There is a new leader atop the podcast rankings from Podtrac, as NPR News Now has surpassed The Daily. Elsewhere, Vince Coglianese got off to a strong start as he succeeded Dan Bongino in his popular podcast.
The program from NPR jumped past the New York Times show to earn the top spot. NPR News Now wasn’t the only podcast from the public radio outlet on the podium, however. Up First from NPR remained steady during the U.S. Unique Monthly Audience rankings for March 2025. That show finished in third place.
Dateline NBC finished fourth. Meanwhile, Fox News Hourly Update jumped two positions to earn fifth place.
Many in the podcast industry were watching the rankings closely after the departure of Dan Bongino, who exited to serve as the Deputy Director of the FBI. His replacement, Vince Coglianese, got off to a good start in his first month of hosting the show. VINCE, the new podcast from Silverloch Media — founded by Bongino’s wife, Paula, to divorce himself from his media endeavors — ended its first month seventh in the rankings.
Other news-focused shows in the top 20 included the Shawn Ryan Show (8th), Today, Explained (11th), The Ben Shapiro Show (13th), The Ezra Kline Show (15th), 48 Hours (16th), and 20/20 (18th).
In the Top U.S. Podcast Publishers & Networks rankings from Podtrac, iHeartMedia reigned supreme again, as the iHeartAudience Network and iHeartPodcasts earned the top two spots, respectively.
NPR Sales Network was third, while Acast and Libsyn rounded out the top five.
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.
Radio.Cloud and Quu have announced a new integration that allows metadata from the cloud-based operating system to be pushed directly to car radio dashboards. The announcement was unveiled during the first day of the 2025 NAB Show in Las Vegas.
The collaboration means partners of the two groups can place programming and advertising messages on car dashboards, allowing those utilizing the services to feature great attention in the competitive space.
“This is a very innovative development for the radio market, and we’re proud to fully integrate with Quu,” said Radio.Cloud CEO and Founder Christian Brenner. “We always pride ourselves on aligning with other forward-thinking companies.”
“As radio evolves, the industry is increasingly embracing visual content and Radio.Cloud’s technology,” said Quu CEO Steve Newberry. “Our collaboration gives broadcasters maximum flexibility to deliver exceptional visual displays that engage listeners and drive new revenue.”
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 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament secured its most-watched Final Four games in eight years, averaging a collective 15.3 million viewers on CBS, according to data from Nielsen Fast National and Out of Home data. This average is expected to proliferate on Tuesday when the final numbers become available from Nielsen Media Research. As a whole, the round experienced an increase of 19% from the previous year on TBS, TNT and truTV, and the doubleheader peaked with 20.4 million viewers from the 8:30 to 8:45 p.m. EST quarter-hour, according to Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal.
The opening game between Florida and Auburn averaged 14.6 million viewers on the broadcast network, marking the highest average total for the early game since Gonzaga and South Carolina played in 2017 and procured 14.7 million viewers. Aside from that game, the only other early national semifinal contest to accrue higher viewership in the last 20 years came in 2015 when Duke and Michigan State achieved an average 15.3 million viewers. Compared to the matchup featuring Purdue and NC State last year, the Florida-Auburn game was up 27%, and the showdown garnered a 23% rise from the San Diego State-Florida Atlantic tilt two years ago.
The 11-point comeback by Houston to eliminate Duke later in the day contributed to an average of 16 million viewers, indicative of the most-watched game of this year’s tournament thus far. Houston’s victory was up 13% from the UConn-Alabama matchup last year and the most-watched men’s college basketball game since the National Championship between Kansas and North Carolina in 2022. Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch reports that the Houston-Duke semifinal game surpassed viewership for the last two national championship games.
As Florida and Houston prepare to square off and win the National Championship on Monday night, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament is averaging a combined 9.9 million viewers per window on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. Average viewership of the tournament is up by 2% year-over-year moving into the National Championship Game, which will air live on Monday night at 8:50 p.m. EST on CBS and streaming live on Paramount+.
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One of my favorite awards to present each year at the BSM Summit is the Mark Chernoff Award. The honor is given to sports radio’s top program director as voted on by radio executives, past winners of the award, and Mark Chernoff. It’s my pleasure to announce that Sports Radio 96.7/1310 The Ticket’s Jeff Catlin has been named our 2025 recipient. Jeff will join us in Chicago to receive the honor, and address the room during the Premiere Networks Awards ceremony on Friday May 9, 2025.
