matter.

On his podcast, The Skip Bayless Show, Bayless was asked by a fan in what ways has coverage of sports changed when he first started covering them to what it is today. He said he might someday write a book about that subject, but he thought back to a time when he covered the Dallas Cowboys and how easy it was to talk to players.

“When I first got into the sports media business, print dominated. Daily newspapers were king… When I first started covering the Dallas Cowboys (1979), I would go out to their practice field at lunchtime when the players were available and it was like I was entering a multiplex of theaters. I just had my pick. I could go to the Roger Staubach movie or the Charlie Walters movie or the Too Tall Jones movie or the Drew Pearson movie. I had movies to watch everywhere I wanted…I would fill my notebook every lunchtime.”

One of the things that made it easy for Bayless was that newspapers were a way for the athlete to control their message and the only outlet to get statements across.

“They were all happy to talk 1-on-1 as long as I wanted. If you wanted to meet them after practice, meet them at their house in the evening, they would do it because you were all they had as an outlet. If they wanted to make a statement, there was no Internet. They had to make the statement to you into your newspaper and hoped that you got it right and presented it the way they wanted it to. If they wanted to make a public image, it had to come through your feature story, your column that you wrote about them, you can make or break them through your coverage. They knew it and they catered to it. Those were some of the greatest lunchtimes in my life.

“Now of course, it’s about the Internet. Now players can control their message and carefully craft their image through the statements they post and the pictures that they post. Newspapers are a thing of the past. There’s still a place for newspapers and there’s still a place for reporting, but it’s not like it used to be. 

When Bayless was a writer, he mentioned the amount of letters he would get on a daily basis and most of the messages he received back from readers were of a positive nature.

“I used to get 20-30 snail mail letters a week. I would get more than anyone else would because I was outspoken. I would answer everyone of them by hand.” 

In this era of social media, Bayless knows the vitriol that he gets, whether it is from something he says on FS1’s Undisputed or his podcast. He doesn’t consume it all directly, but he knows about most of it.

“Now I’m told that I get cancelled every other night on Twitter. I’m told by my wife Ernestine who does monitor this that if I consumed all the evil aimed at me on various social media platforms. Sometimes she will read me some of them just for our amusement. If I actually allowed into my psyche all the misinformation, all the out-and-out lies she sometimes reads to me, if I let it all sink in, I’d wind up in a straightjacket on some funny farm somewhere and I don’t have plans to do that just yet. I keep arms length from Twitter, from the reactions. I tweet, but I don’t read. Someday I’ll write a book on all of the above because I’m just touching tips of the iceberg.”

Stoney & Jansen Baffled By NBA Finals TV Schedule

BSM Staff
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Stoney & Jansen Baffled By NBA Finals TV Schedule

The NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final continue with games taking place this weekend, and many basketball and hockey fans are expected to tune in to watch the action. The Denver Nuggets will try to take a 3-1 series lead on the Miami Heat, while the Vegas Golden Knights will look to rebound from an overtime loss to return home one win away from a championship. Aside from the pomp and circumstance, there is considerable intrigue pertaining to the action on both the court and the ice. The challenging part of the entire situation is knowing when the games are played due to the disjointed nature of the schedule.

Throughout the NBA Finals, games have taken place three days apart from one another, while the Stanley Cup Final has followed a similar pattern but both avoid playing games on Sundays. As a result, there were only two days between the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals, but three for the remainder should it reach a deciding seventh game. Similarly in basketball, the first three games of the NBA Finals were played every other day, but the remainder of the series is scheduled with two days of rest. There is a chance the decision was made to accommodate travel schedules, as both series are aligned in a 2-2-1-1-1 pattern, meaning the first two games are played in one city; the next two are played in the other; and then they continue to alternate until a champion is crowned.

“I don’t know why the NBA’s not playing on Sunday,” 97.1 The Ticket morning co-host Mike Stoney said. “That big travel day – because you really need travel days nowadays with your private planes to fly from Miami to Denver.”

Show co-host Jon Jansen, who played 10 seasons in the NFL as an offensive tackle with Washington and Detroit, expressed how some players may need to acclimate themselves to the altitude in Denver, Colo. The city is located 5,280 feet, or one mile, above sea level, making the air thinner and dryer and presenting some visitors with difficulty breathing. Jansen never felt the effects of altitude sickness, claiming that it was never a big deal for him, but obviously, everyone reacts to things differently.

“Basketball in particular and hockey because it’s constant running, especially at your position,” Stoney proposed. “You’re not running like madmen [in football] like they do in basketball where I think it affects you the most.”

The schedule also presents challenges for consumers around the United States living in different time zones. The NBA Finals do not begin until 8:30 p.m. EST, and the games often do not include until close to midnight. Especially on weeknights, asking East Coast fans to stay up late and then go to work early in the morning limits the amount of sleep they can receive. Meanwhile, those on the West Coast are just returning home from a standard eight-hour workday and may have other tasks to carry out.

“They’ve got to get up early on the [West] Coast,” Jansen said. “We’ve got to stay up late because Monday Night Football can’t start until 8:30. It goes both ways.”

There is no perfect time slot that will appease all consumers, but even so, ratings for this year’s NBA Finals have exceeded most expectations. Game 3 attracted an average audience of 11.2 million viewers and peaked at a figure of 12.4 million, down 2.5% from last year’s third game of the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors. Viewership for the first three games of the NBA Finals is averaging 11.6 million, representing a nearly 2% decline from last year’s numbers. ESPN reported its most-watched playoffs across its platforms in the last 11 years, with the total playoff viewership audience averaging approximately 6.1 million people.

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