We’ve reached the end of the first week of our 8th annual BSM Top 20 series. Today we place the spotlight on the Top 20 Mid Market Sports Radio Program Directors of 2022. As you review this year’s list, please remember that the results are a collective snapshot of how forty-six (46) industry executives view the best in this category. My thanks to Alex Reynolds, Stephanie Eads, and Dylan Barrett for their help with the Top 20 process, and Steve Kamer Voiceovers for being our exclusive sponsor for this year’s Top 20 series. Steve’s voice is heard across the nation on many top shows, stations, and networks, and if you’re not familiar with his work, take a second to learn what makes him stellar at his craft by clicking here.
As it pertains to the voting, here are a few key things to be aware of.
– These results are based on 2022’s performance. 2023 changes have no effect on the voting.
– Our executive panel consists of forty-six (46) program directors and corporate executives from a number of top broadcasting companies including Audacy, iHeart, Cumulus, Beasley, Hubbard, Good Karma Brands, ESPN Radio, FOX Sports Radio, SiriusXM, Spotify, and independently owned and operated radio stations. We involve a large number of people in this process in order to include feedback from all parts of the country, as well as to prevent the results from heavily favoring one company.
– A total of 52 programmers were eligible for voting consideration in the Mid Market Sports Radio Program Directors category.
– Voters choose their Top 20 in this category based on a few key factor’s including leadership, brand success, ratings, multiplatform impact, etc.. Keep in mind that voters live in different cities, have different tastes, and value certain qualities more than others. This isn’t a perfect science, but it’s the best system we’ve been able to come up with to showcase how sports radio’s brain trust view the best in the format.
And that brings us to the rankings for this year’s Mid Market Sports Radio Program Directors. Brad Carson of 92.9 ESPN in Memphis returns to the top this year with his second category win. Brad knocked off Andy Roth by twenty nine (29) points to claim the top prize. BSM congratulates Brad and the 92.9 ESPN team on earning this year’s top honor, as well as every programmer who gained a spot on this year’s list.
Now, here are the full results of “BSM’s Top 20 Mid Market Sports Radio Program Directors of 2022!”
Additional Notes:
Brad Carson, Andy Roth, Ryan Haney, Paul Mason and Allan Davis tied for the most first place votes with two apiece.
Spots 21-25 were held by Ryan Maguire, Tim Spence, Scott Garrard, Andy Sweeney, and Buddy Wiley.
The closest battle saw Jeff Austin finish 2 points ahead of Kraig Riley.
Of the 52 programmers eligible for consideration this year, 1e received at least one 1st place vote.
Here is the remaining schedule for the BSM Top 20 of 2022.
Monday February 13 = The Top 20 Major/Mid Market Sports Radio Stations of 2022
To view prior years of BSM’s Top 20 results, click here.
There are people in this world that have been to every Super Bowl. The single biggest event in American sports has become old hat to them. Most of those people will not be part of FOX’s broadcast crew on Sunday.
Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen will be in the booth for the first time ever. Tom Rinaldi will be on the sidelines of the game for the first time ever. The lone veteran on the game crew will be across the field from Rinaldi. The 57th Super Bowl will be the fifth Erin Andrews has covered.
Andrews told me she is happy to help out and share what she can, but her new crew doesn’t need advice on how to do the job.
“They don’t need me,” Andrews said. “They don’t need me at all. The only thing they have leaned on me for is stuff like ‘What’s the week like?’ and ‘Where are we going?’ In terms of the game prep. They don’t need me.”
The spotlight will be especially bright on FOX this year. Not only is this the first time the nation will hear Burkhardt and Olsen call the NFL’s biggest game of the year, but plenty has been written about the fact that it could be their last. The next time FOX carries the Super Bowl, Tom Brady is expected to be in the booth alongside Burkhardt. Whether that’s with Greg Olsen or instead of him remains to be seen.
Olsen has been a trooper throughout the week. When we met, I told him that I wanted to ask him a broadcasting question he probably hadn’t heard yet. He quickly used the moment to inject humor by adding “you want to know what I think about Tom Brady?”. It elicited a near guffaw from Tom Rinaldi.
The former tight end turned television analyst has won near universal acclaim since he retired from the NFL. It really shouldn’t surprise anyone. He has been great as an interview subject for years.
I asked him if those interviews, particularly his regular visits with The Mac Attack on WFNZ in Charlotte, helped get him to the point he is at now, where he’s not just ready to analyze a game in the booth for Super Bowl LVII, but does such excellent work that the discussion that follows is nearly start-to-finish praise.
