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Are Athlete Podcasts Poised to Doom the Future of the Industry

John Mamola
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Are Athlete Podcasts Poised to Doom the Future of the Industry

There’s an audience for everything, right? That’s the first thing that came out of my mouth when I saw the news that former NFL quarterback Brett Favre launched a podcast. The 4th and Favre podcast features the Pro Football Hall of Fame signal-caller discussing sports, his career, and everything in between.

Was there an audience asking for this? Does Brett Favre command a digital audience that’s salivating to hear his thoughts on Aaron Rodgers, the death of Nick Mangold, and Arch Manning’s struggles at the University of Texas?

There’s been a lot of chatter over the past couple of years about whether we’ve reached “peak athlete podcast” levels. With advertising dollars shifting to digital and social media, and athletes attempting to remain relevant to a younger audience, will we ever truly reach “peak athlete podcast” levels?

For every Pat McAfee and Shannon Sharpe, there’s a Brett Favre and a Dwight Howard. Bill Simmons told The Hollywood Reporter the most overrated trend in podcasting today is “the ex-player sports podcast boom.” Make no mistake about it, sports podcasts are a growing business in an industry has turned numerous everyday joes into sports media royalty.

Just Another Podcast Evolution

It’s where the scribes took what they gained from radio experience and crafted their own niche of insight and opinion. It’s where former sports talk radio hosts go when the traditional model is out-aging their audience. There’s a cool factor to sports podcasting that has no limitations or time constraints, and it offers a scale that reaches the world instead of just a local market.

It’s also a business where the more salacious you are, the more downloads you get. The audio version of clickbait—keeping the audience coming back for more with a new hot take or in-depth guest interview. It’s uncensored, unfiltered, and more often than not, uninteresting for a number of podcasts.

Podcasts used to be just recorded audio made for download. Today, podcasts still exist in audio form but become lost in the pack if that’s the only format. Podcasts now involve live streams or taped video, heavy editing, social media clips, teaser videos, and the occasional post-show recording. Podcasts have become a television operation, albeit with audio still at the heart of their success.

You can tell the story of success through downloads, engagements, views, click-throughs, time spent listening, time spent watching, likes, shares, and so much more. The ease of access has become absolute—making it easier than ever to simply start talking and hope someone is listening, watching, sharing, or liking.

Where current and former athletes come into the industry is that they bring what any podcaster wishes they had: a following of the masses before saying a word. Athletes bring instant attention, social buzz, and advertisers because of the star factor they carry from the field of play. This makes “peak athlete podcast” levels a concern for podcasters looking to cut through the noise and grow their own following today.

Follow the Signs

There are a number of top podcast charts to follow, from Spotify to Apple to YouTube.

Glancing over the top ten sports podcasts this morning on Apple’s charts, not one of the top ten is hosted by a current or former athlete. Spotify has three of its top ten sports podcasts hosted by current or former athletes. YouTube’s latest charts show nine sports podcasts in their top 100, with six of those nine hosted by current or former athletes.

You can see that on the visual side of the podcast industry, athletes are making more impact than in the audio space alone. Has anyone paid attention to where podcasts are growing and where more investment is being made? Video.

Netflix added a selection of Spotify video podcasts to its platform in early 2026 to keep up with YouTube’s massive growth and relevance in the podcast space. Let’s not even begin to talk about social media platforms now hosting live streams of podcasts and building their own networks for consumption.

Much like former athletes once took jobs away from qualified sports columnists on television and hosts on sports radio, here they come for podcasting.

That’s the bigger issue for the future of non-athlete-hosted podcasts—the athletes flooding the ecosystem. The Bill Simmons Podcast was founded in 2015. Pardon My Take? That was in 2016. The Dan Le Batard Show is eleven years old, and The Fantasy Footballers have been around even longer. These are some of the most successful podcasts in the sports category, but they were all launched when the field rarely had an athlete participating.

We live in a new day today.

Show Me The Money

Athletes are hopping into the space because they know that with their following, they can make money instantly by taking away opportunities from others. It doesn’t matter if it’s good content or not—the consumer already has a built-in relationship with the athlete.

Like blind sheep, many will follow, like, listen, and download without even thinking about whether it’s worth their time or whether they should take a chance to discover something else.

Unfortunately, it’s no longer about finding a niche in sports podcasting. It’s not about standing out among the rest. Saying something different just to say something different may not matter anymore. Be unique? Wish you luck.

The former athlete’s presence in sports podcasting has damaged the industry’s outlook for non-athletes looking to join the space. Of course, the first step is the most important, but breaking through a very crowded field that grows more saturated with each retirement is becoming nearly impossible.

