After a brief hiatus for Super Bowl week, we are back, and our sales meeting today is about the final step in the six-step sales process – servicing the account. Pretty much, this can be defined as everything you need to do in order to over-deliver for the client after the sale has been made.
You have all heard the saying – ‘the work begins after the sale’ and hopefully you have taken that to heart. If there is any one thing I would criticize our industry sellers on it would be this step. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a renewal be lost within days of the sale being made. Mostly, this happens because the salesperson figured the hard part was over.
Remember, you pitched yourself as part of this deal. You are included in the added value that came with the investment from the customer. Now, you have to prove it and back it all up.
From here on out, you should be in contact with your clients on the regular. The last thing you want to be known as is the guy or gal who is only seen when more money is needed. If your clients only see you when it is time to buy, they won’t be clients for long.
Ad copy is one of the most crucial parts of all this and is another place people come up woefully short. I lost track a long time ago of how many sellers I have heard complain about not being able to put together good copy because “the client didn’t send me anything.” Pal, you just signed on to be their new in-house marketing person. Get it done. Scour the website, review your notes, go into the store and ask employees, find a way.
And find a way to make it great, make it standout and have it be something that gets people talking. There are too many tools out there now, from RAB.com to AI, to not have good copy for your clients. And then, keep doing that. Keep it fresh. Don’t wait until the client tells you to change the copy. You are the marketing expert, not them.
Speaking of being the marketing expert, part of that assignment means keeping your client(s) updated on the latest information, trends and insights as it relates to marketing overall and specifically in their category or field. I have known some sellers who made their own mini-newsletters and would send them out to clients on a monthly or quarterly basis. Again, something different than what most would do – it stands out.
Another very important thing is to never be surprised by a cancellation. The way you do that is to stay in contact with your clients and get their feedback along the way. Too many times, sellers will wait until renewal before asking for the first time about how the client thought the campaign was going. The more you know ahead of time, the more you can cut off the cancellation.
Now, we all know most people really buy because they like you and trust you. Your job is to make them like you and trust you more. One of the ways human beings tend to get to know each other better is by having conversation. And, since your business is sports, it does make sense for you to try and get that client out to a sporting event. Your hope is that you can bond over sports like your listeners do with your hosts. Chances are that the person wouldn’t have invested with you if they weren’t at least somewhat personally interested in the format you are in.
This used to be a gimme. This used to be a big part of the job. In some places it still is, however, in a lot of places the companies do not allow you any budget to entertain. And that sucks. But you still need to find a way to do it. You have to build a relationship with your clients and if that means taking them out to lunch or to a game on your dime, make it up when you get that renewal year in and year out.
This is a relationship business. Taking the time to get to know your clients and to engage with them will not only lead to more opportunities to do business with that company, but potentially others as well. Generally, business owners know other business owners and we all know the best way into a new client is by referral.
Remember that a renewal is a heck of a lot easier than a new sale to a new client. Think about that the minute you close a deal.
Six steps in what we do – the prospecting, getting the meeting with a decision maker, having a client needs analysis, making the pitch, closing the deal and servicing the account. If you can be good, not even great, in each of the categories, you win. Master the key steps and you win big.
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The third installment of Countdown to CRS features Audacy Country Format Captain and WYCD, Detroit Program Director Tim Roberts. Roberts recently appeared on Barrett Media’s Top 20 Country Program Directors and Top 20 Classic Hits Program Directors for Country 99.5 WYCD and Classic Hits 104.3 WOMC in Detroit.
Before starting our conversation about CRS, I asked Roberts for his reaction to landing on the two lists.
“Well, it’s amazing. This is a poll that was voted on by my peers in the industry, so it’s a great honor to be thought of by your peers as one of the good guys. I really appreciate it. It just makes you feel good.”
“I thought it was a great list of great programmers. There were a lot of my Audacy compatriots there, and I thought it was a great list. I’m honored to be part of it.”
Roberts has been a long-time CRS attendee and has served in various roles, including the agenda committee, panel host, and facilitator. He says that CRS played a pivotal role in his career.
