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Josina Anderson on Becoming an Insider: It Doesn’t Happen Overnight

BSM Staff
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Being an insider in almost any industry is an incredible time and effort commitment. Now, imagine being one of those insiders in the United States’ most popular sporting industry, the NFL. That’s the position of CBS Sports HQ’s Josina Anderson is in and in her own words, “you can’t just parachute in”.

Anderson was on with The Pat McAfee Show. Co-host A.J. Hawk asked her about the time commitments it takes to be an insider and more specifically, if she ever feels like she is in “too deep” because of the job’s requirements.

“The way Adam Schefter and them go about it as far as bein on-call all the time, I got to leave time for my dog, my hair, my nails all that others stuff. I’m not quite 24/7, I’m more 20.” Anderson joked.

She did offer some insight to the difficulty of the task at hand daily. “It’s definitely a lot of commitment. I would say before, when I was in Denver (FOX 31), you would have a lot of anxiety about when you first got major, major stories.”

Anderson continued, “Now you don’t have as much anxiety because you develop this repertoire of filters in terms of deciding if someone is credible, if you’re gonna put something out, what your relationships are. I will tell you, it doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t just parachute into it.”

Greg Olsen: FOX Was Upfront About Brady Joining Network

BSM Staff
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With the news of Tom Brady joining FOX Sports once his career is over, the one person that it could have the most effect on going forward is Greg Olsen. This year, Olsen gets a promotion from the number two analyst to being an analyst on the A team that will call the Super Bowl with Kevin Burkhardt.

Olsen was a guest on The Adam Schefter Podcast this week and he said he appreciated that FOX was upfront in telling him about Brady joining the FOX family and he appreciates getting a chance to call the Super Bowl this year:

“It was just a long offseason of speculation and rumor and reports of who was going to get the job. We always knew we were in the mix. We [Olsen and Burkhardt] weren’t exactly sure who else was in the mix. We had some conversations over the winter.”

“When the Brady news broke, we weren’t exactly sure what that meant. We weren’t exactly sure where we fit into that picture. To FOX’s credit, they were super upfront and they called us and they said this was too good of an opportunity to pass up, but we would love you and Kevin to be back together again and call this year as the A crew and call the best game that we have.”

“It’s a great opportunity for me to do it. I don’t know if it’s going to be one year or two years. For the time being, I’m going to go out there and try to have a great year and give people a fun broadcast.”

Since Olsen decided to join FOX after his playing career, he has always wanted call the Super Bowl and be on the top team. It is something he told the network at the beginning of his broadcast career:

“I always dreamed and I always aspired and I told the folks at FOX from the beginning, listen, I’m getting into this because one day I want to call the top game, I want to aspire to call Super Bowls and playoff games and what-not, but I understand there’s a little bit of a process involved in growing into that….Never in a million years did I think in Year 2 I would get an opportunity to call a Super Bowl.”

While Olsen will be analyzing some of Tom Brady’s games this year, Brady will not be on his mind and he understands that this is a business:

“Other than when we call Bucs games, not really at all. I can’t control all that stuff. Tom Brady is Tom Brady. I get it. I’m not naïve. I understand the way things operate. I’m going to go out there and do what me and Kevin did last year and try to even get better. If that day comes, that I get replaced by Tom, I get it. In the meantime, I’m not going to be looking over my shoulder and be afraid to mess up. I’m just going to let it rip…I have no hard feelings or animosity towards Tom. I have all of the respect in the world for Tom.”

Kevin Kugler Receives National College Baseball Award

BSM Staff
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The voice of the College World Series on Westwood One is being honored for his national presence on those broadcast and efforts to help promote the sport. Kevin Kugler is the 47th annual NCBWA Russell D. Anderson/Wilbur Snypp Award recipient for national contributions to college baseball.

“Kevin Kugler has been identified with the College World Series and college baseball for most of his broadcasting career,” NCBWA executive director Bo Carter said, “And he has been a great promoter of the game as well as providing exciting coverage of so many games going back to his college days at Nebraska. Congratulations to Kevin for this excellent honor, and it is a pleasure to have his acquaintance. His baseball voice is familiar to thousands of college baseball fans.”

The award is named after the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association founder Wilbur (Bill) Snypp and Russell D. Anderson who was the NCBWA’s treasurer and associate executive director from 1996-2021.

“I have been so fortunate to have worked college baseball and the World Series with such people as John Bishop for many years,” Kugler explained. “As a native Nebraskan kid growing up in Lincoln, you go to as many World Series games as possible as a fan and dream of doing the broadcasts some day.

“I also am deeply honored to receive this award from the folks who cover college baseball on a daily basis and know the amount of hard work and preparation that goes into every game. This is truly memorable, and I am appreciative.”