So, will we ever reach “peak athlete podcast” levels? We’re not there yet, and the notion of it is awful for podcasting’s future.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

Enter the Sports Media Haunted House if You Dare

John Lund
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Enter the Sports Media Haunted House if You Dare

Welcome to the Sports Media Haunted House 2025—where networks vanish like restless spirits, announcers drift like phantoms, gambling fiends lurk, and boosters jingle NIL cash like Michael Myers rattling his keys in the dead of night.

The lights flicker ominously. The stream sputters. Somewhere, a chilling voice hisses, “This game is streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime… with alternate commentary on Netflix.”

Grab your flashlight, clutch your passwords, and step inside—if you dare!

The Streaming Swamp

Once, a humble remote control was your sanctuary—unless it disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Now, searching for a game feels like wading through the bog of lost logins, stumbling over a tangled web of apps, subscriptions, and cryptic rules.

Gone is the age of cord-cutting—now, it’s death by a thousand logins. Did I just renew that subscription, or was that only a nightmare?

Fans shuffle like the undead, endlessly hunting for highlights. The swamp is filled with streaming fiends, Jason Voorhees-like in their menace. Lurking behind subscription walls and declined credit cards at every sinister turn. Even with NBC, ESPN, and streaming portals, viewers must navigate a dark labyrinth just to witness that first dunk or buzzer-beater.

The Ratings Graveyard

In the Ratings Graveyard, tombstones recount the story: the 2025 World Series averaged 12.5 million U.S. viewers for Games 1–2—down 14% from 2024. NFL Monday Night Football still haunts the airwaves, raking in 17–20 million viewers, dominating audiences and proving that appointment viewing isn’t dead… yet.

Appointment viewing has perished. Long live the algorithm.

Announcer ghosts drift through the murky fog. Vin Scully, Pat Summerall, and Keith Jackson murmur from beyond. John Smoltz groans through a World Series inning like a mummy; Joe Davis sleepwalks through the graveyard. Al Michaels hangs on, now excelling at vexing Amazon and NFL executives week after week, buried in the abyss of Thursday nights—the last sentinel against the darkness, a flickering torch in the vast hall of announcers.

The Ghosts of the Pressbox

The eeriest chamber in the house?

ESPN’s echoing corridors, stripped of genuine reporters. When the NBA betting scandal broke last week in real time, Kendrick Perkins was, to put it kindly, no Bob Costas—or Bob Ley, for that matter. It would be naïve to believe the Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups stories are isolated incidents. The temptation for professional—and especially college—athletes to wander into the contradictory graveyard where “everyone can have the betting candy but you” is only beginning.

ESPN has become a studio haunted by fiery hot takes and shrieking panels, optimized for clicks over clarity. Opinions—not facts. Audiences wander these haunted halls, endlessly scrolling in search of reliable reporting that has vanished into thin air.

Where is the line between reality and rehearsal? Not long ago, ESPN was the place to go when sports and news collided, but now they’re unequipped and unreliable when serious sports coverage is required. They’ve traded their souls for followers and likes.

The press box still has seats… but they remain eerily vacant.

The Vampire Lounge (Gambling Edition)

Vampires preside over this chamber. Odds slither across the bottom of the screen, the crawl an ever-growing poison ivy—until it mysteriously vanished at the breaking of the Rozier/Billups story in real time on ESPN.

The contradiction is a crossroads, haunting the game’s integrity. Betting entanglements cast long, swirling shadows over every contest. Was it all a nightmare, and will fans awaken to sports they can trust again?

These vampires don’t fear hot studio spotlights—they broadcast brazenly from the FanDuel set, as second-half player props and real-time offerings flood the screen before the third quarter begins. The Rozier/Billups story chills the integrity of the game, but not enough to stem the lifeblood revenues or to keep their fangs from sinking into the profits.

The Buyout Catacombs & NIL Maze

Descend deeper: the Catacombs of College Football, where former big-time coaches’ coins jangle like rusty chains in the autumn winds. Brian Kelly, James Franklin, and others boast $40–50 million buyouts—parachutes stitched from solid gold.

The NIL maze rises from the ground. Boosters pour $30–40 million into 2025 rosters at Texas, Texas Tech, Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia, and Alabama—matching the first NFL salary cap in 1994.

In the Catacombs of College Football, failure is the only thriving enterprise.

College basketball approaches with its own spectral aura: a starting five materializes, ghostly and well-paid by wealthy and success-starved boosters. Rental players are ready to vanish next season if the price isn’t met. NIL has become an unwelcome, unregulated spirit, haunting arenas and demanding tribute—or else.