“I’ve been on record before, and I’ll say it again. I really credit a lot of my career success to CRS. When I first came there in the prehistoric times of the 1980s, I really was just blown away by the level of expertise, commitment, and smart people.”
“All of my radio heroes were there. There was Les Acree and Rusty Walker, and you can name-drop forever. But these guys were legends in programming. I really looked up to them, and then to meet them and to be able to talk to them in the hallways and just be inspired by that. It made me want to be so much better. I do credit CRS for being a huge motivator and inspiring me to strive to be better at my craft.”
What does Roberts look forward to at this year’s seminar?
“CRS is unlike any other convention in that we’re all striving to be greater at our craft and we share ideas and get to hear so much great music. You can credit a ton of artists’ success over the years to just being present and playing in front of all the great programmers.”
“So that’s part of it. I look forward to the research panel every year. I’ve gotten just tremendous information.”
“They do a great job on the CRS board of lining up a different way of looking at things. And there’s been some really earth-shattering news coming out of some of those research projects that made you rethink how you’re doing radio. So, I’m sure there’ll be another great panel on that.”
“I think [KSON San Diego PD] Scott Roddy is heading up one, and it’s 30 sales ideas in 30 minutes. That’s one where it’s just a brainstorm of tremendous ideas. And then I’m looking forward to things on AI, different strategic things.”
Does Roberts have a particular memory or two that stand out?
“Former Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz. His speech there was so inspiring that it was just like you were on the Notre Dame football team. I wanted to leave CRS after Lou spoke and get out and start playing football or do something great. It was so fun and uplifting.”
“I also remember Ken Kragen speaking; it was just how he understood marketing and his theory on the power of threes. When I was younger, those really stood out to me.”
Hosting other radio personalities was another highlight for Roberts.
“I was in charge of bringing air personalities in for years and years as part of my board duties and the agenda committee. I always hosted these killer air personality panels where I’d have Moby or John Records Landecker or Scott Shannon.”
“We would bring in these incredible air personalities, not only from the Country format, or [longtime WSIX Nashville morning host] Jerry House and many of the great Country morning shows were there, but we’d always try to pull from outsider formats.”
And from a music standpoint?
“I’d never seen Lady Antebellum before until CRS. And I remember just watching them do their first show at the luncheon, sitting right there, and I’m going, wow, unbelievable.”
“There are countless other superstars I saw for the first time at CRS: Keith Urban, Alabama going way back, Keith Whitley, and Randy Travis. I’d seen Travis as kind of our house band around the Charlotte area when I was working there. But then, when I saw him at CRS, it was like, what happened to this guy? He’s unbelievable. There’s just been so many over the years that just blew me away, and I think it’s still that way. I’m sure a lot of people thought the same thing who had never seen Jelly Roll before.”
After Roberts remembered seeing his radio heroes as a young programmer going to CRS, I reminded him that he now may be the guy younger programmers look across the room at and say, “Wow, that’s Tim Roberts.”
“One day, I realized, hey, I’m the old guy now, which was kind of a funny realization. It’s flattering that people look up to you. Secondly, we started doing those mentoring breakfasts years and years ago. And I really enjoyed that.”
“I’m happy to talk to anybody. Those other guys that I mentioned did it for me. They were always happy to spend time with me and talk radio.”
“I feel the same way, whether in the hallway, at the mentoring breakfast, or if they want to grab me for five minutes and pick my brain about something. I’m always happy to do it. I love people who want to learn and be better at what they do.”
“Maybe it’s because I played sports and was a coach for many years outside of radio. I played sports at a pretty competitive level, and so I feel like when people want to be better, that keeps me motivated in this business.”
“I want the people that work for me in Audacy to be better at their craft. And I want people, wherever they work, to be better. It makes the Country music industry better. And frankly, as a human, I like helping people.”
CRS 2025 is February 19-21 at the Omni Nashville Hotel in downtown Nashville. Online registration is closed, but walk-up registration is available at $799 starting February 19.