“Like anything, the more experience you have being confident speaking and being confident with your thoughts and answering hard questions is all really good experience to draw on,” he told me. “I think the challenge is how do you make it compelling but also concise and easy to absorb. The more experience you have going on radio shows, going to press conferences, facing the music after you had a bad game, all of it is part of the process of learning to be comfortable and just be yourself.”
Erin Andrews may be the only one on this crew with experience broadcasting the Super Bowl, but Olsen has been here before. He had four catches in Super Bowl L, which the Panthers lost to Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos.
“The last time I walked off a Super Bowl field, I had to watch another team celebrate with confetti after one of the best years in NFL history. We were 17-1. It’s nice to know I don’t have that level of pressure to deal with. This is a different type of pressure.”
The pressure he’s referring to is about delivery. Can you be relatable and fun, yet sound smart? Can you offer insight without getting in the way? Can you let the pictures speak for themselves while recognizing what they aren’t saying that the audience may want to know?
You may not realize how much work that takes, because Olsen makes it look easy. Anyone in this industry knows that even if our audience isn’t aware of it, they are tuning in for the story. That is where this crew sets itself apart.
Who in the sports world is a better storyteller than Tom Rinaldi? He told me that he came to FOX in order to tell the stories around two major events – the Super Bowl and the World Cup. He did the latter in November. Now, he gets set to take on the former.
“I was floored by the passion, the reach and the scope of the World Cup,” Rinaldi says. “Even though it was during a time of year it has never been done before and it was largely a one city World Cup, right? It was Doha and then everything was within an hour of Doha. I loved the experience there, but at the end of the day, you can’t compete with the NFL, not if you’re American.”
Not only can they tell a great story, there are great stories on FOX’s Super Bowl crew. It wasn’t so long ago that Kevin Burkhardt was calling high school football games for whoever would let him. Just fifteen years ago, this was still a second job.
He knows it can be discouraging for guys in their 30s still calling those high school games to see men and women eight, nine or ten years younger than them getting network opportunities. Those are the people that will be on his mind Sunday.
“I hope I’m proof to keep going,” said Burkhardt. “I grew up in North Jersey, went to a small college and had a hard time for a long time getting any traction. Hopefully, I’m inspiration to people hitting the wall and not getting anywhere thinking ‘should I give this up?’”.
This team isn’t just fueled by stories. It is fueled by relationships. Burkhardt cites Olsen’s dad, Chris, as one of the greatest influences on his career when he was calling those high school football games. Rinaldi and Andrews worked together at ESPN and on College GameDay. Andrews also said she had an incredibly comfortable relationship with Olsen when she was covering him as a player.
“Greg was the one I would go up to in pregame warm-ups and half the questions I had we wouldn’t even talk about because we would just joke around and make fun of people. So, we just picked right up where we left off,” explained Andrews.
Be fun, be trustworthy, and be interesting. That is the challenge in front of Andrews and a group of Super Bowl rookies. FOX trusts this group and believes that individually and collectively they’re ready to rise to the occasion.
The Volume may only be two years old, but it has quickly proven it has all the experience needed to deliver memorable events. Case in point, the company’s Super Bowl media party, which has quickly become a must-attend event during Super Bowl week. If you work in the business and aren’t there, you’re missing out.
Last year, Colin Cowherd and his team celebrated the company’s one year anniversary with a special bash in California, attended by some of the biggest names in sports and the media industry. This year in Phoenix, the second act was even stronger.
Held Wednesday night at The Duce, the three hour celebration included a live DJ, free food and beverages including a signature cocktail called The Cowherd, and of course, some of the biggest movers and shakers in the media business. Executives in attendance for the event included The Volume’s Founder, Colin Cowherd, the brand’s Head of Content Logan Swaim, 30 for 30 co-creator and current CEO of Words + Pictures, Connor Schell, WWE’s EVP of Development and Digital, Jamie Horowitz, Michael Klein of Silver Tribe Media, Josh Pyatt of Endeavor, Premiere Networks President Julie Talbott, Emmis Communications CEO Jeff Smulyan, American Media President and former ESPN Audio SVP Traug Keller, and FOX Sports Radio’s power team of Don Martin and Scott Shapiro.