Exit: Flickering Light & Faint Hope

Not every corridor in this house is cursed. NBA nostalgia still wields its magic:

5.61 million viewers tuned in the night the NBA “rose from the dead” on NBC, proving that communal moments aren’t all an illusion. The first week of the NBA season has been a solid ratings triumph, and Inside the NBA on ESPN hasn’t missed a beat. The NFL has delivered 44 of the top 45 highest-rated shows since the season began in September, with only Game 7 of the ALCS between the Mariners and Blue Jays breaking the streak. Proof that for every dreaded Almond Joy, there’s a heavenly Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

Halloween weekend looms. Keep your flashlight charged, your passwords memorized, and your wallet close. Because in sports media 2025—the scariest things aren’t lurking in the shadows… they’re hidden behind paywalls and lagging internet speeds.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

How Doug Podell Remains the ‘Doc of Rock’ After 50 Years of Service

Mike Stern
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How Doug Podell Remains the ‘Doc of Rock’ After 50 Years of Service

Radio is not an easy business to build a career in. It requires fortitude, adaptability, motivation, and a willingness to grow and change with the times. Looking back across his career, which just reached its 50-year anniversary, Doug Podell, known as the Doc of Rock, has shown all those traits and more.

“My first job in 1975 was at WABX in Detroit,” Podell says. “And now, here we are 50 years later, and I’ve really had almost no down time along the way.”

Across those five decades, Podell has worked at many of the biggest Rock and Classic Rock stations in the Midwest, been part of memorable format battles and legendary stunts, and, the entire time, one thing has been consistent across his career: his nickname, the Doc of Rock.

Podell explains the name was born at a crucial time early in his career. He had left WABX for full-time work at another legendary Detroit Rock station, WWWW, better known as W4. The station was programmed by Sky Daniels, another famous Rock radio host known for his time at WLUP in Chicago.

While the full-time opportunity was great, Podell knew he was having a hard time cutting through with the audience. What he didn’t know was that there were discussions behind the scenes about whether he was going to cut it at the station.

The Birth of “Doc of Rock”

That’s when Daniels set out to help Podell find his identity. “He said to me, ‘Doug, we got to do something to spice you up,’” and asked Podell if he had a nickname. In college, some friends had called him the Doctor, and the rest is history. “The next Monday I’m coming in, and out front is a big sign that says, ‘The Good Doctor Doug Podell 10 to 2,’ and then I hear Sky say, ‘Coming up next will be the Good Doctor.’”

Creating that on-air persona was what Podell needed. “It gave me an opportunity to hide behind the name and open up my personality, and that’s when things started to take off.” Over the years, the way Podell has used the Doc of Rock persona has gone from very foreground to more subdued and back again.

“It developed into the Mad Doc of Rock because I really went overboard with it at some points, and then it was just the Doc of Rock, and now it’s just kind of the Doc.”

Regardless of which doctor is in the studio, Podell says it’s still how the listeners greet him.

Country… Gone

Since the day when the Doc of Rock was born, Podell has been involved in several seminal moments in Rock radio history. The first was when W4 shocked Detroit by changing from Rock to Country, which was memorialized in Howard Stern’s book and movie, Private Parts.

“I was on at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning and was greeted at the door by the General Manager with a cowboy hat,” Podell says. “They offered me the chance to stay on, and I thought, ‘Well, I do have to eat tomorrow,’ so I hung around for 30 days until I landed a job at KQRS in Minneapolis as Music Director, which was my first management position.”

Working together at W4, Podell became good friends with Stern. Down the road, that led him to Cleveland, where he programmed Classic Rock WNCX and launched Stern’s third syndicated market.

“That may be the biggest nuclear bomb ever dropped in radio,” Podell says. “We took out America’s Rock station, WMMS.”

Podell had already proven his ability to lead a station to battle in the eighties when he had programmed the original WLLZ and taken on Detroit’s biggest rock station, WRIF. Now in Cleveland, the battle was on again.

“Everybody told me we could never win, but we did.” That included holding a “funeral” for WMMS’ morning host when Stern’s ratings exploded. The broadcast was famously interrupted when one of WMMS’ engineers cut the line for the satellite feed. “I might have to write a book about those days,” says Podell. “I think there’s a book and a movie of what went down.”

Adapting to a New Generation

Today, due to many factors including consolidation, lack of resources, and changing music tastes, format battles like the ones Podell fought in are almost unheard of. But there are lessons from those days that Podell still swears by.

“You have to be more engaged with your airstaff. Whether they are in the market or not, you can’t just let them fend for themselves. You need to keep everybody focused, engaged, and on track with what the mission is.” He knows it’s hard, but thinks it’s something Program Directors today should strive for. “Despite all the meetings, the sales, and the promotions, always make time for your personalities. Don’t think of them as jocks; think of them as generals out there on the streets.”

And he adds that the lack of direct, overt competitors doesn’t mean there isn’t competition.

“The war isn’t necessarily on the street anymore, but I’ve still got to do more than the next afternoon guy across the street. You got to be smarter than them, faster than them, and get your information out quicker.” That hustle includes a healthy embrace of social media, something not every veteran radio personality is comfortable doing.

