Sports radio is losing a leader at one of its most accomplished mid-market brands. Longtime market manager Todd Markiewicz has decided to enter the brave new world of NIL collectives.
Last month, he announced that his time with Tegna Inc. and 97.1 The Fan will be coming to an end. Markiewicz isn’t leaving Columbus, though. He is giving up radio to help his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes stay competitive as the college sports landscape changes.
Barrett Sports Media wanted to give Todd his flowers before he assumes the role of President of the 1870 Society. That is why he is the debut feature in our third annual Meet the Market Managers series presented by Point-to-Point Marketing.
Markiewicz sees a lot of similarities between his new job and the one he is leaving next month. In this conversation, he shares insight on why stations should be courting business from NIL collectives, what he learned about simultaneously serving sportsbooks and listeners, why it isn’t easy to recruit sellers right out of college, and so much more.
Demetri Ravanos: As you look back on your time at The Fan, what is it you’re going to walk away most proud of?
Todd Markiewicz: Well, I think there are a couple of things. First of all, I wasn’t looking to leave the broadcasting industry. I love this industry. It’s all I’ve ever done my entire career, and I’ve done it at a variety of places around the country. It’s been very good to my family and me, and I love it. I’m passionate about radio.
In terms of leaving it behind, you know, there is a sense of pride that I was here 13 years, and that we’ve grown and accomplished so much together as a broadcast team. I feel confident that I’m leaving this product in a better position than it was when I got here, and I think any market manager or GM would want to be able to say that.
I will add to that, it’s really hard to leave this group of people. We have such a great team and it really gave me a lot of thought and pause in deciding to go down this new road – just the thought of not being able to work alongside all of them each and every day.
DR: It’s interesting that the time you are stepping away from the business, and particularly, by the way, working for a company like Tegna, where you have so many different outlets where you can serve advertising partners. You’re stepping away during a time when, on the advertising side, the business has never had to be more creative. Is that something you’re going to miss or is it a little bit of a relief at this point?
TM: I wouldn’t say it’s a relief. I really enjoy that process. You know, the interesting thing is the verticals of these two jobs are actually very similar from the standpoint of managing a team, building relationships, doing the CNA’s, etc.. You satiate the clients needs by coming back and putting together all the different assets that you have that meet that marketing need.
This is very similar in terms of that. I’m going to be going out and working with businesses and potential contributors to put together marketing programs. The difference is, instead of station assets, I’m going to be working with athletes and other assets. But basically, the process is very similar in terms of building solutions for businesses and contributors. So from that perspective, they’re really not that different.
DR: It’s interesting to hear how similar they are because I work in Raleigh, North Carolina, now. I worked in Columbia, South Carolina for a while. Both of those markets are similar to Columbus in that so much of the sports culture centers around the college team in town. I’ve often thought that NIL sort of presents this real opportunity for broadcasters in markets like those. Is that something you could see your group when you move over to 1870 pursuing, whether it is for the athletes at Ohio State or a way to go about servicing some of the businesses that are going to be partnering with you guys? It just seems like a natural fit to me.
TM: I think it absolutely is, and that’s one of the things that appealed to me. It’s just not that far off the mark from what I currently do. It’s just using different assets to do it. The reality is this also needs to be a very creative space. It lends itself to that, whether it’s tying in a player’s name to a business, putting together speaking engagements, or meet and greets, as well as activating the investment from the contributor or business to maximize that opportunity by using media.
I’ve told the folks at the radio station that you know, I’ll probably be back here purchasing media as opposed to selling. But having that skill set of understanding media, I think is very relevant in this NIL space.
DR: You hit on something that I want to ask you about, which is it does seem like this space presents a lot of opportunity for broadcasters. You have had the broadcast experience, now you’re moving over to the NIL collective world. I would guess you sort of look at the business you’re leaving and say, “Man, radio, television, digital. These are businesses that should be chasing business from me and NIL collectives.”
TM: Absolutely. Yes, and I see a huge opportunity for utilizing OTT because of how targetable it is.
DR: I mentioned that so much of Columbus’s sports culture revolves around Ohio State. But also, you are kind of in this ideal space where that is a school where sports plays a big, big role. You are the big sports radio brand in town. Does that make it easier to recruit younger people coming out of high school, whether they are looking to be on air, on the sales side, behind the scenes, or whatever it may be? Did having the Buckeyes brand associated with yourself and The Fan make it easier to recruit kids coming out of that school?
TM: There’s no question that it’s made it easier, in particular on the programming side, to find individuals coming out of high school or college that were interested in getting into radio broadcasting. I wouldn’t say it’s made it any easier on the sales side. Those are two completely different animals.
DR: So you mentioned that they are two different animals. Is that about something beyond The Fan and Ohio State?
TM: Well, let me put it this way. I started in college on air. I started my career doing news at WONE and WTUE for Summit Broadcasting in Dayton, Ohio, and it was my dream to be on air. I quickly realized several things.
Number one, I really wasn’t talented enough at it, which is why I appreciate the programming folks so much and what they do every day for 3 hours or more. It wasn’t my forte, but I loved the business, so I gravitated to sales as a result of that. I didn’t want to leave radio.
I think that when we, as an industry, are targeting salespeople there’s a little bit of a mystery around what radio sales means, whereas when you’re looking at being on the radio, everybody knows what that means. Everybody knows what that looks like. So you just naturally get more interest. There’s more people that dream about being on air than there are that dream about being an account executive, right?
DR: Ohio recently came online with sports gambling. It looks like we’re going to get Kentucky here soon. North Carolina might come on by football season. It probably won’t happen in Texas.