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When news broke that Warner Bros. Discovery would not be retaining the U.S. broadcast rights to the NBA, there was considerable concern among consumers surrounding the future of the program. Inside the NBA, which has been on the air since 1989, has become immersed in the cultural zeitgeist of the league with its award-winning quartet of Ernie Johnson, Kenny “The Jet” Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal. Smith has remained aware of what is taking place throughout the process as the company initially sued the NBA, reached a settlement and inked a sublicensing agreement to present editions of the studio program on ESPN and ABC commencing next season.
The show is said to be airing around marquee live events as the league commences 11-year media rights deals with The Walt Disney Company, Comcast and Amazon, reportedly worth a collective $77 billion. TNT Sports will still create and produce the show from its Atlanta-based Studio J with the same team of personnel, something that has helped eliminate putative ambiguity and apprehension. Despite no longer airing live game broadcasts for the first time in four decades, Smith views the show as being a separate entity from these rights and considers it to be immersed within the league itself.
“Some of the details are still being worked out from a contractual standpoint, but I think we know that we’re going to have our continuum of producers and directors and talent, so our fear is gone,” Smith said. “You know what you’re getting when you ask for us and you want that, so why would you want something that’s been Emmy award-winning and has been voted as the best and has the best talent and then say, ‘Well, I don’t want that’?”
Rather than harkening on TNT Sports losing the rights, Smith knew that the show had various entities vying for their services. The inconspicuous chemistry exhibited between the cast members and production value has presumably helped the program set itself apart from other basketball studio presentations. The current iteration of the show will soon be airing on Disney platforms, but he is optimistic about the upcoming venture while remaining concentrated on the league calendar.
“Everyone would have loved to have us part of their family because we’re part of the league,” Smith said. “We’re not part of just TNT anymore or WBD, but we will be producing the show from our studios [with] the same look, the same vibe. It’ll just be different letters.”
Although Smith was not named an All-Star in his 10-year playing career, he managed to win two NBA championships and become one of the most recognizable and esteemed broadcasters in the business. Smith has been part of the coverage from before the time the company started broadcasting the All-Star Game in the 2002-03 season, marking the first time a cable network aired the exhibition and the last appearance in the contest by superstar Michael Jordan.
TNT Sports as a whole is entering its 40th season of All-Star coverage, solely broadcasting the Saturday night events beginning in 1985. The studio team has remained the same since 2012, which is when O’Neal was part of the crew for the first time broadcasting from Kia Center in Orlando, Fla.
While Inside the NBA is continuing beyond this season, NBC Sports will be televising both All-Star events under its 11-year pact reportedly worth $2.45 billion annually. Even so, this weekend will mark the final time under its existing contract that TNT Sports will present the festivities. Smith, Barkley and O’Neal are all serving as general managers for the All-Star Game, which has adopted a new mini-tournament format of four teams in three games.
“I think at some point, [with] whatever how it goes down, people understand what we bring to All-Star Weekend, and a lot of the game isn’t always the exciting part,” Smith said. “It’s the ancillary things around it, and for us not to be part of that would be probably, I think, foolish on just the league because there’s been such iconic things that have happened.”
Instead of approaching this assignment as the conclusion of an enduring tradition, Smith is thinking about the excitement connected with the event. This will mark another venture in his media career, which started upon his retirement from the league and providing studio analysis through the end of the regular season and playoffs in 1998. Even though longtime producer Tim Kiely voiced that Smith would be good on television, he assumed it is what he told everyone. Smith was proven wrong when he received a call in his retirement, and he quickly assimilated into learning how to communicate his insights in a comprehensive and cohesive manner.
“When you’re on television as a broadcasting person, you have to summarize things in 30 seconds where everyone could understand it,” Smith said. “So my thought process is, ‘I want my grandmother to understand it as well as one of the top coaches in the NBA,’ so I know I’m speaking to both [with] what I’m explaining or having a moment so everyone understands what I’m saying and not just a small few.”