“I do more social media every day than I do content on the radio,” Podell explains. The hustle that has driven him throughout his career is still in high gear. “You can’t be complacent and do the same video every day. You’ve got to be creative and get outside your usual box.”

He jumped on social media early and thinks it’s been greatly beneficial. “It’s one of the reasons I’m still around. A lot of the people who didn’t embrace it aren’t.”

But extending his brand onto other platforms is something Podell understood the value of long before social media came about. Back in the late ‘seventies, before the debut of MTV, Podell hosted a weekly show called The Beat on cable TV in the Detroit area that played music in this new format called videos.

“To this day, people still recognize me from the TV show, which aired for seven years,” noted Podell.

While he might talk about the wars he fought as Program Director of WLLZ or WNCX, when you get right down to it, one of the accomplishments he is most proud of is the time Podell spent running WRIF, Detroit’s longest-standing Rock station.

“Never had any idea whatsoever I would ever work there. I’m humbled by it because it was always such a great station; it was where you wanted to be.” He continues, “I looked up to it, you know, and to then be asked to run it and be there for 18 years—that’s very gratifying.”

And while he says he could have walked away from his career after that and been satisfied, he didn’t. The Doc is still on the air today, administering Rock to his patients across the motor city.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

The Chasm Between Clients and Radio Sellers

Bob Lawrence
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The Chasm Between Clients and Radio Sellers

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve written about advertisers who simply desire real results, as well as those naysayers who think radio is a modern-day dinosaur. Sometimes clients incorrectly believe that advertising is about moving product, while you and I know that advertising is about branding a product, which is far more important. We know this because there are so many great brands that aren’t great products. I won’t name them for obvious reasons, but you can likely think of them if you start with just beer and pizza.

With branding as important as it is, many sales teams are out there still armed with one-sheets, statistics and data, power point decks, a great deal of enthusiasm, and a belief that more of something will change everything. We all know that “more” alone won’t cut it. In fact, “more” can often hurt our cause.

We in media sales talk a great deal about “solutions,” “integration,” and “multi-platform synergies.” But to quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “To thine own self be true. (I guess my literature professor was right when she said I will use it someday.) Half the time, the three go-to items are simply rearranged: spots, promos, and sponsorships, and couched as “innovation.” Meanwhile, clients sit across the table thinking, “Didn’t I hear this same pitch from your competitor yesterday?”

Last week I mentioned sponsorships that matter and engage the audience. If you watched last Saturday night’s World Series game two in Toronto, you witnessed a wonderful, perfect example of this. In the fifth inning, Mastercard sponsored MLB’s “Stand for Cancer” program to benefit cancer research. The tradition started many years ago but in this international played game, virtually every person in the stadium held up a big placard that read, “I stand for Cancer” and it included someone they knew who had, struggled with, or survived cancer.

WOW! I had never seen that before, and I was emotionally moved. It engaged everyone, including the attendees, players, camera men, broadcasting team and of course, viewers like me. THAT is true social engagement that matters and THAT is why Mastercard sponsored it. We all don’t offer enough of this type of impact.

The problem isn’t that advertisers have stopped believing in what we offer. It’s that they may have more likely stopped believing in how we sell it. We became so focused on selling airtime, impressions, and clicks that we forgot about emotion and impact. Clients don’t wake up excited about our rate cards, “limited time offers,” or station promotions. They wake up worrying about cash flow, customers, and whether any of this “marketing stuff” will even move the needle.

A client told me recently – and this hit hard – “Honestly, Bob, I’ve thought about cutting everything and just saving the money. I’m so confused; I have no idea what even works anymore.” Ruh-Roh Scooby! That’s not good. To me, that’s salespeople fatigue talking. It’s the exhaustion of being pitched daily by every platform under the sun. It’s no wonder some advertisers have gone numb.

The truth is, “reach and frequency” don’t mean much to someone trying to move inventory or fill tables. What they really want to know is, “Will this campaign make my cash register ka-ching?”

Here’s the scary part. We may have trained some clients not to trust us. Too many bad habits, too many “this month only” specials, and too many cookie-cutter proposals labeled “custom.” You and I know that radio sells the best branding mechanism on the planet, and yet sellers sometimes forget the depth of the “relationship” and then we wonder why they shop around. They keep pushing features when what clients really want are solutions with a pulse; something that feels like it was built for them. We’ve all reviewed proposals that make us feel like we’re cardiac surgeons with a patient who just went into V-fib. “Paddles – 100 Joules – CLEAR!!”

Our clients want to believe and trust us. They want to believe in local media, in radio, in sponsorship, in the power of connection. But we have to figure out how to meet them halfway with honesty, clarity, and a little less pitch and polish. We need to do what air talent has learned to do… just be authentic and tell great stories!