Jeff Catlin has been with The Ticket since its launch in 1994. Initially The Hardline‘s producer, he has programmed the brand since 2003. His passion and influence is felt across The Ticket’s airwaves, supported by countless ratings wins, Marconi Awards, and industry wide respect and recognition. The radio station has done a remarkable job excelling in multiple demos, producing high revenues, besting local competition, and winning with hall of fame personalities, and new voices. All of those successes are a reflection of strong decision making by Jeff Catlin and Regional Vice President, Dan Bennett.
In addition to featuring great talent throughout its lineup for decades, The Ticket has also produced one of sports radio’s signature events, Ticketstock. The two-day affair has been a huge success. It attracts thousands of fans, and features the biggest names in Dallas sports, past and present. As events become harder for stations to produce due to the costs associated with creating them, The Ticket continues to find ways to maximize the opportunity.
If you’re unfamiliar with how Jeff approaches his job, I highly recommend reading this piece by Derek Futterman. You’ll quickly notice how much Jeff respects his talent and audience. He also appreciates the opportunity he has to lead one of America’s great sports radio brands. Jeff loves what he does, is damn good at it, and I’m excited to present him with the Mark Chernoff Award in Chicago next month.
As an added bonus, Jeff will be part of our opening programmer’s panel alongside 670 The Score’s Mitch Rosen, Sports Radio WIP’s Rod Lakin, and Fox Sports Radio’s Scott Shapiro. These are four of the format’s sharpest programmers, managing some of the best brands in our business. To have them together on stage for an in-depth programming discussion will be a treat for all in the room. The session takes place Thursday May 8th. Our full agenda for the Summit will be revealed in a few weeks.
If you haven’t purchased a ticket to the show yet, don’t wait until the last minute and risk paying more. Tickets are $299.99 and can be purchased here.
Additionally, hotel rooms are discounted at $249.99 per night but reduced rates expire after April 9th. This means that you must book your room by this Wednesday or you’ll be paying higher prices. To reserve your room, all you have to do is click here and follow the directions. It’s that simple. Our hotel partner (Westin Michigan Avenue) is a 1-2 block walk from the MCA (Summit location). It’s also close to the Chicago Sports Museum, our home for the ESPN Radio After Party following day 1.
Lastly, I want to thank Westwood One/Cumulus Media for coming on board as a Summit partner. We have a handful of opportunities still available but they’re filling up fast. If you’re interested in supporting the show, please email Stephanie@BarrettMedia.com to learn what’s available.
The 2025 BSM Summit presented by Point to Point Marketing is just 31 days away. We have a strong show planned, and will have a few more announcements to share in the coming weeks. We appreciate your support, and hope to see you in Chicago!
Most people reading this column won’t remember what Classic Rock stations sounded like in the mid-eighties when Fred Jacobs launched the format, and it began picking up steam and stations across the country.
The Beatles were a dominant core artist, and there were special features like The Soul Patrol. A lot has changed since then, not the least of which is that the original audience for the format has aged beyond the 25-54 demo cell, creating challenges for stations in both ratings and revenue.
When I agreed to start a weekly column for Barrett Media focused on the Classic Rock and Classic Hits formats, I knew that the topic of dealing with an aging audience would be an important one that I would have to address. I did not, however, expect to write about it in week one.
Then the legendary Classic Rock station KQRS/Minneapolis took the airstaff off and began stunting, saying the station was “under construction.” After talking with Cumulus Format VP – Alternative/AAA/Classic Rock James Kurdziel about the changes at the station, I figured it was time to dive in.
Looking at the 6+ ratings for the last few months, KQRS appears to have been doing fine, if not stellar: 5.1, 4.2, 4.1, 4.7. According to Kurdziel, the problem wasn’t a lack of audience at KQRS. ” It isn’t bad ratings; it’s the wrong ratings. The audience KQ had in 1995 is the audience we have now, and that’s not great in the long term.” He said if the station didn’t evolve, it would have eventually withered.