Talent could be found throughout the venue as well. Among those to appear included the co-host of UNDISPUTED, Shannon Sharpe, PFT Commenter of Pardon My Take, Outkick Founder Clay Travis, Taylor Lewan and Will Compton from Barstool’s ‘Bussin’ With The Boys, Kevin Clark from The Ringer, Cousin Sal, ESPN’s Mina Kimes and Doug Kezirian, Cowherd’s on-air partner at FOX Sports Jason McIntyre, and a number of The Volume’s on-air talent such as Mike Silver, John Middlekauf, Alex Monaco, and Liv Moods. Even accomplished reporters such as Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal, Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, and Bryan Curtis of The Ringer made time to attend, as did a number of top media agents.
The Volume has already cemented its position in the sports audio and video space, but if it decides it wants to get into the events business too, Wednesday’s night’s party showed it could likely excel at that as well.
As Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Riley Patterson launched the football between the uprights, the crowd in Jacksonville erupted in jubilation, a stark contrast to its palpable despondence just a short time before. The Los Angeles Chargers had established a sizable 27-0 lead in the Wild Card game but proceeded to have no answer for the Jaguars’ offense in the second half. Working in his emeritus role with NBC Sports, Al Michaels was on the call for the matchup and delivered the final call to a national audience, which subsequently received a deluge of criticism from sports fans and media pundits alike.
In fact, some people, deeming the broadcast lackluster, went so far as to suggest Michaels should step aside and retire from broadcasting altogether.
Yet Michaels, who has made a stellar career of nailing the big moments with just the right tonality and volume, saw an official throw a penalty flag following the game-winning field goal. As an experienced national play-by-play announcer, he remained patient and waited for the ruling to see if it would impact the final score.
It was a shrewd observation on his part, but the penalty, which turned out to be a defensive offside on Asante Samuel Jr. of the Chargers, was declined by Jacksonville. The game ended in a 31-30 Jaguars victory, and many fans preferred the impassioned call made by Jaguars’ radio voice Frank Frangie, sharing it across social media.
“It might have been something like, ‘A comeback for the ages for the Jaguars; a meltdown for the ages for the Chargers,’” Michaels hypothesized on his final call had there not been a penalty flag. “That’s it. I don’t go on and on. I don’t holler the game at you; I don’t scream the game at you.”
For the previous 16 seasons, Michaels had been the voice of Sunday Night Football on NBC, working with the late-John Madden and Cris Collinsworth on the prime time matchup of the night. Throughout what turned out to be his final season with NBC Sports in 2021, there was much speculation about where Michaels would end up; however, it was made obvious to him that his broadcast scenery would change.
“I was not offered the opportunity to remain on Sunday night, so we start there,” Michaels said. “This was not a move that I made; this was a move that was made for me.”
"Come slidin' in here for one final time"
Al Michaels to Cris Collinsworth for what might be their final broadcast together ❤️
NBC Sports had chosen Mike Tirico to take over as the play-by-play announcer for Sunday Night Football, one segment of a larger broadcasting shakeup across the NFL last offseason. Michaels and Tirico had corresponded over the years at NBC, having conversations about the future of the business and collaborating on broadcasts as the play-by-play announcer and Football Night in America host, respectively.
Recognizing that Tirico is a veteran in the industry, Michaels knew he would quickly assimilate into calling Sunday Night Football full time with Cris Collinsworth – especially since Tirico had been his predecessor once before. As a result, he knew Tirico would not need unprompted advice from him regarding the new role.
“Don’t forget, Mike did 10 years of Monday Night Football,” Michaels said. “It’s not like Mike was coming into a fishbowl and he hadn’t been there before. People forget [that] I did 20 years of Monday night [and] he did the next 10. Monday Night Football is still… a major, major American television institution. Mike has had a ton of experience; it wouldn’t be like somebody brand new coming in and making a big leap.”
In March 2021, the NFL announced a new media rights agreement beginning in 2023 worth a reported $110 billion between CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC/ESPN, and Amazon Prime Video. The deal also includes increased flex scheduling for Sunday Night Football on NBC and Monday Night Football on ESPN, along with Amazon Prime Video being named the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football.
Originally, Amazon Prime Video was not supposed to begin its production of Thursday Night Football until the 2023 season; however, negotiations between the company and the league resulted in its launch being moved a year earlier. FOX Sports had been producing Thursday night football games since 2018, and the broadcast was simulcast to NFL Network and on Amazon Prime. The network raised no qualms when afforded a chance to back out of the final year of its agreement, ceding the broadcast property to Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon Prime Video officially announced the signing of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit as its inaugural Thursday Night Football booth after months of speculation and reporting about the potential broadcast pairing. The OTT streaming service had secured the Thursday night broadcast rights for 11 years and sought to build ethos and trust with its audience while innovating on its modern platform.