Here’s some personal insight. When I walk onto an auto dealer’s lot shopping for a new car, I don’t want a salesperson coming over to pitch me before both my legs are even out of my truck. If it starts that way, their experience with me probably won’t be good. They usually begin with, “What brought you in today?” My answer is always, “My car! You just saw me drive up.” Then the next question is predictable, “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” To which I respond, “Yep – I just haven’t seen it yet.” Then the old reliable… “How much do you want to spend?” By now I’m asking myself who trained this guy? “My answer of course is, “How much do I want to spend? I don’t want to spend anything. Do you have anything that’s free?”

The sellers still winning big aren’t slick talkers. They’re translators who speak fluent client-ese. They walk into a meeting with curiosity, not confidence, and make it about the advertiser’s success, not their own commission. They’re not selling airtime or impressions; they’re selling outcomes. Most of all, they don’t walk-away when a client says “no, “not now”, or “I can’t afford it”. The best salesperson knows – that’s when the “selling” through relationship, trust and authenticity begins.

Even I get tired of the lack of care for ME as the customer. I’m also pretty sure that advertisers don’t really hate sellers. They are just frustrated at the sheer volume of salespeople, and hate being sold and pitched. The sales role is to ask and listen to the biography of their business and then create the story that will help them most succeed.

Look, if you have a dog, you know you need to feed it. A plant requires water and light, or it’ll die. Well, we need to remind our customers that branding is not an expense. It is the food and life’s blood of their business – and it’s an investment in the life and health of their company. That’s a reality that every business owner needs to hear.

How A Documentary Podcast on the History of CNN Actually Tells A Story About the Downturn of Legacy Media

Garrett Searight
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How A Documentary Podcast on the History of CNN Actually Tells A Story About the Downturn of Legacy Media

Few cable channels, let alone cable news channels, have the history that CNN does.

The network is synonymous with cable television, and has covered some of the biggest stories in the world over the course of the past 45 years.

And yet, CNN is also the bellwether for not only the cable industry, but the news media as a whole.

Bill Smee, who has worked at CNN — along with time spent at NBC News, Huffington Post, Discovery, The New York Times, and most recently as the Vice President of News for Audacy — is setting out to tell the story of the network. But not just the linear history of CNN, but how it relates to the media industry as a whole.

Smee and his associates are producing a documentary podcast called Breaking the News, a double entendre about the news media industry and the business aspect of the medium in 2025.

“I think what is really compelling is this is a story that seems to have more relevance for each passing week and each passing month,” said Smee. “It is a story about what has happened to journalism and the media industry over a period of now decades that is accelerating. And it is the story of what has happened to truth, quite literally.

“We live in a time when people’s versions of reality are questioned. So how did we get to this moment where we no longer can agree on that? And it is really a story about how CNN’s evolution over time reveals a lot about that.”

Smee wanted to make it clear he and his team don’t believe CNN is the culprit for what can be described as the downturn of legacy media. But the network does hold a complex place in that narrative.

“It’s a story about the corporate side of media and what happens with mergers and consolidation,” he added. “So it’s going to cover a lot of ground. But we feel like the CNN life story, in many ways, is a great object lesson to what has happened to modern media.”

The production of the documentary podcast is still in the early phases. Bookmark Media, who is producing the project, is still in the midst of lining up interviews with high-profile figures, highly influential people in the network’s history, and doing extensive research on some of the largest topics in the network’s history.

Smee said that it’s a passion project to be able to be so retrospective about his time with the network but also where the state of journalism and news media sits in 2025.

“I think a lot of people, as they get on in life and go to work other places, they reflect back on their time at CNN often with fondness,” he shared. “But I would say also examining and looking back on what CNN stood for matters a lot to people. So I think there’s a kind of inherent draw for those of us who are part of the CNN, if you will, fraternity. But for me, what’s compelling is I’ve worked in a lot of different places in this industry, and television and digital and radio, and I’m at a point in my career where I’m sort of looking at our business and seeing what has happened to it, and sort of want to tell a story that I think encapsulates it, tries to explain how we got here, I guess.”

The company is in the midst of a round of fundraising to help the project come to fruition. And that can be a challenge at this junction.

“This is not a great time for serial, narrative podcasts. Period. Full stop,” Smee admitted. “That being said — and this is why we’ve chosen to kind of go there — we’ve established a nonprofit entity we’re working with, and they are allowing us to take in, we’ll call it crowd-sourced donations.

“So we have a strategy to tap into folks who we believe will donate because they care about this cause. And then we have a strategy for hitting up some deeper-pocketed folks on the fundraising side, just that we can get to our goals,” he continued. “We have a plan, a budget, and we also have a fair amount of material already in the can.”

Overall, Smee said he’s looking forward to diving deeper into the juxtaposition of CNN, it’s history, and the media landscape today, and what the future might look like.