Instead of taking a slower, longer-term approach and making small adjustments, the team decided to be “bold and declarative,” with a big attention-getting stunt and a sweeping change in the product. Part of that decision was in deference to the brand, “KQRS heritage is in evolution and taking chances. We’re just leaning into it,” says Kurdziel. “I tell people here, we’re not changing what we are; we’re changing what we do.“
Those changes included evolving the music and leaving older titles behind while adding music from the 1990s and 2000s – an area where most Classic Rock stations are still treading lightly. “The truth is an entire decade-plus (90s and 2000s) has been ignored by this format, and that music is hitting a maturation phase now. We need to capitalize on that, and doing it under a legacy brand umbrella helps.”
More specifically, Kurdziel describes the target audience, which includes himself. “We’re Gen X/millennial, and to us, Led Zeppelin is still cool; Tom Petty has become universally revered; Pink Floyd has cool songs; and artists like that remain an important part of what we’re doing.” He says those types of songs meld well with 90s music “because that’s what we did then when we were kids burning CDs. Every Pearl Jam fan loves The Who.”
To put the music changes into perspective, two months ago, the most-played artists on a typical day on KQRS were the Classic Rock staples: Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Journey. On the first day of the new format, the artists receiving the most play include U2, Pearl Jam, The Police, and REM, with Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, and Queen mixed in.
The adjustments are not solely music-focused. The talent lineup has been revamped, but it still starts with morning host and former Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman, whom Kurdziel calls the station’s secret weapon. He says many of the messages they received from the audience when the station first began stunting all started with “Gorman better be OK,” which was a great sign. “The audience showed they are very protective of Steve.”
Two new additions to the station airstaff come from the AAA and non-commercial world, possibly signaling a little more about the station’s musical direction. Former KTCZ/Cities 97.1 host Paul Fletcher joins the morning team as well as hosting middays, while Jade Title, a long-time presence at KCMP/The Current, takes over afternoons.
Now, with everything in place for Kurdziel and his team, it’s time to see what the audience says, “In the onset, feedback will be telling. That’s how we’re going to refine it in the first 30-60 days. We’ll pay close attention to what people say.” In the long run, though, success will be about finding a new audience. “For me, it’s going to be about the average age. In six months, (the audience) should be firmly 15 years younger, and I think it will be.”
However, the most important thing to take away from talking to him is that Kurdziel doesn’t take being responsible for a venerable brand like KQRS lightly. “It’s a privilege to be this stressed. I know how much people care. I know what it means to people who grew up here, and I don’t want to let them down.” But he also wants to make the brand relevant to a new generation, “I want the fans of this music to be proud that their heritage station heard them and adjusted to their lives.”
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Delilah is the most listened-to woman on U.S. radio. Syndicated by Premiere Networks, she is heard on 140 stations, her channel on iHeartRadio, and her podcast, “Love Someone with Delilah.”
She has won nearly every industry award and is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame and the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Delilah is the mother of 15, 11 of whom are adopted.
When the show began in 1997, did Delilah have any idea that it would be such a success?
“Yes and no. Yes, in that I know how determined I was to make it. My biggest dream was to be on three stations simultaneously. That, to me, was going to be freaking amazing. Everything has undoubtedly surpassed my dreams times a million, but I knew I wasn’t going to give up.”
Delilah knows the winning formula.
“The callers and the music – that’s what makes the magic. Unfortunately, a lot of powers that be want to control every second of the show and think they know better than I do, or the listeners do what they want to hear, so that is a constant struggle. It is a constant struggle to say, ‘ No, I’m not playing to a meter; I’m interacting with my audience.”
Audience interaction can make a listener feel involved and, in some cases, comforted by what they are hearing.
“That’s what I want to do every night. I want, when you listen to my show, when you interact with my show, whether it’s calling or going on my Facebook page or just silently listening in your car while you’re driving to and from work, I want you to feel better about yourself, about life, about opportunities when you turn the radio off or walk away than you felt before you turned it on. That’s my goal.”
I asked if it was even possible to remember a specific call that had a lasting impact on her.
“There are millions, but I’ll tell you about a call I took last night. I’d been working all day in my greenhouse. I recently got custody of three more kids. So, I have five kids. Four of them are under the age of 10. I was pretty beat when I went into the studio, and I was working, taking calls, great calls, great stories. I was just about to say, okay, I’m done for the night.”
