Barrett Blogs
The 3 L’s: Laugh, Learn and Likeability
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
The 2024 BSM Summit is Coming To New York City
“The 2024 BSM Summit, will take place March 13-14, 2024 at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in New York City.”
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
Cheers to 8 Years of Barrett Media, and a Look Ahead to 2024
“To be here after 8 years, still able to share my passion for sports and news broadcasting with you, and earn your time and attention is an honor..”
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
The New York Times Sports Saga is About Dollars and Cents, Not a Lack of Interest in Coverage and Reading
“You can take issue with the vision and how the situation was managed but an investment in The Athletic makes no sense if the Times doesn’t prioritize its importance.”
Call me asleep at the wheel, out of touch or an aging broadcaster who has it all wrong, but I firmly believe that people still like to read. I know the popular thing is to talk up video, audio, streaming, etc., and I love all of those options, but I don’t buy that people don’t have time or interest in reading.
For many, especially in the media business, it’s how you start and end your day. I’ve heard people pronounce last rites for print for well over a decade, only to see social platforms and media outlets thrive off the written word, newsletters rapidly rise, and text become the main form of communicating. Clearly, written content still matters.
It’s ironic that I’m telling you this in print as you read it on the BSM website. In fact, more than nine million visitors have stopped by this site over the past three years, reinforcing why I remain convinced people value learning and enjoying a mental distraction.
As much as I love audio and video, there’s something therapeutic about reading a story. There are thousands of shows flooding the daily content cycle, many discussing the same topics and issues. Some could say the same exists in print, but there are countless examples of in-depth storytelling and reporting that can’t be duplicated on radio, TV or even in a podcast.
Think for a second about the majority of sports information that people react to each day. It comes in written form. If you’re an NBA fan, you rely on tweets from Woj and Shams. If you crave the NFL, Schefty and Rapoport keep you informed. Even those seeking sports media news get it from Marchand, McCarthy, Ourand, and BSM. Whether it’s delivered in a tweet or an online article, the bottom line, you’re reading it.
Though I remain bullish on the power of print, I’m not naive to the fact that the business has been challenged. If the revenue or costs don’t produce positive results for a company, they are going to do whatever is necessary to strengthen their business.
Recently, the New York Times chose to throw in the towel on its local sports department, relying instead on The Athletic for its local sports coverage needs. It was a decision undoubtedly influenced by dollars and cents. As expected, many in the media took exception.
In a statement issued to the Times’s newsroom, the newspaper’s executive editor, and deputy managing editor emphasized that the changes would result in more direct focus on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large. What they felt no longer needed attention was coverage of games, players, teams and leagues.
Interesting. This follows the Los Angeles Times recent decision to remove box scores, game stories, standings, and TV listings. These are things that sports fans have cared about and paid attention to for decades.
These two newspapers believe your interest in knowing the details of a game, and how your favorite team is performing compared to others, no longer matter. Either that’s the viewpoint or they’ve waved the white flag and determined people would rather go to ESPN, Yahoo and other online destination for that information. It’s easy to see why these decisions drew the ire of Adam Schein on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio and Jessica Benson on Grind City Media.
I don’t believe people who love sports don’t care about the things the Times is eliminating. Maybe interest in those items is lower when compared to news and in-depth storytelling but sports fans have always had interest in statistics, schedules, transactions, and standings. To suggest they don’t matter anymore is foolish.
You can debate if the newspaper’s vision for covering sports is right for the future or not but what made this situation worse is the way their executive team managed the situation with the sports staff.
It was reported that employees sent a letter to management the day prior, asking for clarity on the future of their department. Though the Times said in a letter to staff that no plans existed for layoffs, they ignored the fact that The Athletic had 20 staff members eliminated last month, and 20 more transferred to other roles. The transfer approach was also their solution for the sports department, hoping moving staffers to another department would help avoid the wrath and a bigger fight with their union.