“What’s exciting is we feel like the story of CNN and its journey over these 45 years, it really works for our larger narrative on two levels,” he shared. “There’s the question of what’s happened to reporting and news, of how news is consumed. There’s also the question of CNN’s journey through mergers and consolidation in the 90s. That itself is also a really interesting object lesson about the current state of our media.

“And I think with all that you’re reading lately about what’s going on with Paramount and elsewhere, I just feel like those lessons are also pretty ripe. And how Ted (Turner), who started as an independent operator of CNN as part of Turner Broadcasting with great gusto for 15 years, it was then the Time Warner and the AOL, two mergers in a row that sort of really set this on a course. It changed CNN in a lot of ways, and it’s an object lesson for where we are media today.”

Smee added that he hopes Breaking the News is ready to be released at some point in the second half of 2026.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

Hits on the Horizon: Benson Boone, Twenty One Pilots, Dasha, Morgan Evans

Jim Ryan
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Hits on the Horizon: Benson Boone, Twenty One Pilots, Dasha, Morgan Evans

First off, happy Halloween!

Let’s see if I can “scare” up some hits for you to consider this week with Hits on the Horizon.

Starting off in my usual area of Top 40/Hot AC. I’ve been obsessing over a hit song I believe Hot AC can own and champion on their own to separate from Top 40: Mumford & Sons ft. Hozier – “Rubberband Man.” No, this is not a remake of the hit by The Spinners in the ’70s! It’s catchy and is getting some early radio love from “Alice” in Denver.

Next up, Benson Boone – “Mr. Electric Blue.”

“He was a stranger who walked in looking for danger!” The song has a good hook and grabbed over 1 million streams this week. So far, Z100/NY has jumped in with spins.

One more to get your ears on, if you haven’t already: Cortis – “What You Want.” The song has a solid hook and a bit of an edge to it. It was released in late August and so far has no radio airplay, but it did just shy of 500k streams this week. This could be a song to carry you through the holiday downtime for new releases.

Let’s move into the rock world for the week. From the alt side, it’s hard to think a lyric such as “I feel like garbage” would actually be an up-tempo, fun song that sticks with you—but that’s the case with Twenty One Pilots – “Garbage.” With the only radio love currently coming from SiriusXM’s Alt Nation, the song scored over 700k streams nationally this week.

Okay, this next one comes from the funniest band name I’ve heard in a long time: Pigeons Playing Ping Pong – “Fantasy.” Such a cool groove! I’m usually a big fan of rock songs with horn sections, and this one has it. It’s getting early radio love from 92.3 WTTS in Indianapolis, WEXT in Albany, N.Y., and WTMD in Baltimore.

Another one from the AAA world that caught my ear this week is Chet Faker – “This Time for Real.” It has a groove that will stick with you after one listen. Early radio love is coming from XPN in Philadelphia and Lightning 100 in Nashville.

Let’s segue to the country world for this week. I’m really liking Dasha – “Like It Like That,” with just shy of 1.7 million streams this week and radio love coming from SiriusXM’s The Highway and KNCI in Sacramento, to name a few. This song has crossover potential as well.

Next choice is Morgan Evans – “Beer Back Home.” Catchy lyrics: “I could use a beer back home, with some friends I know… nothin’ tastes better than a beer back home!” No streaming story so far, but you should get your ears on this one.

One last stop in the rhythm world for the week. Leon Thomas – “Yes It Is” should be on your radar if it isn’t already. It has a really cool groove, scored just shy of 1.8 million streams this week, and has radio airplay coming so far from 102.3 Radio Free in Los Angeles as well as Music Choice.

One more for this week: give a listen to Kid Cudi – “Maui Wowie.” He even name-checks John Legend: “Goin’ back to Honolulu just to get that Maui Wowie!” Radio love so far from Hot 104.7 in Portland, Maine. The song also had 5.5 million streams nationally this week.

Well, there you go—ear candy for the weekend when we end daylight saving time and fall back, except in those states that don’t (looking at you, Arizona and Hawaii). Happy listening!

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

Why an Accuracy Over Speed Strategy Has Led the Media to Lose Audience Trust

Krystina Alarcon Carroll
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Why an Accuracy Over Speed Strategy Has Led the Media to Lose Audience Trust

Pew Research Institute released not one but two new polls this week, and media outlets should be embarrassed. The first poll claims nine-in-ten adults in the U.S. believe the news they are seeing is inaccurate. The second says trust in the media has declined since the beginning of the year.

This is not the polling we should be reading ahead of next week’s election. There are 145 state, local, special, and recall elections on Tuesday, November 4, according to Ballotpedia, with another 35 happening between November 15 and December 30. That is 180 elections across every size market that we, the media, are not just getting wrong but diminishing our own value.

Of the Americans who believe the news they are seeing is inaccurate, 42% say it happens extremely often or often. For those outlets continuing the big push on their digital platforms, your performance is worse. Pew’s data shows 43% of Americans who get their news from digital devices encounter inaccurate news more often. Disgraceful.