Utilizing a boxing analogy, Smith compares himself to Floyd Mayweather in that he will jab people with information throughout the show before knocking them out by the end. Furthermore, he compared Barkley to Mike Tyson in possessing an immediate knockout kind of style, while explaining that O’Neal would resemble George Foreman, who was known for his heavy hitting style. Johnson, the esteemed studio host for the show and various other TNT Sports properties, is someone he would view as akin to Angelo Dundee, a distinguished trainer who worked with greats such as Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali.
“We’ve had all of those times – rocky times, tough times, crying times, laughing times,” Smith said. “We’ve seen births of babies on this show, like everything you can imagine, we’ve been through as a four, so that’s how it is. I don’t say it all the time, but people say we’re the best in the business at it, but I think that’s why we are the best in the business at it.”
Kiely has assisted in facilitating the success of Inside the NBA and recently returned to TNT Sports after a brief retirement. Yet the show deviates from generally accepted practices by the analysts not attending the production meetings, a suggestion Smith made following his first and only gathering of this kind. In a discussion with Kiely, Smith reminded him that it was Johnson’s job to know what was taking place and reach commercial breaks, whereas he was responsible for analyzing gameplay. Upon asking why he was there, Kiely concurred that Smith was right and would not need to come to these meetings.
“That was the conversation, and then when Charles [arrived], he never came because there’s nothing in the basketball game he’s not going to know, seen or heard or been part of,” Smith said. “So, it’s just a constant message, and also when Chuck came, it keeps us on our toes because now he has no idea what I’m going to say in that moment, and it keeps it fresh.”
Smith and his colleagues essentially try to lend their viewpoints to accurately discern what is being talked about or strategized, similar to when a coach emerges from the dugout to visit their pitcher. The program seeks to convey both the aggregate and nuanced angles while also not hesitating to criticize decisions or actions when necessary. Smith offers rebukes with evidence that backs his claim and refrains from discussing the heart, passion or integrity of players since he cannot precisely evaluate those characteristics. In fact, he avers that some podcast entertainment chooses to evaluate these immeasurable intangibles.
“I can’t measure those things,” Smith said. “I can’t show you that, but I can show you how to run back on defense. ‘He doesn’t get back on D, here he is, boom.’ Well, I’m running to the board. ‘Oh, he can’t get up on defense,’ [and] I can show it.”
In heading to the San Francisco Bay Area for NBA All-Star Weekend, Smith will continue holding his annual poker night and bash to benefit charity. Over the last two decades, he has worked with Feed the Children, Habitat for Humanity and several other organizations to raise money and support their causes. The event last year in Indianapolis, Ind. raised over $1 million for Education Reform Now, and he looks to meet and/or surpass that goal again.
“The reason I did it initially was [that] I feel like as the NBA, it’s important to not go into a city and just do a one-off, an All-Star Weekend and another,” Smith said. “I wanted something that was sustainable and that the community felt longer.”
With a variety of moving parts to be determined before next season, Smith is keeping his focus on the present moment and looking forward to NBA All-Star Weekend. By the time the season tips off next year, he could be taking part in an Inside Sports show that Warner Bros. Discovery said was in development upon settling its lawsuit with the league. On top of that, the company could utilize studio talent from the show on new content for air on its platforms. Having clarity in that the show will continue to exist, albeit in various forms on several networks, was reassuring for fans of the game.
“We understand that it was about us,” Smith said. “It was about our show, and our show is not just the four of us. It’s collectively everyone, but we are the principal. This wasn’t about when they lost the rights to the league, it was more about, ‘Okay, they didn’t want to lose the rights to the show because the show has become iconic and synonymous with the NBA.’ We had become the voice of the league, so they needed to have that in some way.”
As the NBA season approaches the stretch run ahead of the playoffs, Smith is continuing to educate and entertain the audience through displaying his cognition and personality. Refusing to succumb to sentiments of melancholy or despondency about the forthcoming change, he recognizes the business decisions that were made and is moving forward by cogently verbalizing what he sees. With an experienced and congenial team contributing to the program, he approaches the desk with avidity and fulfills his role on a show that has become inextricably linked with basketball.