“We have plenty of calls for the rest of tonight’s show. I’ve got calls to start the show tomorrow. I’m done. And something said, pick up the line. I picked up the line, and the woman could barely talk. She was hurting so bad.”
“She told me about her marriage. She’d been married for over 30 years. He was the love of her life. Last year, he was super healthy and super fit, going to visit their grown kids and their grandkids. And he didn’t feel well. He went to the hospital, and literally a few weeks later, he was gone.”
“The day before he retired, he died. All their dreams for retirement, all their trips they planned, everything gone. She couldn’t even breathe. She said, ‘I don’t want to be here. I want to go be with him.’ I knew she wasn’t kidding. She wasn’t looking for sympathy. She was stating her truth to someone she knew would listen.”
“I said, you don’t have that option until God tells you it’s time. I asked, do you guys have children? She said we were going to be with them when all this unfolded. I asked did you carry them? Did you want to know what they looked like before they were born? She said, of course, every mother does.”
Could you imagine if, in your first trimester, in your fourth month, you walked into your doctor’s office and said, I can’t take it?” I got to hold them. I have to kiss my baby. Schedule me for a C-section tomorrow.”
“What would happen? She said I would lose the baby. Exactly. You were able to be patient until the time was right. You are going to have to be patient until the time is right and God calls you to be with your husband. Just like a baby has work to do growing in the womb. You still have work to do here. Your job is to finish the story.”
Delilah’s desire to give back established Point Hope as a voice for forgotten children everywhere.
“Point Hope began in Philadelphia when I met a woman and her children who were homeless, and I thought, this is not okay. She was in a domestic, violent, abusive situation. She fled and ended up living in cardboard boxes in an alley with beautiful children. And so I started learning about those who are unhoused and what the real core issue is.
From that beginning came a trip to Africa that would further change her life.
“In 2004, I got a letter from a woman who was asking me to adopt her children. It turns out she was someone who lived in a refugee camp in Ghana, West Africa and had heard about me on the internet in a Christian chat room.
“She was begging for money, and somebody said, hey, there’s this lady in America that adopts black kids. You should contact her. That led me to contact World Vision, which agreed to sponsor her if I donated the money. That led to them challenging me to go to Africa. And that led to me thinking they were crazy. But eventually, seeing that that made sense, I went to Africa, and my world was changed.”
I asked about the many awards and honors she has accumulated over the years.
“You know what the awards did the first time I won. I did the I told you so dance. When you’re a kid, and you’re told something won’t work or that it’ll never work that way. And it does. You wiggle your tush, and you say, I told you so. That’s such a satisfying feeling to be validated when things turn out right. The awards are my I told you so dance. And that’s all they are. They don’t make me any smarter or better.”
Delilah has no plans to slow down and still loves being on the radio.
“I love being on the air. Last night, taking calls, I heard from a little girl whose best friend had betrayed her by sharing a secret that she had asked her to keep in confidence. I was able to laugh out loud at myself because I’m the worst secret keeper in the world.”
“You cannot tell me anything in confidence because I will not only forget and violate that confidence. I’ll do it on the air. My daughter didn’t tell me when she was pregnant because she said I was the last person to know.”
“I said, honey, why? She goes because you would blab it to everybody. I said, no, I wouldn’t. She said you would say it on the air. You’re right, I would. I have no boundaries, but I love, love, love my medium, and talking to and connecting with people.”
“I love the power of radio. You can paint pictures, create scenes, and draw people in, and they’re with you. You can be describing the banks of a river.”
“I got the name Point Hope from Point Hope, Alaska, because I did a broadcast on the hottest day in Philadelphia in my 20 years from Point Hope. I did the whole broadcast using sound effects. And my best friend thought I had flown to Point Hope. You can create amazing stories. It’s such a powerful medium. I love that there are still incredibly talented people who see that power and that beauty and don’t waste it.”
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.
As Mike Greenberg moved out of the ESPN Radio lineup after five years hosting solo in the late mornings, the company opted to revamp the daypart with a brand-new offering emanating from the West Coast. For the last several months, the national audio network has operated under its new lineup featuring Clinton Yates in the two-hour timeslot hosting live from studios in Los Angeles adjacent to Crypto.com Arena. Communicating with a production team largely located at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Yates has created a show where he discusses matters surrounding assorted sports leagues, teams and athletes.
