While Matt Fishman is a baseball fan and keenly aware of the movie Field of Dreams, its signature phrase “If you build it, he will come” depicts a dual meaning. In fact, it is somewhat indicative of the seismic change the sports media industry has experienced over the last decade to be expounded on next week in Los Angeles at the 2023 BSM Summit.
“Before, you would build it and [consumers] would come wherever you were,” Fishman said. “Now, you really need to be everywhere where people consume content.”
Some sports media pundits would posit that baseball has been slow to evolve towards today’s generation of consumers. While the game remains popular among key demographics, it is cognizant of its need to appeal to youth to maintain a steady growth trajectory.
With its content offerings easily accessible to consumers and due diligence on the sudden, yet previously anticipated cataclysm of regional sports networks, it can be ascertained that the league remains well-positioned in the market.
This season, the league is instituting a pitch clock to hasten the pace of play, while also introducing larger bases and limiting defensive shifts to increase offensive output and run production. Those in baseball hope it attracts a younger audience and maintains interest in the game, just as Fishman, Director of Content at Good Karma Brands’ ESPN Cleveland, hopes innovations in the digital space keep its content relevant and accessible.
Although these decisions may seem obvious from an outsider’s perspective, they require collaboration, negotiation and experimentation before becoming official. As it pertains to baseball, iterations of these new rules have been tested in the minor leagues for the last several years, and just like any change, will surely require an adjustment period for players, managers, umpires and fans.
In the short term, they may seem like an inconvenience, but in the long run, Major League Baseball hopes this innovation keeps the game more relevant than it otherwise may have been.
Fishman and the team at ESPN Cleveland have utilized a variety of resources to guide their future strategy, one of which is the BSM Summit. As a regular attendee of the annual event, Fishman eagerly anticipates connecting with managers, broadcasters, and personnel from around the country. Through this organic exchange of ideas, he looks to stay ahead of the curve and implement ideas and practices gathered from the two-day conference in Los Angeles back in Cleveland.
“There are some incredible speakers and new things to learn,” Fishman said. “In sitting in [the sessions], I may learn a lot more than the people I’m looking forward to seeing speak.”
The audio landscape is in a constant state of flux through dynamic consumption habits and evolving means of dissemination. Just 10 years ago, the distribution of audio consumption would be somewhat unrecognizable through a prevalence of vehicular listening and fledgling selection of podcasts.
“If you fell asleep 10 years ago and woke up today, you would be blown away by how audio is consumed,” Fishman expressed. “Yes, there are still people, and it is primarily in their cars, who listen on the radio – and even that’s changing with electric cars and the dashboard of the future.”
From Chicago to Cleveland and everywhere in-between, Matt Fishman’s journey through sports media has included many twists and turns. His foray into the industry ensued after being cut from his high school baseball team, largely because of his struggles at the plate.
Today, he remains immersed in baseball and professional sports at large as a content director, helping curate and shape the sound of the audio space in Cleveland on terrestrial and digital platforms. In doing so, he keeps his eye on the ball and tries not to swing and miss. The BSM Summit is effectively one means within a robust scouting report.
Before attending the event, Fishman wrote a weekly column for Barrett Sports Media, giving him the opportunity to reflect on his previous stints in the industry at 670 The Score in Chicago, KCSP in Kansas City and SiriusXM on its Major League Baseball and college sports programming. He was able to proffer his ideas to an audience working in or interested in learning about the sports media space, effectively preparing him for the next stage of his career.
“It was a great time to reflect on best practices,” Fishman said. “‘What’s the best thing to do when you’re on-site? How do you handle a crisis situation? What do you do when you’ve got a difficult talent?’ [These were] all things that sort of came up through one story or another and how you would deal with them in sort of a fantasy land, and then talking to people who were dealing with it.”
Aside from escaping the frigid temperatures of Cleveland and spending time in sunny Southern California, Fishman looks forward to watching established professionals in the industry take the stage and provide their thoughts on the business.
In particular, Amazon Prime Video Thursday Night Football play-by-play announcer and longtime sports broadcaster Al Michaels is someone he is excited to hear speak. Michaels, who has called 11 Super Bowls and a litany of other showcase events, will be receiving the BSM Lifetime Achievement Award for his time in the industry and the impact he has had on sports media as a whole.
“Probably my earliest major memory is the Miracle on Ice in 1980 – I was eight years old – to every other major sporting event,” Fishman said. “I remember Al doing ABC baseball and even doing college football before he was doing the NFL. He’s just a legend in our business, so it will be really interesting to hear his reflections on what he’s done and how media has changed.”
In working for Amazon Prime Video, which primarily distributes its broadcasts through its OTT platform and other forms of streaming, Michaels has gained a greater understanding of the burgeoning digital growth imbued in the industry.
Aligning in this belief, Fishman helped oversee the opening of brand new studios for ESPN Cleveland in the Flats East Bank district, located alongside the Cuyahoga River, a facility equipped with the tools for the next generation of media. With high-definition cameras, superb audio quality and editing systems, the location further underscores the emphasis Good Karma Brands is placing on both short and long forms of immersive digital content, the live aspect notwithstanding.