“We are a part of the fabric, and if you go to an NBA game on Thursday night, you expect to see us,” Smith said. “You don’t just expect to see LeBron play. You expect to see Chuck, Shaq, Kenny and Ernie play too.”
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In 2024, Nielsen announced a massive change to the way it calculates its PPM radio ratings, by shifting the qualifying time from five minutes in a quarter-hour down to three.
The change in methodology — like many topics in the radio sphere, especially when it comes to ratings — drew plenty of reactions, ranging from celebration to skepticism.
The implementation came with the industry, its health, and its collaboration at heart. Jon Miller, the Vice President of Audience Insights at Nielsen, noted how Herculean a task such as changing something as significant as the qualifying time is for a company of Nielsen’s magnitude.
“Nielsen is a great company that does a lot of great stuff, but, we are a bit of a battleship. It’s hard to turn quickly,” said Miller. “We brought this idea sort of from conception to implementation in about 30 weeks. About half a year, really. That’s a huge accomplishment. It came about from working with our internal data science folks to figure out: is this feasible? Can we do it? What does it mean?
“But more importantly, working with the industry as a whole. It was everybody from the Radio Advertising Bureau, the c-suite executives at our largest clients, the Media Ratings Council, which is the governing body for what we do. It was a really extraordinary effort. We are so pleased that we were able to take something from an idea last spring, and then we met about it in the summer with our clients, and we went through the process of impact data and all the reviews and looking at everything. And here we are, February 2025. It’s rolling out. It’s live in the industry. So we’re extremely proud of that. We’re really excited about it.”
Miller shared that it was something that Nielsen had been considering themselves, especially when juxtaposed against what is considered an impression in digital metrics.
“It was something that we’ve been thinking about internally, but then it was the customer base that kept coming to us and saying, ‘In the current world of audio use, are we doing the best job capturing and crediting the way radio is being used, especially when you compare it to other media?’
“That was a really big selling point. If you look around, the way certain digital platforms are credited — the way an impression gets counted somewhere else — on TikTok, for example, a couple of seconds of exposure counts as an impression. And yet, here’s radio using a five-minute rule that’s 70 years old. Does that make sense? So we talked about it, worked through it, and used data to guide us, which is the way Nielsen does it.”
While using three minutes as a qualifying time might seem like an arbitrary number, it actually was figuratively smacking Nielsen in its face.
“Of all of the uncredited occasions that we see in the PPM markets, the median length is three minutes,” Miller shared. “So that was like a blinking red light of like, ‘You know what? Maybe that makes sense to go to that number’, right? This gets us, again, more in line with current digital currencies.
“It credits more impressions, it gives advertisers more credit for audiences to commercials that we weren’t necessarily including, and it gives programmers the ability to do things a little bit differently, because it changes the rules a little bit. We think it’s a win across the board. And it was really a great collaboration between us and our client base and the industry to make it happen.”
Jon Miller added that one of the largest hurdles in making such a change is figuring out whether there was any code or currency changes needed. However, it proved to be quite simple since it was a rule change on how the company tabulates the ratings rather than some massive change in methodology and technology.
Despite some early apprehension and criticism, Miller said the changes have been praised.
“It was generally very positively received. Of course, the radio clients are excited about it and in favor of it. And the agencies are too, because we pitched it as you’re buying different types of audio platforms. You’re buying different types of platforms. We want to try to try to make things easier to buy,” he said. “You want to make it easier to get credit for the impressions. That’s a win for everybody: the advertiser or the agency.
“So there wasn’t a large amount of pushback. A lot of questions, of course, as there is when you do something like this. But in general, top to bottom, broadcaster, agency, committee, it was very positive. That’s one reason we were able to do it in a half year. Sometimes things can take years to roll as you have to go through all these committees to make it happen. We got it done in less than half a year.”