Yates remembers being asked if he wanted a co-host, something management did not believe to be necessary. Although Yates had always assumed that he would be part of a duo at minimum should he elicit a show in weekday prime, he jumped at the unexpected option to partake in a new creative challenge. As a result, the program is titled Clinton & Friends and leverages individual hosting ability with contributor insights, listener perspectives and other dialogue under the wing of authenticity and dedication.
“I really am honored and thankful they trusted me with that opportunity in terms of not just the timeslot, but the format,” Yates said, “and that’s something I’ve really tried to do is make sure that I’m being the person that people know I am on the air, and that is the trust that you have to have with listeners, the trust that you have to have with co-workers, so when we talk about ‘& Friends,’ I am doing it the way that I learned how to do it.”
The lineup alterations unfolded as Yates was on paternity leave following the birth of his son, and he embarked on punctilious research and preparation leading up to the show premiere. Working with ESPN executives David Roberts, Justin Craig and Liam Chapman in the formation and launch of the new program, he brought several ideas to the table and has sought to grow the product. The remainder of the weekday prime lineup features an array of shows introduced within the last three years as the network aims to continuously bolster its audience and overall consumption.
“I think the thing about ESPN Radio that’s always been a plus is that not everybody sounds the same, and that’s a difficult thing to do in terms of more largely for program directors because you do want to have sort of a consistent sound that listeners know they’re going to come to, but if it becomes too much of the same, then all of a sudden it gets very boring very quickly,” Yates said. “The diversity of talent at ESPN Radio is what makes it go.”
Following Mike Greenberg
Yates, however, discerns that people do not like him and regularly receives messages from social media users that he will never be Greenberg. In fact, he contends that some people view him as a know-it-all since he uses sophisticated verbiage and draws shrewd inferences through salient analysis. Rather than taking umbrage or loathing the sentiments, he leans into his penchant for refinement without forsaking elements of entertainment, nor losing sight of the responsibility gleaned from being in the spotlight.
“I think to me, the idea of credibility is not just one that other people think,” Yates said. “It’s one that you have to feel inside of you, and if you’re faking it, people are going to know, but that’s not the reason why not to do it. The reason why I can’t be a phony is because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Yates acknowledges that Greenberg lives a different life than him and that there was not much collaboration between the two radio hosts amid the transition. Nonetheless, they have seen each other when Yates went to New York City to participate on First Take or guest host editions of Around the Horn. Although they have not worked together regularly, Yates filled in on Mike & Mike a few times over the years and is familiar with Greenberg’s ESPN portfolio.
“The only anxiety I had was in the idea that, first of all, the show wouldn’t look good or wouldn’t sound good,” Yates said. “I was very nervous about the actual product, I was less nervous about the position I was in.”
Welcoming in Friends to Join the Program
Moving into the spring, Yates has been satisfied with consumers dialing the show to express their thoughts and take part in the discussion. As someone who listens to sports talk radio outside of hosting his own show, he is aware of how valuable it is to afford patrons a voice in programs, and their inclusion is something that his show has stressed. Yates recognizes that callers range from regular devotees to newcomers across a variety of demographics, and he also accentuates external input through other means when such is warranted.
“If I read a story from somebody [about] some obscure thing, we’re naming the publication, we’re naming the byline,” Yates articulated. “If we hear something – a clip from another show or another thing – we’re not only highlighting who said it, but what station they were on and when they did it. That kind of stuff is important to me, just acknowledging folks.”
Yates is embedded in a collaborative process to determine the best topics to discuss, something through which he lends his perspectives realized through maintaining his coverage of sports, writing and making television appearances. Rather than watching the action from afar, he attends games and converses with others in the business while also remaining active in the community.
“Just the stuff that comes up, the news cycle, the editorial judgment, I don’t know how to describe it,” Yates said. “That’s the part that makes me me, and I do my best to kind of show distinctions that I think are important to be filled in terms of stuff that I find interesting, and that’s where we go.”
While Yates was on spring break as a college student at Miami University, he showed up unannounced to ESPN Zone in Washington, D.C. with a stack of newspapers and met Tony Kornheiser. Once he explained his career ambitions and rationale for arriving, Kornheiser invited him into the studio where he met Michael Wilbon, his colleague at the network and The Washington Post. Through conversations and assistance from Wilbon, he landed an internship with The George Michael Sports Machine and eventually received a chance to record a highlight reel on the stage with George Michael and Jim Vance looking on.