You should not be pushing to be the first, best, or most active across digital. Instead, be the most accurate. I get it: the more you post, the more you will appear on your viewers’ feeds. But the moment you retract, mislead, or hoodwink your audience, the more likely they are to use your work against you (cough, cough—see last week’s column for a prime example of this).

We, the media, are only twisting our self-inflicted dagger more. The research institute wrote, “There is a strong connection between how often Americans say they come across inaccurate news and how difficult they think it is to determine what is true. Those who report often encountering inaccurate news are more likely than those who rarely or never do to say it’s hard to know what is true (59% vs. 31%).”

If everything is inaccurate, then there is no truth. If there is no truth, then our job as journalists is a sham. It’s an embarrassment to read, “51% [of those polled] say they generally find it difficult to determine what’s true and what’s not when they get news.”

Which brings us to Pew’s second poll: Trust in the media is down 11% since March of this year. This week’s data revealed 52% of adults have a lot or some trust in national media outlets reporting, which sounds great until you break it down by age.

Generation Z and below trust the national media only 1% more than social media (51% to 50%, respectively). This is a scary thought when combined with the aforementioned 43% of Americans who get their news from digital devices and encounter inaccurate news more. It begs the question: does Gen Z have the ability to identify inaccurate news, or has growing up with an iPad in their face hindered this ability? Pew, I’ll wait for that poll.

Now wait, I know what you are thinking: comparing Gen Z data to all Americans is misleading. You’re right, it is. If you didn’t pick up on that purposeful manipulation of data, you are part of the problem as to why trust in the media is so low. What’s worse are the people who do this on purpose, as it misleads their audience. (Please know I’m not trying to mislead you; I’m giving you an example of what not to do and what to look out for in bad reporting.)

While the data is broken down in several ways (generations, political party, etc.), there is one piece of good news for the media. According to Pew, “Trust in local news organizations remains higher than trust in national news organizations among Americans of all ages.”

Your platform does not matter. Your market does not matter. What channel number you have or radio signal you broadcast on does not matter. The only value media companies have is trust. You can spend all the money in the world, but it will not bring you the viewers’ trust.

Trust is something a lot of my former local news colleagues think about more than my national news associates. Personally, I believe this is because the suits are a lot closer to the actual production of the show in national news versus local. Suits are often so focused on the numbers (budgets, viewership, etc.) they forget the most important numbers: trust. Does your audience trust you to be accurate, unbiased, and, most importantly, truthful?

Trust is the most important (and at some outlets, most underrated) currency in media. That is what gives any outlet—or independent journalist—their value. Right now, across media, we are failing. Trust in the media is down 20 points since Pew began asking this question in 2016. We’ve had nearly 10 years to make things right. It is time to start doing better.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

How the Podcast Industry Fell Into the Same Trap as TV and Radio

Garrett Searight
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How the Podcast Industry Fell Into the Same Trap as TV and Radio

It feels like every medium eventually gets here. Television did. Radio did. And now, the podcast industry has officially joined the club — recycling the same guests over and over again.

Once the explosion of the “podcast election” hit last fall, it was clear that the medium’s influence had reached a new level. Podcasts weren’t just entertainment anymore — they were shaping political narratives, influencing voters, and driving real conversations. That kind of power doesn’t go unnoticed.

Now, PR professionals are more than happy to add podcast placements to their media strategies. The result? A parade of the same voices, telling the same stories, on every show that will have them.

Podcasts have become the new “book tour.” It’s the same media cycle we’ve seen for decades: an author, celebrity, or political figure releases something new, and suddenly, they’re everywhere. Once upon a time, that meant a run through morning television, late-night talk shows, and a few national radio interviews. Today, it means hopping from podcast to podcast, often sharing the same anecdotes, same punchlines, and same “exclusive insights” that aren’t exclusive at all.

That’s not necessarily the fault of the guest. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do — promote their work. The issue lies more with the hosts and producers who think booking the same hot guest will bring them credibility or clicks. There’s this belief that if you land the person everyone else is interviewing, you’ve arrived. But the truth is, the audience can tell when they’ve heard the same conversation five times in a week.

And it’s not like most of these hosts are pulling anything new out of their guests. The format is flooded with interview podcasts — and plenty of them are helmed by people who just aren’t great interviewers (looking at you, Alex Cooper.) Too many shows rely on a laundry list of questions instead of a genuine curiosity about the person sitting across from them.

When that happens, every podcast sounds the same, no matter how different the branding might look.

Part of what made podcasts special in their early days was how they broke free from the traditional interview mold. They felt more intimate, more conversational, more authentic. A good podcast could take a guest in a direction you wouldn’t see on television or hear on radio.