In the data Nielsen collected as reasoning for the change, it shared that it expected a 24% increase in ratings with the change from five minutes down to three. With the very early returns of the data, Nielsen has seen exactly what it projected.
“In general, the results are absolutely in line with what we expected. We went through a whole process last year where we actually reprocessed a whole survey month and did a side by side, here’s what you got with the five-minute currency, here’s what it would have been with the new rule. And so that really was a great guide for us to anticipate what’s happening. And what I can tell you is all the changes we saw in that impact data is generally what we’re seeing now: 20+% higher audience levels from an average audience basis.
“Across the board, results, of course, are varying, mileage varies by market, station, unique situation, but again, we’re seeing what we expecting to see. What you get when you do this is you’re finding those lifts and audiences are generally coming from capturing more listening from the same panelists.”
Miller added that time spent listening is going up more so than a station’s cume, and there’s a logical reason for that.
“We are capturing more audience because there are people that listen in short bursts, especially younger listeners who might only be there for two or three minutes because that’s the way you use all your media now. It’s so fast-paced and there’s so many things coming at you. So we are capturing some new listeners, but in general, the majority of it is we’re getting longer occasions.
“We’re getting a few more minutes that we wouldn’t have credited previously because of the rules, and now we’re getting those. So time spent listening is going up more than cume is, and those are the two things that flow into the average audience.”
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I’m a big Indycar fan. So I was overjoyed to see the series get several promotional slots from FOX Sports during its coverage of Super Bowl LIX on Sunday. And I think there was a lesson for radio stations by those promos.
FOX Sports is about to enter its first year broadcasting the Indycar series. So it has a vested interest in making sure as many people as possible are exposed to, and ultimately watch, the races when the season begins on Sunday, March 2nd.
There were three promos for the series during the game broadcast. Not the pregame show, but the actual game broadcast, when viewership is at its heights. Not only is viewership at its peak, but that’s also when the price for a 30-second commercial is at its peak.
During the broadcast, FOX was getting $8 million for each 30-second slot. In some cases, more than $8 million per spot. Which means the network saw more than $700 million in advertising sales for the day. A nice chunk of change.
But that could have been more. I’m sure FOX featured more promos than just for the Indycar series throughout the game broadcast. Since I’m not as interested in those promos, I wasn’t exactly keeping track, but logic would dictate there were others.
FOX, however, took the approach that I think many radio stations could remember, too: “Nobody’s commercials are more important than ours.”
Could they have sold the advertising slots, not had the promos for their own stuff, and made a couple extra million bucks? Totally. And they would have been well within their rights to do so! But when you work under the mindset that nobody else’s commercials are more important than yours, it’s easy to find the value in putting your own messages in front of your biggest audiences. And make no mistake about it, Super Bowl LIX is the biggest audience in history.
It’s easy to take the immediate payoff. Roughly, the network would have made $24 million on the time it gave the Indycar series alone. But growing the audience of a new program or new rights partner sure is helpful in the long-run if you’re able to leverage this one gigantic audience one time, instead of hoping and praying that the audience for another property will grow organically, while you pocket $24 million.
I listen to sports on the radio frequently. I will infrequently hear station promos. Instead, I’ll often hear every commercial slot in a break filled, along with the rejoins and legal IDs also featuring sponsorships and advertisements. And there’s nothing left for the station to even hardly position itself, let alone tell the audience what it can expect in the future, or why they should be locked into the station at all times.
I wholly recognize it’s easy for me to say “don’t take the short-term windfall while forgetting about the health of your station overall” when I’m not trying to reach my monthly, quarterly, or yearly sales goals. And you never want to be the Market Manager, Sales Manager, Brand Manager, or Program Director that is turning down money or is the reason your station doesn’t have more of it.
But you also don’t want to be one of those leaders who also sees your ratings dwindle because you don’t ever have the ability to leverage the audience for your own gain. And if you’re not leveraging them for yourself, you’re not likely killing it in providing your advertisers a great return on investment, either.