Kugler also tweeted his gratitude for the bestowment of the honor:

https://twitter.com/kevinkugler/status/1538209885585915906

Kugler joins a number of distinguished national baseball broadcasters such as Mike Patrick and Kyle Peterson of ESPN, the late Tom Price, Bill Little, Fred Gerardi and Jim Ellis, among others.

Jeff Culhane Named New Voice Of Florida State

BSM Staff
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Jeff Culhane is going to need to get rid of a few jackets. The play-by-play man has been named the new voice of the Florida State Seminoles.

He will re-locate from Fargo, ND, where he has served as the radio voice of FCS powerhouse North Dakota State for the last six years.

The opening in Tallahassee was created in the spring when Gene Deckerhoff announced he was retiring. Deckerhoff spent nearly 50 years calling Noles football and basketball. The 77-year-old will call one final season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before retiring completely.

“It is truly an honor to be named play-by-play voice for the Florida State Seminoles,” Jeff Culhane said in a press release. “To follow in the footsteps of a legend like Gene Deckerhoff is an opportunity and a challenge I will look to live up to every single day. My family and I can’t wait to get to Tallahassee and immerse ourselves in all the traditions of Florida State. Go Noles!”

Before taking over in Fargo, Culhane served as the voice of the West Virginia Mountaineers baseball and women’s basketball teams. He was also a studio host for the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ football, basketball and baseball broadcasts.

“Jeff Culhane is an exciting hire for our department and fans,” FSU Vice President and Director of Athletics Michael Alford said. “He is a talented, experienced play-by-play voice who has called many postseason games across multiple sports while also creating content for the programs he has worked with and their affiliate radio networks. This position attracted nationwide interest, and Jeff’s unique abilities continued to rise to the top. I look forward to how Jeff will help tell the stories of our student-athletes, coaches and department through this expanded role.”

Cullhane officially joins the Florida State family on July 1. His first broadcast will be August 27 when the Seminoles host Duquesne.

Gregg Giannotti: ‘Mark Chernoff Never Turned WFAN Off’

BSM Staff
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Boomer Esiason isn’t the only person in Gregg Giannotti’s professional life that was off on Monday.

Gio opened the final hour of the Monday edition of Boomer & Gio with the revelation that WFAN PD Spike Eskin has some time off. With the boss in Bog Harbor, ME, he noted that things could be a little more laid back on the show.

“He’s probably not listening to anything we’re doing right now, right?” Gio asked. “So all the stuff he asked me to do I could probably not do you think and he’d be okay with it?”

“Let’s break at :32 and see what happens,” Recco answered.

While it is easy for Gio to picture Eskin throwing a stick to a golden retriever in Acadia National Park, that is not the relationship he is used to a boss having with vacation. He said there was never a moment it felt like former WFAN PD Mark Chernoff wasn’t listening.

“Chernoff would never turn it off,” Gio said. “He would never take a vacation actually. He would just be gone for a couple of days here or there to visit his grandchildren.”

Mark Chernoff, ever the workaholic, wasn’t keen to sit still for too long in retirement. He recently announced that he was joining 107.1 The Boss on the Jersey Shore as the morning show’s sports anchor.

Sinclair Sets June 23 Soft Launch For Bally Sports Plus

BSM Staff
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Sinclair Sets June 23 Soft Launch For Bally Sports Plus

Five markets will be the first to get a look at Bally Sports Plus. Sinclair has revealed a softlaunch date of June 23rd for its new streaming service.

Initially, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Milwaukee and Tampa will be able to stream their local Major League Baseball teams.

“This is all about just testing, learning, iterating, and getting our full marketing plans in place,” Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley told Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand. “There isn’t necessarily a milestone that I can point you towards that says, this is what marks when we take the next step.”

The price point for the service is $20 per month with a $190 bundle available for users that want to pay for a full year upfront. That is significantly lower than what it will cost New Englanders to subscribe to NESN 360.

Both services are important, not just to their respective companies, but to the cable industry in general. Regional sports networks are struggling to hold on to clearance on cable, satellite, and streaming services around the country. If there is an appetite for a direct-to-consumer model, you can bet everyone want to discover its ideal price point ASAP!

“The math for the whole sports industry gets really interesting when you have a scaled audience on a digital platform where you can deliver interactive experiences,” Ripley added. “That’s because this younger generation is really interested in interactive experiences. They’re far more interested in sports betting than their parents.”

Bally Sports Plus will be rolled out in full this fall.