Now, that same medium has become the place where everyone gives the same answers, framed by the same questions, edited to the same beats.

It raises a question: is there a way out of this cycle?

There might be — but it requires both hosts and guests to think differently. For hosts, it means resisting the temptation to chase the same names everyone else has. If your guest has already made ten appearances this month, maybe it’s time to find someone new. I know that’s easier said than done. If Taylor Swift wanted to come on my podcast to promote her new album, I doubt my first question would be, ‘But how many other shows are you doing?’ The audience might not recognize the names of the guests you do host instead, but they’ll appreciate hearing something fresh.

For guests, it might mean being selective. Not every podcast appearance is worth it, and not every conversation adds something meaningful. Saying “no” could make the “yes” moments more impactful.

Ultimately, the fix might come down to purpose. If the goal of a podcast is to serve the audience — to inform, entertain, or challenge them — then the interview process has to evolve. The best shows will always be the ones that find a way to make familiar voices say unfamiliar things.

The podcast industry has come too far to settle for sameness. The medium’s power lies in its diversity of voices, perspectives, and ideas. If it’s going to stay that way, hosts will need to do more than just book the name everyone else is chasing. They’ll need to give their audience something they can’t get anywhere else — and that starts with asking better questions.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

David Samson Says a Costume Change Could Change Perception of Michael Jordan Appearances on NBC Sports

BSM Staff
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David Samson Says a Costume Change Could Change Perception of Michael Jordan Appearances on NBC Sports

Former MLB executive and media personality David Samson believes NBC Sports could have avoided fan frustration over Michael Jordan’s second on-air appearance with one simple adjustment — a wardrobe change.

During a recent episode of Nothing Personal with David Samson, Samson broke down how NBC might have handled the basketball legend’s latest segment differently after viewers criticized the network for reusing footage that appeared nearly identical to Jordan’s first appearance.

“They didn’t change Jordan’s clothes,” Samson said. “All they had to do was have a costume change, and then it would look like, oh, he sat down again. All you do is change clothes, put a green screen for a different background, and it looks like he sat down a second time, and no one’s saying a word.”

NBC has drawn reaction both positive and negative to the Jordan appearances this season. Especially when Jordan’s second appearance on the network’s NBA coverage looked strikingly similar to his debut — same outfit, same set, same setting. That continuity led fans online to question whether NBC had filmed all of Jordan’s contributions in one sitting, then divided them into multiple segments.

Samson said it’s a small production detail that can make a big difference.

“The reason why people are so angry is they’re saying, wait a minute, he sat down one time,” he continued. “NBC got him one time, and they’re just gonna chop it up to make it for 10 shows. Christ, I change my blazer when we’re doing something on a different day to make people think that it’s different. I think it’s funny.”

Jordan’s partnership with NBC, announced ahead of the 2025-26 NBA season, was billed as a major addition to the network’s coverage as it returned to broadcasting league games for the first time since 2002. Fans expected the six-time NBA champion to bring gravitas and unique perspective to the broadcasts — but not necessarily to play a regular on-air role.

“Michael Jordan, when he signed a deal with NBC, is getting paid a lot of money,” Samson said. “And the thought was, what’s he going to do? And everyone said, ‘Oh, is he going to be a broadcaster?’ No chance. He’s not traveling to road games. Is he going to be pregame, postgame like Jeter? No chance. Jordan would never do that. He’s not allocating the time. Doesn’t have the time, doesn’t need to.”

Still, Samson’s larger point highlighted how much perception matters in sports television. Even a small detail — a wardrobe swap or a different backdrop — can shape how audiences interpret authenticity and effort.

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

FOX Earns More Than $3.5 Billion in Revenue During 2025’s 3rd Quarter

BNM Staff
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FOX Earns More Than $3.5 Billion in Revenue During 2025’s 3rd Quarter

FOX Corp. has unveiled its financial results for 2025’s third quarter — the first quarter of FOX’s financial year — and the company reported strong earnings.

In total, the company earned $3.58 billion in revenue during July, August, and September. Advertising revenue grew by 6% during the quarter, up to $1.07 billion. In the cable network programming division, that sector rose 7% to $345 million.

Additionally, the company said it would buy back $1.5 billion of its shares after the positive financial results. During the quarter, FOX reported an adjusted earnings per share of $1.51.

In the company’s earnings statement, Lachlan Murdoch shared that the financial results are the product of hard work and great offerings from the company.

“The quality of our assets and their consistent capacity to deliver financially gives me great confidence in the positive outlook for Fox,” Murdoch said.

He added that cable network Fox News played a large role in the company’s results.

“Fox News sustained a strong ratings and audience momentum throughout the quarter,” Murdoch said. “Fox News once again cemented its status as the most-watched cable network in total day and in prime time. Even more impressive, Fox News is the most-viewed network in all television in weekday prime calendar year to date.”

Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.

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