I wonder as somebody that was in the position you were and kind of watched this go from debate to live and in action, what advice would you have for GM in those places where it looks like sports gambling is coming? Whether it is about what to be prepared for or even what it is their role might be in lobbying lawmakers to help get this to happen, what would you tell them?
TM: Great question and the way I would answer that is to say don’t wait to prepare. If you are a sports radio station or a sports radio format, you need to be prepared now for the opportunity that is legalized sports betting.
I don’t know if you know how things went down in Ohio, but we were supposed to launch a year sooner than we actually did. So we had been preparing for about four months. We were very strategic and deliberate with how we handled this opportunity because it’s immense for our format. And, you know, our team worked tirelessly. We had very specific intentional meetings just about LSB (legal sports betting), what it means to us, asking ourselves about the pitfalls and the other questions that needed to be asked.
So when it was delayed another year, what we realized is that four months wasn’t enough time to properly prepare for it. We needed that extra time. So it was a blessing in disguise for us to have another full year to put our plan in place.
Some of the things that we decided upon are a lot different than the way some other stations are handling it. For example, we knew there would be a lot of LSB advertisers coming into the market. There’s a plethora of them. They’re all looking for those first-time deposits. Some come in and they’re there for two months during launch and they go away. Some are there longer term. Some are late getting to the party and they’re coming into the fold, launching their apps later.
But through all that, one of the most important considerations for us as a station from the programming side was we were worried about listener fatigue. This constant barrage of LSB advertising could have a negative effect on a radio station. Not everybody that listens is gambling on sports, right? A lot are, but not everybody. So we took that listener fatigue factor into account. We spent a lot of time talking about them, and so what we decided to do was take our prime shows, all of which are top in the market with men, and we put a package together that sold each of those shows as a separate show sponsorship.
Morning Juice has its LSB sponsor, Bishop and Friends has its LSB sponsor, Rothman and Ice has its LSB sponsor, and Common Man and T-Bone has its LSB sponsor. Any LSB can advertise within spot breaks on any of those shows. They can advertise throughout any part of the day, but when it comes to show content or when they’re talking about lines, the features within the content of the show, all of that is the same by show.
So we’ve got one sponsoring one, one sponsoring the other, one sponsoring the other, and so on. What that does is it cuts down on the potential for talking about this app’s line or this company’s line or whatever the case may be. It keeps it more cohesive, and that has really worked really well for us.
DR: What I’ve always found interesting about Columbus is I think if you are of a certain age, like late thirties and on, no matter where you are in the country, you watched that market kind of become a pro sports market. You guys were in on MLS from day one. The Crew has a passionate following. How do they resonate both on air from a content standpoint and also with advertisers? Soccer has this young, diverse audience. Is coverage of the sport easy to sell or is it still sort of a niche that isn’t easy to take to the average business?
TM: That’s a great question, and here’s how I’ll answer it because it was a unique situation for the sport here in Columbus. There was a very passionate MLS fan base, soccer fanbase, and then the team was taken away from us. Then there was a huge movement in our community to save the Crew.
We didn’t cover the Crew early. We maybe talked about them, but we weren’t the flagship. After the community rallied the way they did, I felt like it was the right thing to do, to support the community, to support the Save the Crew movement, and then the Crew, once they were saved.
To give them the type of platform that they deserve in terms of monetizing it, selling it, marketing it, that was challenging at first, partially because it was new, partially because it’s niche. But that sport has grown leaps and bounds. And with the new stadium now here in Columbus, which is absolutely incredible, Lower.com Field, there’s been an elevated interest. It’s become a very sellable asset for us.
DR: I do want to end by asking you about your thoughts on the industry at large. Large media companies are cutting jobs like crazy this year. Is there a trickle-down effect to the locally owned stations in the radio world – positive or negative?
TM: Obviously, we’re owned by Tegna, which is really a television-rich company. They’ve been very good to us since the purchase.
To answer your question though, I don’t think there is a negative impact as long as you’re staying local and relevant and the content is on point. You know, we’re winning even from a revenue standpoint. In the Miller Kaplan, we’re winning big and it’s because content is king and it is such an advantage right now because listener habits have changed since COVID. People were working from home, they were listening to music on apps and by other means because they weren’t in their cars. When they returned to their car they didn’t necessarily return to music radio stations, right?
In our experience, that was different for us as a spoken word format. I really think that’s where the advantage for the format is. There’s only one way to get the content I provide to the community, and that is going through us. You can listen time-shifted on a podcast, you can stream us, you can listen on terrestrial air, but the reality is there’s only one way to get what we have, and what a huge advantage that is. It’s bearing itself out in our share growth since COVID.
Now, I will say that there has been a contraction of ears overall in the market, as I think a lot of markets have probably experienced. But our shares, in spite of that contraction of ears, have grown exponentially since COVID. I think it speaks to the strength of this format. When you’re doing it right, you’re living local and you’re targeting your community and what’s of interest in that community.
We’re blessed to have such a great variety of shows and how they present the content. Let’s be real. Unless there’s breaking news, most of our shows are talking about the same stuff that’s going on in the sports world, right? But we do it in such a way that’s so unique from a talent perspective.
Each show has its own specific tone and texture, and so we have people that listen all day long, you know, it’s not like they only listen to one show or the other. Now some do elevate their ratings above others, but for the most part, we’re pretty consistent in being number one with both men and adults throughout the whole day. That’s pretty astounding when you think about the fact that the content they’re talking about is basically the same. It’s just different ways of presenting and different opinions about the same topics.