A key move that piqued the interest of Michaels in joining Amazon Prime Video was when it named Fred Gaudelli as the broadcast’s executive producer. Michaels had worked with Gaudelli for the last 21 years – 5 at Monday Night Football on ABC; 18 at Sunday Night Football on NBC – and developed a rapport with him.
Due to the success of Sunday Night Football as being prime time television’s number one show for the 11th consecutive year while averaging a total audience delivery of 19.9 million viewers, Michaels was, in his own words, “surprised… that he was going to do this.”
“He’s at the very top,” Michaels said of Gaudelli, who produced his final NFL game last month in the truck but will continue in the executive producer role with Amazon Prime Video and NBC. “A lot of us in the business say, ‘Our producer; our director is the very best.’ I’ll go to war about that…. Fred is at the top of the line.”
With the broadcast team in place, Amazon Prime Video began preparing for the season by assembling shoulder programming, composing a theme song and building out hi-tech mobile broadcast units. The production felt at scale with what Michaels had departed from, and he felt confident the new endeavor in his career would be successful.
“I didn’t know what my expectations were except for the fact that I knew that with Fred in control, this was going to look big-time – and it did,” Michaels said. “I credit him with making the show look what it looked like. He did it like Sunday Night Football; he put together a crew from scratch.
“Our directors; our guys – ‘Take one;’ period; end of story; live,” Michaels said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people who do this [and] I would hope the league appreciates how good television makes the National Football League look every week on all of the networks.”
According to Nielsen ratings data, Amazon Prime Video’s presentation of Thursday Night Football averaged 9.58 million viewers over its 15-game package, peaking during its first broadcast in a matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers. A particular challenge Michaels and the broadcast team faced emanated simply from broadcasting games on a Thursday.
“It’s difficult for the league to give us a compelling game every week because you can’t ask teams to play more than once a year on a Sunday-Thursday type of schedule,” Michaels said. “That’s why, for the most part, you have to do every team in the league.”
Throughout the season, Thursday Night Football had its fair share of matchups that were ostensibly not appealing to consumers because of the teams and/or the flow of the game.
Michaels had similar experiences over his time with ABC and NBC, enduring through contrasting facile and difficult stretches of games, but knew many factors were beyond his control. Just because a game fell short of expectations, however, did not mean it equated to a subpar broadcasts, as there were contests throughout the season – most notably the Los Angeles Rams’ Week 14 matchup against the Las Vegas Raiders – that were decided in the final five minutes garnering an implausible and/or unlikely denouement.
“You’re going to get some dramatic games; you’re going to get some pretty good games; you’re going to get some okay games; and you’re going to get some stiffs,” Michaels said. “….We had our share this year of games that were less than compelling, so hopefully the law of averages gets us some games that will go down to the wire.
“I don’t think anything televises like football,” Michaels said. “I think a lot of the popularity of the National Football League can be attributed to what it looks like, and I think the advent of HDTV years ago, and now 4K [and] skycams – you’re taken inside the huddle; you’re taken wherever you need to go…. I’m even amazed being inside the business of how great it looks and how amazing it is that we’re able to get the shots that we get.”
–
One of the first things Al Michaels remembers in life is walking into Ebbets Field on the first-base side in the early 1950s with his father, Jay, by his side. As he marveled at the baseball field the then-Brooklyn Dodgers called home, he knew his future would somehow involve remaining around the world of sports.
His father, who initially worked as a booking agent and went on to become a television executive, taught him about the rules of the games and kept him immersed in the Dodgers, along with other local teams. He would go on to attend many more Dodgers games in his formative years, always transfixed on both the action and the broadcasters. Additionally, he would listen to baseball games from afar, including local New York Giants and New York Yankees broadcasts.
“Sports had to be a part of my life and it never wavered,” Michaels said. “It is the only thing that I ever wanted to do; I was able to do all of the things to get to the point where I was able to get into the business.”
Around the same time when Michaels attended his first Dodgers game, the team had introduced its new announcer who would go on to be known as the legendary voice of baseball, Vin Scully. In his rookie season, Scully worked with Red Barber and Connie Desmond, two established sportscasters in their own rights – and went on to broadcast the World Series three years later at the age of 25.