Invest in your brand. Invest in your programming. If FOX didn’t make everything for sale when the price tag was $8 million per spot, your radio station doesn’t have to, either. Keep some time for yourself when your audience is at its peak. It’ll be worth it in the long run.
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According to his LinkedIn, Green spent time with Townsquare Killeen-Temple before coming to Tyler, where he spent nearly 12 years.
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YES Network is shaking up the top of its production staff as a longtime exec transitions into an advisory role. According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, Jared Boshnack has been promoted to executive producer and the company’s vice president of production. John Filippelli, who has long sat in that seat, is moving to a senior advisory role. Marchand announced the news via his X account:
According to the network, Boshnack will now oversee all aspects of production at YES, including studio and remote production and operations, and will also be involved in programming acquisition and development.
“Jared has excelled in every aspect of production during his long tenure at YES while working alongside Flip,” said YES president & CEO Jon Litner. “He has played an instrumental role as YES built and expanded upon its leadership position. Jared possesses a keen eye for the way sports fans’ consumption habits are constantly evolving, and I look forward to working more closely with him going forward as the YES Network continues to reach new audiences.”
In his new role as senior advisor, the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Filippelli will counsel Litner and YES’ chairman of the board and New York Yankees president Randy Levine on all aspects of YES’ production and programming. Throughout his YES career, Boshnack has tackled all aspects of production, picking up 31 New York Emmy Awards and two Promax/BDA awards along the way. From 2005 to 2021, he oversaw the creation and launch of Emmy Award-winning graphics packages for YES that helped visually define and brand the network.
“Flip will work closely with me and YES Chairman Randy Levine in overseeing the creative direction of the YES Network across multiple platforms to serve New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets audiences in this dynamic media landscape,” said Litner. “His Hall of Fame career and his decades of storied experience in baseball and in sports media are invaluable as we continue to provide our viewers with best-in-class storytelling and programming.
Filippelli was the first YES Network employee, hired on Sept. 10, 2001, and the network has won 151 New York Emmy Awards under his watch. Before YES, Filippelli held senior production roles at ABC Sports, NBC Sports, FOX Sports, and The Baseball Network. He was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2021.
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Fox News anchor Bret Baier interviewed President Donald Trump as part of the Super Bowl LIX pregame show on FOX on Sunday. The conversation saw an uptick in viewership compared to the 2020 version.
According to figures from Nielsen, the interview — which aired on FOX and the Tubi streaming platform in the 3-3:45 PM ET window — garnered 11.1 million viewers.
Just over 4 million viewers were in the Adults 25-54 demographic.
In 2020, Donald Trump sta down with Fox News host Sean Hannity for the Super Bowl pregame show. This year’s conversation between Bret Baier and Trump saw a nearly 10% increase in total viewers to the 2020 edition.
Additionally, the interview was up 39% in total viewers compared to Trump’s interview with Margaret Brennan of CBS in 2019, and up 28% in the Adults 25-54 demographic.
In total, Super Bowl LIX averaged an audience of over 127 million on FOX as the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs.
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ESPN has announced its plans for the 2025 MLB season, including weekly Sunday Night Baseball telecasts on ESPN TV and radio.
For the fourth straight year, Karl Ravech will handle play-by-play for all 25 games. Ravech will be joined once again by analysts David Cone and Eduardo Perez, and reporter Buster Olney. The crew debuted in 2022, with Olney, an ESPN veteran since 2011, as the longest-tenured member. He will also continue hosting Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney.
On ESPN Radio, Jon “Boog” Sciambi and Doug Glanville return for a fourth season. ESPN Deportes will continue Spanish-language coverage with Ernesto Jerez, Luis Alfredo Alvarez, and Guillermo Celis.
ESPNwill also deploy its skilled team of MLB reporters. Jesse Rogers, Alden Gonzalez, Jorge Castillo, Bradford Doolittle and David Schoenfield will continue sharing insights for ESPN.com. ESPN’s MLB front office, draft and prospects expert Kiley McDaniel will add perspectives as well.