“Jim looked at me and he said, ‘You’re telling me you’ve never done this before?,’ and I said, ‘No, first time,’” Yates recalled. “He said, ‘George, this kid’s got a future in this business,’ and so early on, I was taught by people that were very good how to instill confidence, how to do things sort of the right way in terms of presenting yourself as a broadcaster, and I think it really helped me out going forward.”
With the goal of becoming a columnist at The Washington Post, Yates graduated and started working at Express editing news and penning articles. At the behest of reporter Dan Steinberg, he joined the sports desk for a two-week trial, but the stint ended up extending to six months and led him to wonder if he would ever return to his old job. Kevin Merida, who was the managing editor at the time, informed him he would not return to his local column because he was a better sportswriter.
“He said, ‘Just trust me on this, just stay there. It’ll be okay,’” Yates explained. “Six months later or whatever it was, he went to ESPN and he took me with him, so that’s how that all came is that I was lucky enough to be in a couple good spots at the right time.”
Merida served on the editorial team that launched The Undefeated, a multimedia platform looking at the intersections of sports, race and culture. Yates helped execute the vision and satisfy the outline of what the team was looking to achieve, and he penned several powerful stories and the ‘All Day’ blog that assumed a format resembling a newsletter.
After attending a town hall meeting in Chicago, Yates received a call from Aaron Solomon, the coordinating producer of Around the Horn, offering him a chance to serve as a panelist on the program. With the impending conclusion of Around the Horn next month, Yates asserts that participating on the show made him a better person and journalist. The program deviated from any previous experience he had in a newsroom, and he always ensured to bring his best and take accountability.
“I knew the vibe of the show, obviously, because I had literally watched every single episode in my entire life,” Yates said, “and by the time I finally got there, it was just a matter of being comfortable sharing the real parts of myself because as much as people want to say that writing or radio even for that matter is very intimate, there’s something very different about people seeing you talk on television that adds a different dimension to one’s own persona.”
Before Yates started working in the current midday slot, he hosted locally on ESPN LA 710 and also had a national weekend show with Domonique Foxworth and Mina Kimes titled The Morning Roast. With this new project though, he did not want the local element to go away, reputing that the market is too big to act distant or detached. Part of that came through the set design, urging the team to replace an old backdrop and keep graffiti towers in the background to impart the veritable tableau.
“I’m like, ‘This is what downtown Los Angeles looks like. We got to be real. Why would we lie?,’ and so that particular part visually was very important to me,” Yates said. “The set looks great, which gives me a lot more confidence every single day of the week when I get on.”
With Yates becoming more acclimated to the new responsibility, he does not take anything for granted and is excited about innovations around the business. Instead of being tethered to a particular daypart, the show can expand its influence and reach through social media and digital content initiatives. On top of that, Yates is optimizing his professional network and highlighting the lives of others while demonstrating that being a national radio host is not an anthropomorphic assignment.
“There’s only a certain amount of championships you’re going to see, but for me, staying in the game and being able to be an evolving storyteller as things that I’ve seen unfold over my career with the same, not the same,” Yates outlined. “The fastball is not the only pitch I’m trying to throw, and over the course of my career, I’ve tried to mix in different pitches and do things different ways.”
With distinctive versatility through a multifarious medley of dissemination outlets, Yates is moving forward on the air looking to augment the quality of his show. Having played sports and being a fan, he takes pride in his longevity and ability to accurately report and divulge information in several different facets of the business. Yates is striving to foray on new adventures every year in the sports media business with an earned ethos behind his genuine discourse and giving people reasons to tune in.
“I did not feel that I could not be myself, and I still don’t feel that way, and so that’s very important to me, not because I have some sort of ego to be a certain thing or not, but I do feel that creativity is a large part of what makes radio fun,” Yates said. “If you can’t be yourself, then there’s no real point of doing it.”
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.
You have an opinion on what’s happening? Good for you. Turns out everyone has an opinion, and this time it’s going to be very hard to find anyone over the age of, say, 12 who doesn’t. That means that you — talk radio host — are not unique. Sure, you can and should talk about it, opine away, but when you do so, you’re doing what everyone else on and off the air is doing. No crime in that.