Keyshawn, JWill & Max: ‘Warriors Aren’t Going To Stop Being Petty With Media’

BSM Staff
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The Golden State Warriors are enjoying being NBA Champions for the fourth time since 2015. They are also enjoying getting to wrap themselves in “told you so” for the first time.

Monday morning, Keyshawn, JWill and Max discussed what they called the team’s pettiness in victory. 

Whether it is fans, opposing players, or media members, so many members of the Warriors have wanted to shove this victory in doubters’ faces. It’s not just Draymond Green, who has been vocal the entire playoffs. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have gotten in on the act too. 

Johnson says that the media talking about the players’ saltiness has motivated the Warriors to keep talking. 

“If you just be quiet and take the L, you good!” He said on ESPN Radio.

Draymond Green’s feud with Memphis’s Jaren Jackson Jr has drawn a lot of attention. Jay Williams says that the fact the Grizzlies forward cannot stop talking is exercising Draymond Green’s muscles as a member of the media.

“That’s content though,” he said when Keyshawn Johnson asked why Green was responding to a guy that has never won a title. “For Draymond that’s content. You love it!” 

Johnson noted that so much of this is reacting to meaningless comments on social media. Opposing players and fans use social media as a shield from having to face real consequences.

Williams doesn’t see it that way. He said that social media is the media in 2022.

“Social media is what newspapers use,” he said. “Key, when you would wake up back in the day and you would see a quote that some opposing player said about you in a newspaper or someone brought it to your attention, that’s what it’s all about. It’s another layer of that. That’s all it’s gonna be the whole offseason.”

Vince McMahon Appearance Boosts Ratings For WWE Smackdown

BSM Staff
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It was a strange decision for the WWE to put Vince McMahon on TV the same day the network announced he would step back from the CEO role amid a misconduct investigation, but it worked.

FOX enjoyed a significant bump in the week-over-week ratings for Smackdown.

The company and the network spent much of Friday afternoon promoting that McMahon would appear during the show’s opening segment in character. It prompted plenty of speculation about whether or not he would address accusations that he used $3 million of company money to cover up an affair and if so, just how much restraint would he show.

That isn’t what Vince McMahon did. He came out and delivered a promotional statement, reminding the audience that the four words that make up “the WWE signature”.

“Those four words are ‘then,’ ‘now,’ ‘forever,’ and the most important word is ‘together,'” he said. “Welcome to Smackdown!”

The lack of substance did not matter. The hype turned into ratings.

WWE Smackdown drew a .6 rating on Friday for FOX. That is 26% total growth week-over-week and 46% growth in the 18-49 demo.

What Makes A Former Player Or Coach Valuable On Air?

Demetri Ravanos
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What Makes A Former Player Or Coach Valuable On Air?

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who is a programmer in a major market. We were talking about former players that transition into broadcasting, particularly into sports radio.

He said that the reason the overwhelming majority of former players and coaches on air come from football, as opposed to any other sport, is because that is what most people want to know the most about. The value of their knowledge and experience is higher than what a basketball coach or baseball player could offer the audience.

I pushed back, not on that being the reason that football seems to breed the most future broadcasters, but on the idea that their value comes from their knowledge. That kind of thinking is the bedrock of so many forgettable, easily replaceable shows.

Last month, we learned that Tom Brady and FOX had reached a deal that will see the Buccaneers quarterback walk right into the network’s top NFL booth at the end of his playing career. It was a major investment by FOX, which will reportedly shell out $37.5 million per year for a decade.

Almost immediately, the reaction was “What about Drew Brees? Did TV not learn anything from making huge investments in players before they have even been in front of a camera?”.

I have way more faith in Brady and it is for the same reason that I push back on knowledge being what makes an ex-player or coach valuable.

The GOAT may not be the most interesting guy in the world, but we have seen him unafraid to have fun or to be the butt of a joke. We’ve seen him hold an audience’s attention when speaking candidly. It doesn’t happen all the time, but we have seen it!

The only time Drew Brees opened his mouth before joining NBC was to sell Wal-Mart blue jeans or pyramid scheme vitamins.

A bet on Brady is a network seeing building blocks that can be developed into something worthwhile. A bet on Brees was just dumb.

Whether it is TV or radio, our goal in broadcasting is to entertain the audience. John Skipper recently called Charles Barkley the most valuable asset any network in the sports business has.

Why is that true?

There are better X and O analysts of basketball, but no one combines knowledge, fearlessness, and an ability to entertain the way Charles Barkley does. Honestly, he is closer to Stephen A. Smith than any former player on TV. The first-hand knowledge of the game that he can offer is just a bonus.

That is what programmers would benefit from understanding. An athlete or coach turned broadcaster isn’t special because they played the game. They aren’t special for winning at a high level.