Working within the Dodgers organization for 66 years, Scully was a renowned figure among baseball fans at large. He was widely regarded as a master storyteller, emblematic of America’s national pastime and a recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award for his contributions to the game. Michaels followed Scully from his early days as a member of the Dodgers’ broadcast team and is someone for whom he has a profound amount of respect.
“I was unbelievably and thrillingly honored when the Dodgers asked me to come and emcee the Opening Day tribute to Vinny going into his last year,” Michaels said. “So many of the players I grew up with were there to honor him. Vinny – number one – was the guy I always strived to model myself after.”
Shortly after his graduation from Arizona State University, Michaels called Hawaii Islanders’ Minor League Baseball games, a Triple-A club then-affiliated with the Chicago White Sox. This came after a brief stint as a talent coordinator with Chuck Barris Productions where he would assist in the planning of The Dating Game, a television game show hosted by Jim Lange.
Additionally in 1967, he had worked with Chick Hearn as a broadcast assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers while also helping the team in its public relations department. After eight games (four of which he appeared on the air) though, Michael was surprised to learn that he had been fired via a phone call by Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke. He found out years later that he had only been brought on the broadcasts to help Hearn assimilate working with a partner, who eventually would turn out to be Rodney Hundley.
While many people visit Hawaii to relax and unwind, Michaels did the complete opposite, working in a variety of roles that gave him a decade’s worth of experience in the span of just three years. In addition to his role calling Islanders baseball, he announced University of Hawaii football and basketball games and high school sporting events. He also wrote a column in a weekly magazine all while appearing on television twice per day on a news station at 6 and 10 PM.
His ticket back to the continental United States came when someone at NBC had heard Michaels broadcasting during their vacation and recommended the Cincinnati Reds interview him for their open radio play-by-play announcer job. Michaels’ first major league broadcast partner was former Reds pitcher Joe Nuxhall and together, they covered Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, and “The Big Red Machine” for the next three seasons.
Early in his broadcast career, Michaels had displayed versatility and was always cognizant of opportunities to learn new information and gain new experiences. When the team qualified for the World Series in his second season, he appeared on NBC at the age of 27 alongside its national broadcast team of Tony Kubek and Curt Gowdy to call the game and provide local insight.
“I also loved Curt Gowdy when I was growing up because Curt was extremely versatile,” Michaels said. “Curt did the Super Bowl; he did the World Series; he did the Final Four and a number of other shows…. It was a great thrill for me to get to work with [him].”
Following the next season, Michaels returned to California to call games for the San Francisco Giants and also began calling men’s basketball for UCLA. In 1977, he signed with ABC Sports and became the lead play-by-play announcer for its coverage of Major League Baseball and had the opportunity to call the World Series seven additional times, two of which he alternated broadcast duties with Keith Jackson depending on the location of the game.
One of those World Series occurred in 1989 when the San Francisco Giants were playing the Oakland Athletics – and Michaels was live on the air when Game 3 was interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake, which registered a 6.9 on the Richter scale. For the next eight hours, Michaels broadcast live coverage of the earthquake from Candlestick Park, the home of the Giants, demonstrating his adept proficiency in adjusting the scope of coverage. He received an Emmy nomination for his abeyance of broadcasting the game itself to provide on-site news coverage, informing viewers in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country as to what had occurred and the events that ensued.
While at the network, Michaels had the opportunity to cover a wide range of different sports, including college football, horse racing and ice hockey. In 1980, Michaels was on the broadcast team for the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid – the year when the United States upset the Soviet Union 4-3 in what was perhaps the 20th century’s most iconic moment in sports. The game was aired on tape delay and ultimately resulted in a gold medal finish for the United States when they came back to defeat Finland two days later. The victory also ended the Soviet Union’s streak of capturing four straight Olympic hockey gold medals.
Michaels affirms that his famous call, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!,” is the unequivocal highlight of his career. Years later, it was utilized in the Walt Disney Pictures movie “Miracle,” a depiction of the 1980 U.S. Men’s National Team starring Kurt Russell as former head coach Herb Brooks and Patrick O’Brien Demsey as team captain Mike Eruzione. Even without the movie though, the team remains fixed in American sports lore forever – and Michaels’ call continues to provide the bonafide soundtrack of what is perhaps its most heralded moment.
It also continues to run in the family, as his grandson, who is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, is set to call his first women’s hockey game.
“The hockey coach at the University of Wisconsin – they’ve got a fantastic program – is Mark Johnson, who [was] one of the big heroes at Lake Placid,” Michaels said. “Everyone thinks about Eruzione and Jim Craig, but I can’t wait until Mark Johnson finds out that my grandson [is] going to be announcing one of his team’s games. I can’t believe it – it’s just unbelievable. I’m excited as hell for that to happen; I can’t tell you.