But you can also do what others may not be doing, and that’s focusing on what the tariffs and the DOGE chaos actually mean to listeners’ lives, or, more specifically, their bank accounts. If you watch cable news, there is no shortage of pundits and experts throwing out numbers for how much this is all going to cost the average family in America.
There is a shortage, however, of exactly how those numbers are calculated. Is it increased food costs? Does it assume every family will be buying a new car within the next year? From where are the numbers coming?
We’ve weathered recessions before, but this is more of a self-inflicted wound with aspects that few thought would actually happen, and the results are still being determined. That leaves your audience unsure of how much of a financial hit they’ll be taking, and very unsure of how to proceed. Most of them do not have financial advisors, but a lot of them have 401ks. Everyone is nervous about Social Security and Medicare.
What should they, and by “they” I mean “we,” do? Argue about the political elements all you want, but most people are sitting there in shock not sure if they should stand pat, cash in their savings and stuff it under the mattress, buy gold, sell their house, stay in a job they hate just for the insurance, retire, emigrate to another country, hoard eggs… what’s the next move?
Who knows? But the time for action is now, and most people don’t know what to do about it. That’s where you can come in. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about the political issues and the protests and whatever’s headlining the news at that moment, but it does mean that you can take a few segments out of your show to go over what the latest developments mean for listeners’ wallets and suggest what they should be doing now to mitigate the damage somewhat.
You can do it in conjunction with reliable financial advisors or “do your own research” (ugh), but either way, if you give people practical, legitimate advice, you’ll probably be the only non-infomercial show on the dial at any given time doing so.
This isn’t your garden-variety financial crisis. This one is like an out-of-control steamroller careening through the country flattening everything in its path. Speaking as someone in the unfortunate age group just about at retirement/Medicare age who doesn’t know what he’ll do if Social Security and Medicare are eliminated or revised, and I’m surrounded by neighbors in the exact same position, we could all use some hand-holding and solid suggestions for navigating the crisis. If you tell me that host X on station Y is providing useful information on what to do, I’ll listen.
I don’t know if there is any help out there, to be perfectly honest, but if there is, now is the time to trot it out. I already have my opinions on what the administration is doing (you can probably guess). I don’t need talk show hosts telling me their opinions as much as I need some semblance of hope that this, too, shall pass.
Or I can just listen to sports radio and watchBeverly Hillbillies reruns. The economy may be a problem too big to ignore, but we can try.
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1210 WPHT afternoon host Rich Zeoli is one of my favorite news/talk radio hosts in the country. The Rich Zeoli Show is often a balance between humor, cynicism, and sarcasm while still delivering the day’s news and Zeoli’s thoughts on the most pressing topics of the day.
Unlike other hosts, however, he isn’t afraid to dip his toe into the interview waters. He regularly schedules conversations with lawmakers, newsmakers, and fellow media members.
This past week, Zeoli featured an interview with Amie Parnes, a Senior Political Correspondent for The Hill, and author of the new book “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.” In the book, Parnes revealed several interesting nuggets about the transition between President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Those revelations were widely bandied about in the news media sphere last week. So, first of all, it’s a good get for Zeoli to land someone at the forefront of the news cycle.
But what information did Zeoli get from the author of the book that generated plenty of headlines? Let’s find out.
The first question to Parnes was more of a statement from Zeoli — which included his theory that Democratic Party leaders wanted President Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump in June with the hope that he would perform terribly, leading to a new candidate being inserted — and asking the author for further understanding about the situation and her reporting on the topic.
He followed up by asking if there was any one person who “pulled the kill switch” to pull Biden from the race.
The first two questions allowed Parnes to establish her reporting to an audience that might not have been previously exposed to the content of her work. It was good work by Zeoli to allow Parnes to shine at the beginning of the interview, allowing her to build credibility with the audience.
Zeoli then turned his attention to the reporting on Kamala Harris in the book. The reports suggest that few in the Democratic Party — if anyone — wanted Kamala Harris to be the replacement nominee for Biden. The 1210 WPHT host took the only logical stance and question you could ask in that situation: “Why didn’t they do anything to replace Harris off the ticket?”