“We have a three-person digital team who is responsible for turning out video, whether that’s video created in our studio or video created at a game locally or what not,” Fishman said. “I think anything we can learn there on how to excel and grow our digital product is worth the time in Los Angeles.”
Good Karma Brands and ESPN Cleveland know its competition lies beyond the audio industry, a principle reason as to why they are focused on creating and distributing content everywhere.
Through The Land on Demand subscription service, original podcasts and, of course, entertaining and compelling sports talk radio, the company encompasses what it means to be a 21st-century media outlet. Instead of persuading others to adopt similar business operations through pontificating speech and pompous divulgence, the company has, through its practices, inspired others to remain vigilant and curious.
Simultaneously, Fishman and his team look at the industry from a broad perspective and appropriate conferences and other data to gain a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the landscape.
For example, at last year’s BSM Summit in New York City, Fishman observed the digital strategy equipped by program director Raj Sharan at Bonneville-owned Denver Sports (104.3 The Fan; ESPN Denver 1600; DenverSports.com) in Denver, Colo. Through conversations, ascertainment and quantifiable metrics, he consummated an understanding of the brand and related it to ESPN Cleveland as a whole.
“[I saw] what they were doing both from a research standpoint to find out what their fans like and attacking it through digital content postings for the Colorado Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets,” Fishman said. “I look at them as being innovative in the digital space, and that’s an area [where] we’re growing and looking to grow,” Fishman said.
Further proof of digital content’s augmentation in today’s marketplace is evident within the most recent edition of the BSM Top 20 for national sports radio shows. While many programs such as The Herd with Colin Cowherd and The Jim Rome Show implement visual elements to the program, they largely entered the space during a time when innovation in the space moved at a slower pace.
Both hosts will be attending the BSM Summit in Los Angeles to share their philosophies on the industry and how they have stood out in a crowded media landscape through simulcasts, podcasting, social media and other avenues of promulgation.
Nonetheless, The Pat McAfee Show was voted as this year’s No. 1 national sports radio show; yet it has largely built its following on digital platforms with a visual element. McAfee, who also hosts a podcast version of his show, attended the 2020 BSM Summit in New York where he was honored as the winner of the Tony Bruno Award.
Since then, he has had a precipitous rise in the industry and pairs his hosting role with an on-air job at ESPN that has allowed him to contribute to college football coverage, most notably on College GameDay. For Fishman, McAfee is a prime example of what it means to be a sports media personality in today’s day and age, and he aspires to learn as much as he can about the direction of digital and social media.
“I would bet most of the people who voted on that have never listened to Pat McAfee as a radio show,” Fishman said. “They’ve consumed his show on social media, and it does such a great job of putting stuff out that I think it’s something everyone should look to emulate.”
When the Supreme Court made a decision that overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2018), the legalization of sports betting was rendered a regulatory power. As a result, it became up to individual states to decide whether or not it would be legalized, decisions that would have synchronal effects on the advertising space.
Some states, such as Delaware and New Jersey, moved quickly to legalize the practice, while others such as California and Florida have yet to deem it permissible. Nonetheless, sports media practitioners from around the country have become aware and immersed with the practice and are eager to learn more about its future.
Ohio officially legalized sports betting in January, and last year’s BSM Summit featuring appearances by executives from DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel assisted Fishman in preparing for the landmark moment in his state.
“Just learning about new things is what I think the best part of the BSM Summit is,” Fishman said, “[and] just seeing how different stations and media groups are doing different things.”
Aside from attending the event, Fishman will be a participant during its final panel fittingly titled One For The Road. Joined by Sean Thompson of Arizona Sports and Brian Long of San Diego Sports 760, Fishman will share three promotions that his station has executed leading to increased revenue. Through his knowledge and expertise, he aims to communicate clear and effective strategies and compel others to consider instantiating them in their workflows.
“I look forward to sharing the three things that I pick because I think they may spark ideas in their own markets for the programmers in those markets and other markets to think about [and] try and take what we’re doing,” Fishman said. “I feel honored to speak, and it’s great being able to give back to this community to help other stations do well.”
Although attendees will have to wait until next Wednesday afternoon to find out just what Fishman will say on stage, he advises fellow programmers to put the consumer first and align their strategies to larger marketplace trends.
As a manager, Fishman garners the responsibility of developing and implementing strategy at ESPN Cleveland, meaning that he works directly with talent both in the office and on the air, along with keeping a line of communication open with key stakeholders. By being adaptable and willing to embrace change, ESPN Cleveland has experienced success across terrestrial and digital platforms and yearns to keep its momentum.
“Things keep changing in the media landscape and [in] how people consume audio, video [and] digital content,” Fishman said. “If you’re afraid to try new things, you’re going to be dead as a programmer and dead as a media outlet.”