“My younger grandson plays hockey and his team went to Lake Placid about three years ago when he was 12 or 13 years old, and they wound up winning the gold medal in their group,” Michaels added. “Here’s my… grandson at Lake Placid, on the ice, taking a picture with a gold medal around his neck. You can’t make this stuff up – it’s unbelievable.”
–
When Al Michaels first became aware of the job opening with Amazon Prime Video, he was not looking to reinvent the wheel, instead trying to find aspects of the broadcast on which to improve each week. After all, there is no competition from other television broadcasts in the National Football League on Thursday nights, giving Amazon Prime Video a unique chance to differentiate itself from other programming.
In persuading viewers to try streaming the game, Thursday Night Football brought on an credible and sagacious broadcast team in Michaels and Herbstreit. The commentators, joined by Kaylee Hartung as its sideline reporter, quickly developed chemistry in the broadcast booth, blending traditional perspectives and modern insights to cultivate an appealing weekly program.
Some viewers, however, were confused as to why Herbstreit was added onto these broadcasts, but the decision made complete sense to Michaels. He pointed out that more than half of the players on NFL rosters today are either in their first, second or third seasons – meaning that Herbstreit, from his time in college football, had an esoteric base of knowledge on which to provide cogent, detailed analysis.
“‘He’s seen them all,’” Michaels said he told those skeptical of the decision to hire Herbstreit. “‘He’s more up-to-date with those guys than anybody who’s been doing just the NFL.’ I think that boded well for what it was.”
As a play-by-play announcer, Michaels aims to foster a connection with the listener and accurately depict what is occurring on the field. Despite moving from linear television to an OTT streaming platform, the way in which he calls the game has remained the same. If he had changed his announcing style, Michaels says people would have questioned what he was doing and why he deviated away from what had worked for a prolonged amount of time.
“I have no idea,” Michaels said regarding changing his announcing style. “Would I bring back Dennis Miller? Well, I could do that too. Anyway, that’s what it is. People are more comfortable – I don’t want to say with a standard telecast – but if you go too far… you make it more about yourself than the game and people don’t like that.”
Over his storied career in sports media, Al Michaels has called 11 Super Bowls, most recently last year’s contest between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams. Several of the contests came down to key plays made in the waning moments – such as Kevin Dyson falling one-yard short of keeping the game alive in 2000 and Malcolm Butler’s interception in 2014.
“You get to the game and you don’t want to get over-excited – you just have to calm yourself down and make the week as normal as possible if you’re doing a regular game,” Michaels said. “Once you’re on the air, it’s very exciting. You know where you are; you know how many people are watching – but once you get going, it’s pretty much like the players say: You have that first contact; the play gets underway; the pregame hype is over and then you do your job.”
It was never a sporting event Michaels thought about broadcasting in his youth because the first Super Bowl was not played until 1967, the year after he graduated Arizona State University, in a matchup between the AFC’s Kansas City Chiefs and NFC’s Green Bay Packers. Over the years, the game has become “an unofficial national holiday” and usually dominates sports media coverage upon the completion of the NFL’s championship round.
Although its linear television ratings have slightly decreased over the years, partially due to viewers streaming the game, it remains, by far, the most-watched sporting event of the year in the United States.
As Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen prepare to call the action this year on FOX, the critical thing, just as it is in any other game, will be to keep viewers informed regarding all the action.
“You want to make sure that you’re right on top of everything,” Michaels said. “I’ve had a few of them that went down to the very last play of the game and you’ve got to make sure you’re on top of it. You don’t want to have a blown call on the last play of the game.”
Despite the disparity in the ratings compared to previous years on linear television and inconsistency in the appeal of the schedule, Michaels was pleased with the first season of Thursday Night Football.
He is cognizant of the challenges the broadcast has to continue to overcome in attracting viewers from a broad range of demographics and making the technology accessible en masse; however, the opportunity to be part of this avenue of innovation in sports media both excites him and keeps him motivated to perform at a high level.
“It’s intoxicating and exhilarating for me to still be a part of this and still be a part of the National Football League, which has become the king of all sports right now,” Michaels said.
“The thought of moving away from it – no, that has no appeal to me. To do what? People say, ‘Well, you can retire and play golf.’ I play enough golf….. To me, it’s not a job really; it really isn’t. It’s a source of great enjoyment for me and it keeps my brain stimulated. I’ll probably do this as long as somebody will have me and my health holds out.”