Sunday Night Baseball will air 25 games, including the MLB Little League Classic featuring the Mets and Mariners in Williamsport, PA, this August. Additional broadcasts include an Opening Day game broadcast, an MLB Wild Card Series matchup, and other select games throughout the season.
Baseball Tonight: Sunday Night Countdown will precede most broadcasts. The broadcast will feature Kevin Conners as host alongside analysts Xavier Scruggs, Jessica Mendoza, Jeff Passan, and Tim Kurkjian.
Also expected to contribute to MLB broadcasts during the season are Kevin Brown, Roxy Bernstein, Mike Monaco, Mike Couzens, Anish Shroff, Ben McDonald and Gregg Olson.
Spring training begins this week, with Opening Day set for March 27. The regular season starts early with a two-game Dodgers-Cubs series in Tokyo from March 18-19.
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The FOX Sports presentation of Super Bowl LIX between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs averaged 127.7 million viewers on FOX, FOX Deportes, Telemundo and NFL digital properties. This officially breaks the previous record established for last year’s championship game of 123.7 million viewers, marking record-high viewership for the Super Bowl and the most-watched television program in U.S. history.
The game peaked with 137.7 million viewers during the 8 to 8:15 p.m. EST quarter-hour, which aligns with the second quarter of the game. FOX Sports also shared that the broadcast of the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show featuring Kendrick Lamar averaged an all-time high of 133.5 million viewers, indicating a 3% year-over-year increase. Spanish language coverage on FOX Deportes and Telemundo reached an average of 1.87 million combined viewers.
“The power the NFL has to bring people together was on full display Sunday night and FOX Sports was honored to showcase every moment for football fans across America,” Eric Shanks, chief executive officer and executive producer of FOX Sports, said in a statement. “From the heart of New Orleans on Bourbon Street, to telling moving stories throughout the broadcast and finally presenting an unmatched game production, we couldn’t be prouder to show that FOX is Football with a Super Bowl viewing audience for the record books.”
The contest accrued record-high streaming viewership on Tubi and NFL digital properties with 14.5 million consumers watching the game. Tubi was measured to have independently delivered 13.6 million viewers for the contest, which was streaming in 4K on the streaming platform. Viewership data for the game is provided by Nielsen Fast Nationals and Tubi/NFL first-party analytics. Final average viewership numbers for the game indicates the fifth consecutive year of viewership growth for the championship game.
Compared to the previous year, average viewership for the Super Bowl was up 3%. FOX last broadcast the Super Bowl to close the 2022 season and averaged 115.1 million viewers across all platforms, indicative of this iteration of the contest achieving 9.47% higher viewership. The five-hour FOX Super Bowl LIX Pregame averaged 23.4 million viewers from 1 p.m. EST to kickoff, the strongest performance for such a program beginning at this time on record. Pre-kick programming averaged 82.5 million viewers, which is up 9% from the 75.8 million viewers that tuned in at this time last year.
The city of New Orleans last hosted the Super Bowl in 2013 when the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers, ending with an average of 108.9 million viewers on CBS. Out-of-home viewership for this year’s game measured by Nielsen Media Research covers 100% of the contiguous television population in the United States, up from 66% in the previous year, and is now implemented for overnight and Big Data + Panel ratings.
The 40-22 victory by the Eagles over the Chiefs marked the second Super Bowl championship in the last seven seasons. Furthermore, it marked the first occurrence in which seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady was behind the microphone for the contest, completing the first season in a 10-year deal with FOX Sports reportedly worth a total of $375 million. Brady was joined by play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt, calling his second Super Bowl for the network, along with sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi and rules analyst Mike Pereira.
Fox Corporation is in the third year of a 10-year media rights deal with the NFL reportedly worth $2.25 billion annually. The NFL has the ability to opt out of the deal and most of its other domestic media rights contracts following the 2029 season. FOX will broadcast the Super Bowl again at the conclusion of the 2028 season from a locale yet to be announced. The next three Super Bowl championship games will be televised by Comcast (NBC/Peacock), The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC) and Paramount Global (CBS/Paramount+), respectively.
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