I’ve written about this before. This is the K.I.S.S. method — Keep It Simple, Stupid — on full display. It would be insanely easy to overthink this question. But that is the question to ask. In my opinion, it’s the only question to ask in that spot, because it’s the question every listener wants to know the answer to. This rarely applies to conservative news/talk radio, but I sincerely believe that at this moment, The Rich Zeoli Show was attempting to be curious and not judgmental. And I’ll always applaud curious and not judgmental questions in an interview.
After Parnes described that many Democratic leaders felt there wasn’t enough time to pick anyone other than Harris and that former President Barack Obama felt differently, Zeoli followed that up by asking why was a decision on the candidate at the Democratic National Convention ruled out and who made the ultimate decision against it.
I always dislike when news/talk radio hosts bring up “the media” (because you are the media, dude) in criticisms. It’s lazy. Plus, those same people will spend precious moments of their shows telling you how minuscule the media’s impact is today, how no one is watching, and how the journalists shouldn’t be taken seriously in one breath, while simultaneously dedicating entire segments to bitching and complaining about what the media does. It’s just stupid, in my opinion.
That being said, Zeoli asked about “the media” and the role it played in the reporting of the 2024 presidential election and the cognitive decline of President Joe Biden. He noted that there had been plenty of criticism of those covering the race for the White House, and asked Parnes about that criticism and the pushback she had received on the book.
I think, in this instance, that’s a fair question. Because legitimately one year ago, much of the messaging out of the White House was that President Joe Biden was as sharp as he had ever been. But the reporting now suggests everyone — from the media to those close to the President, and anyone in between — admits that it wasn’t the case.
After Parnes noted she frequently asked questions about the ability of Biden to continue in the race, Zeoli fell into one of the seven deadly interview sins: remarks. Sometimes, hosts, in an attempt to show how much they know, will word-vomit their knowledge about the topic or interview subject and lose sight of the fact that the person has already agreed to come on the show. They’re here, right now, ready to answer your questions. You don’t need to share your opinion, you need to get their opinion, insight, or analysis. That’s why you brought them on your show! They’re the expert in the situation.
And that was, really, the only real big critique I could have with Zeoli’s conversation. At times, he got a little wordy and opinionated about a topic before asking the guest to share what their reporting about the situation revealed.
The very next question was about how Parnes got access to all the major players and information to write such a detailed account of the race for the White House. I thought that was an outstanding question from Rich Zeoli. Because it’s a question that his listeners are likely pondering themselves. There’s the old adage that “Everybody likes sausage until they see how it’s made.” But I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore. People really like to see how the sausage is made today. It helps build a connection when you’re given a behind-the-scenes peek at something.
It also further entrenches the credibility of the guest, which, in turn, legitimizes Rich Zeoli in the eyes of his audience. So for him to ask that question was music to my ears.
If the only large point of contention I can take away from an interview is that the host got a little wordy in the run-up to his questions, I would say he’s doing a dang fine job of running high-quality conversations for his listeners. Bravo to Rich Zeoli. I thought this conversation was a big winner with valuable information reaching to the top levels of the United States government and the power brokers that pull its levels. He deserves high praise for a job well done here.
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.
620 WTMJ midday host Brian Noonan is no longer with the Good Karma Brands Milwaukee news/talk station.
Noonan had most recently been paired with Kristin Bray for Spanning the State, which aired from 1-3 PM. Noonan had been with the station since 2015 in a variety of roles. He previously hosted WTMJ Nights from 7 to 9 PM when the program was not preempted by the station’s coverage of Major League Baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers.
“It’s a common, but painful truth about the radio industry,” Noonan shared on social media after his exit. “I’m still in shock and not clear on all the reasons, but grateful to have worked at this heritage radio station in various capacities for over a decade.”
Before joining 620 WTMJ, Brian Noonan served as a host at WGN Radio in Chicago for nearly 15 years.
After Noonan’s exit, Bray hosted the program alongside colleague Steve Scaffidi throughout the week. Bray also joined Scaffidi on his Political Power Hour program throughout the week as Wisconsin held an election for its state Supreme Court that garnered nationwide attention.
Those close to the situation in Milwaukee tell Barrett Media that a new lineup will be announced for the heritage radio brand early next week.
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.