Walkouts are a common form of protest used by employees to draw attention to workplace grievances and push for change. At NBC, it appears that employees feel that the company may have violated the law in some way.
According to Fox News Digital, about 200 employees from NBC and MSNBC walked out Thursday in response to recent layoffs. The layoffs affected the digital news team. Union leaders said the company broke the law.
The NBC News Guild is a union representing employees at NBC News, including journalists, editors, producers, technical staff, and others. The union is a part of the NewsGuild-CWA, a larger labor union representing journalists and other media workers across the United States and Canada.
“NBC is refusing to bargain with our union, as they have a legal obligation to do so,” Tate James, an NBC News video editor who serves as Guild chair, told the website. “They are acting as if we are not a union, they are acting as if the union does not exist, but we do. We’re here, and they have a legal obligation to bargain with us before they make changes to our workplace.”
The walkout is a form of labor strike which is used to put pressure on MSNBC to make changes or in this case, reinstate terminated journalists. Many believe, by temporarily stopping work, the workers aimed to disrupt normal operations and bring attention to their cause.
“The company has illegally fired a set of workers, they laid them off,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “When you’re bargaining with your union, you can’t just fire or lay off workers, you’ve got to do it at the bargaining table.”
James Carville is a political consultant, commentator, and strategist, who’s best known for serving as the lead strategist for the successful presidential campaign of Bill Clinton in 1992. On Wednesday, Carville drew criticism from pundits when he referred to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) as “white trash” during an interview on MSNBC.
Carville has a reputation for being combative and unapologetic in his political views, and he is not shy about expressing his opinions.
“Well, you know, I told people, I have a Ph.D. in White trashology, and you saw real White trash on display. Let me say something about Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene, she dresses like White trash,” Carville said.
On Thursday, Clay Travis reacted to the comment on the nationally syndicated “Clay & Buck Show.” Travis said going on MSNBC and calling Rep. Greene “white trash,” based on the clothes she wears, is indefensible.
“What’s also interesting about this, in our speech codes, if James Carville says anything about any other race in America, that derogatory, based on anything that they’re wearing, Asian, Hispanic, Black, he gets immediately canceled,” said Travis.
Greene has drawn controversy for her promotion of far-right conspiracy theories. Despite the controversy surrounding her views and statements, Greene has maintained a significant following among certain conservative and populist groups and has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., repeatedly interrupted and interjected during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Tuesday.
“The reaction that there is no reaction to the speech is just out of the window,” Travis said. “Basically, what you’re saying is you can only cheer, you can’t boo. What kind of standard are we setting there? You’re only allowed to support what the president says? You’re not allowed to reject what the president says? I think it’s important to see that everybody doesn’t agree with his agenda.”
It’s the worst week of the year for much of sports radio. Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is hard of hearing. Yes, I’m talking about Super Bowl week. It shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have to be. But there’s nothing worse than turning on your local sports radio station(s) and hearing washed-up, C-list former NFL players peddling deodorant, pillows, and protein shakes on Radio Row, and then spending two minutes talking about a game in which they have little to no insight into. Granted, it seems like the concept has cooled in recent years, largely thanks to new avenues like social media, but it still exists.
Radio Row makes hosts feel good. For many, it’s a reward for a long football season concluding. They get to celebrate and visit with their colleagues, talk with current and former NFL players, and get a change of scenery from the studio. It works out for everyone but the listener, who is ultimately the only person who matters in this conversation.
But for some reason, year after year, radio stations seem intent on sending shows to radio row. I will admit I believe the phenomenon has died down slightly in recent years (although, full disclosure, I have been out of the format for five years). Whether that’s because of budget constraints, or realizing it’s not great programming, is debatable. But no matter what, the further away from radio row, the more enjoyable for the listener.
Now in the News Talk Format, we don’t have anything like a Super Bowl Radio Row. And my sincere hope is that we never try to force one upon the industry. The closest thing we might have is radio row at the Republican or Democratic National Convention.
However, there are big differences.
First off, it’s often only heavily attended every four years during Presidential elections. Secondly, fewer hucksters are walking around looking to pitch products across every radio station in America. I’m not saying the event is void of those individuals, but unlike Super Bowl radio row, they aren’t lurking around every corner.