The guys that had careers like that before they entered the broadcasting world are lucky. That level of achievement is something many of their peers would kill for. Hell, it is the reason that in some cases, these guys have no peers.

Drew Brees was a five-time all-pro, two-time offensive player of the year, and a Super Bowl Champion. Joe Montana was the league MVP twice and the MVP of three Super Bowls. They both sucked on TV because, at the end of the day, all that matters is how you communicate.

Staffing your station or network with a few former players and coaches does add some credibility. That credibility diminishes though if they have nothing valuable to say.

When we are looking to add those kinds of talents to our stations, we have to look deeper than “can this guy speak clearly?” and “does the audience remember him on the field?”.

Here’s what I want to know when I think about former players and coaches for broadcast positions:

IS THIS PERSON ENTERTAINING?

Do they have charisma? Do they know how to tell a story? How is their comedic timing? Are they comfortable being the punchline?

Honestly, if you don’t get the answer you want to even one of these questions, it is worth asking yourself if you can do better. Sports radio isn’t a university lecture hall. It’s a theater and the performers’ only job is to entertain the audience.

IS THE GUY WILLING TO BE CRITICAL?

I know I am in the minority on Jon Gruden as an analyst, but I thought he always stopped just short of saying anything meaningful while he was the analyst for Monday Night Football. He didn’t want to shut the door on any potential future employment.

Before you agree to pay a guy for talking into the microphone, make sure he has something to say and is willing to say it. He doesn’t have to betray anyone’s confidence, but if he sees a problem on the field, he needs to be willing to say so.

DOES HE DESPISE PEOPLE THAT DIDN’T PLAY THE GAME?

The phrase “if you’ve never had your hand in the dirt” is the dumbest thing any ex-jock can say on radio or television. Imagine being a pediatrician and hating kids. That is no different than a broadcaster, no matter his background, telling his audience he doesn’t want to have a conversation with them.

If you cannot articulate your point in a way someone without your life experience will understand, then you don’t deserve a paycheck for communicating. If you want to do this job and do it well, you have to accept that your loyalty to the locker room is over and your loyalty now is to the audience.

CAN HE MOVE ON FROM THE PAST?

Again, this isn’t a classroom and no one is here for a history lesson. If the guy is good at using his own time on the field or court to explain current players and/or situations, okay. If all he has to offer is story time, then he has nothing to offer.

Plenty of former players and coaches have gone on to be great broadcasters. On radio, does it get much better right now than Pat McAfee? On the local level there’s Dan Dakich in Indianapolis, Brad Thompson in St. Louis, T-Bob Hebert in Baton Rouge, Tom Tolbert in San Francisco, Petros Papadakis in LA and so many more. On TV there is Paul Bissonnette for hockey, Randy Moss for football, Jay Bilas for college basketball, and the entire Inside the NBA crew just to name a few.

Every single one of those guys would still be tremendously entertaining and a valuable addition to any station or network even if they had never played or coached. Why? Because we are in the entertainment business and they can all know how to entertain.

I’ll take that over knowledge as the foundation for a show any day of the week. If it comes with some insight, awesome, but first hand experience is the sizzle, not the steak.

Greg Norman Rejects Notion That He’s Taking “Blood Money”

BNM Staff
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Golfing great Greg Norman is speaking out about his decision to partner with the Saudis and join the LIV Golf Series as its commissioner. Norman joined the “One Nation with Brian Kilmeade” on Saturday night. 

A transcript obtained by Barrett News Media indicates Norman has no reservations about his decision to lead the venture. In fact, Norman said there’s an astounding level of hypocrisy being displayed by the PGA Tour. He told Kilmeade that he rejects the notion that he is taking “blood money” from the Saudis. 

“Yeah. Look, I’m disappointed people go down that path, quite honestly,” Norman said. “Look, if they want to look at it in prism, then why does the PGA Tour have 23 sponsors within the PGA Tour doing 40 plus billion dollars’ worth of business with Saudi Arabia?” 

Last week, the PGA Tour announced that it was suspending 17 golfers who are currently playing in the LIV Golf Series. The endeavor is being funded by Public Wealth Fund, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. 

Norman said he has been impressed with what he has seen from the Saudis in terms of their passion for the game of golf, calling the sport, “a force for good.” 

“So, to me, if golf is good for the world, golf is good for Saudi, and you’re seeing that growth internally, it’s extremely impressive,” Norman added. 

“The hypocrisy in all this, it’s so loud. It’s deafening, Brian. And really, when we’re not going anywhere, we want to do what’s right for the serving, the fans, for the players, and for our commercial business model. We are going to forge forward. And there’s been a lot of obstacles, Brian, no question about it.” 

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