Annually, there are some events put on by organizations, such as Turning Point USA, FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and others, who will welcome radio shows across the country. However, in my experience, you book who you please with little pressure, and no one is walking around like Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street trying to get on to pitch cheesy products to your audience.
There are certainly worthy ideas News/Talk can poach from the Sports Talk format. The pacing and energy of most News/Talk shows can be improved to better mirror Sports Talk. This typically translates into a younger listener, especially in the male demographic.
Sports talk can, and at its best, should be, fun and not too serious. Too many News Talkers think they are the President of the United States, not just talking about him. That can also be improved across much of the format.
But when it comes to things that News/Talk has done a better job at, and maybe it’s luck and good fortune as much as anything, it’s not ruining a week of their listeners’ time with a bad product during one of the most exciting weeks of the year.
Green Bay Packers legend Brett Favre is taking Pat McAfee and Shannon Sharpe to court over what they’ve said about his dealings with Mississippi state officials.
Favre lobbied state officials for money to build a volleyball arena and make other athletics-related improvements at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has denied that he knew the money he was lobbying for was meant for welfare programs in the state.
According to Ryan Glasspiegel of The New York Post, in addition to McAfee and Sharpe, Brett Favre is also suing Mississippi state auditor Shad White for defamation.
Glasspiegel tweeted that if the lawsuit advances, this would be a chance to finally shed some light on the situation in court.
Everyone who has ripped Brett Favre should welcome this development BTW. If these lawsuits go through, it would mean he will have to face discovery and testify under oath about what he knew or did not know.
Brett Favre had his weekly radio hits in Milwaukee and on SiriusXM canceled after news of his alleged involvement in the scandal started making headlines last year.
Twitter and other websites reportedly experienced technical difficulties which caused outages Wednesday. According to CNBC, the cause of the issue is not clear. Some users were able to post tweets by scheduling them using the calendar icon at the bottom of the message box. Nationally syndicated media personality Joe Pags shared with listeners Wednesday some of the difficulties he was having accessing the internet which fueled speculation that reported outages may have affected other websites.
“You had the people that were all launched out of their jobs at Twitter and squelching, who were censoring, who were dropping people and they were lying about what they were saying in front of Congress today” said Pags. “It just seems to be very coincidental that on the day that Twitter is in front of Congress, suddenly, all of the algorithms, all of the machinery, all of the servers, have an issue on Twitter.”
Last year, Twitter CEO Elon Musk eliminated about 3,700 jobs to drive down the costs from the $44 billion purchase of the company.
“If there weren’t an issue with every other site, like I’m seeing with this Downdector site, then maybe I would think it’s a conspiracy,” said Pags. “But the fact that there is an issue on all these other sites, is probably not Twitter specific. Although you have to think that there’s still people working at Twitter that Musk hasn’t gotten rid of yet and probably sympathetic to some of those people that were fired.
DownDetector is a website that tracks and reports outages and problems for various websites, services, and applications. It allows users to report issues they’re experiencing, view status updates from the company, and see the latest reports from other users.
Stephen A. Smith doesn’t hide the fact that he and Kyrie Irving don’t see eye to eye.
On First Take this week live from Phoenix, Stephen A. went on a rant about Irving saying he was selfish during his time in Brooklyn. Irving was traded to Dallas earlier this week. Stephen A. asked if Irving was on drugs for suggesting that he did his job while as a member of the Nets.
Appearing with Pat McAfee on Media Row on Thursday, Smith said he’s always been a straight shooter when talking about Irving.
“It doesn’t matter how I feel about you, I’m always gonna be fair, and I’m always gonna be objective,” Smith said. “You ain’t worth my paper. So my attitude is even if I don’t like your ass, I’m still gonna be fair.”
Stephen A. went on to add that apparently there are some irreconcilable issues between the himself and the NBA star, but it doesn’t keep him from separating his feelings towards Irving as a person and his analysis of Kyrie as a player.
“Me and Kyrie have our differences – differences I don’t think will ever be settled,” he said. “He knows why. It’s personal – I’m not gonna say why. That doesn’t stop me from looking at him and saying he’s a phenomenal player.”
Stephen A. Smith said there is a difference between superstars and superstar players. He said Tim Duncan was an example of a superstar player, and Kyrie is a superstar.
“You walk through turnstiles to watch him play. That’s who he is,” Smith said. “So in that regard, Kyrie Irving pays for himself.”
Stephen A. Smith also said the fact is that despite being such a talented player, an NBA team can’t offer Irving a long-term contract this offseason not knowing whether or not Kyrie will play in a meaningful number of games.