But when news trickles in from the outside that plans are in the works to eliminate a department, and those skilled at covering sports are offered roles that remove them from what they enjoy doing, why would they stay? If someone took away your sports job and told you you’d continue being paid but now have to write obituaries, what would you do? Some will see this as creating a structure that encourages people to quit. That’s one way to eliminate costs without being on the hook for breaking a promise to not eliminate jobs.
Though I think the management team at the Times has royally screwed up their handling of this situation, let’s remove emotion for a second, and look at this from a business perspective.
The New York Times’s parent company started this process in January 2022 when it invested five hundred and fifty million dollars in The Athletic. Were they not supposed to prioritize the sports brand they purchased? Were they supposed to continue funding two operations with the same content focus even if it meant losing money?
One could argue that the newspaper could’ve moved its best sports writers to The Athletic, but to expect both to operate as is isn’t realistic. You can also criticize the decision to stick with The Athletic after the brand lost $7.8 million last quarter, $12.6 million in the second quarter last year, and $6.8 million in February and March of 2022 despite having 3.3 million subscribers. By the way, that information was shared by the New York Times in public filings.
Love it or hate it, when a company has resources tied up in two places for the same thing, you can rest assured they’re going to eliminate or reduce one of them. The changes don’t happen right away either, they usually come a year or two later.
This isn’t exclusive to the print industry. Look at what happened to the pro wrestling business when Vince McMahon acquired WCW from Turner. He didn’t run two companies long term. He kept who he wanted, dropped the others, and a lot of people in that business were left without work. It happens in radio too when a station eliminates local shows for national programming or companies take over a new market or entire organization. You may not love hearing executives talk about finding ‘synergies’ to operate more efficiently, but they’re not going to pay twice for something that requires one investment.
When cuts are made and a department is weakened, it’s hard to express enthusiasm. Why would one be optimistic about the Times’s ability to cover the world of sports when they have less of a presence, and are minimizing coverage of games, players, teams, and leagues? If you’re at the New York Daily News, New York Post or Newsday you’re using the moment to remind New Yorkers that you remain committed to local sports coverage with a locally focused staff.
It’s more than fair to question if this the Times is making a smart decision, but for anyone to suggest this confirms a lack of interest in reading and sports coverage is foolish. These decisions are always about one thing, and one thing only, money.
The bigger issue with print isn’t a lack of interest. It’s the cost to employ and retain a talented staff while grappling with the challenges of generating advertising and subscription revenue. Think the fact that the sports desk at the Times was unionized, and The Athletic was not might’ve mattered in this case? You’re nuts if you think it didn’t.
In May of this year, the New York Times missed estimates for quarterly revenue. That led to a 6% drop in their stock price at the time. The Times said they expected digital ad revenue to decline by low-to mid-single digits, which was confirmed when they revealed they were nearly 9% down in digital ad revenue for the first quarter, and off by 11 million dollars for total annual revenue.
As a publisher myself, I know how hard it is. We are fortunate to have some excellent, loyal advertising partners on this website but truth be told, we don’t have enough of them. More months than most we spend more than we take in to run our websites, and newsletters. Consulting remains our top source for revenue, leaving me to ask many times if modifying our content approach is needed or if we’d be wiser running a business without an online focus.
We put a ton of time and effort into educating the industry. I take great pride covering brands and people, telling their stories, trying to help folks learn about each other and the daily happenings across the media landscape. We pump out 30-40 stories each day between our two websites, promote them across social media, and deliver them to more than 10,000 inboxes via our BSM 8@8 and BNM Rundown. And that’s just the content side.
We also spend countless hours creating packages, pursuing new business, and taking meetings to demonstrate our reach and value in order to gain advertising support. We build conferences across the country, and risk a lot financially to do them, hoping to earn enough to cover the expenses and get many of the right industry people in the room. But even that can be difficult. For every partner we gain, there are many who don’t come on board. Most who do have seen the benefits, but I understand that a weakened economy makes decision makers nervous.
That said, if this site disappeared tomorrow, many would be upset. We’ve earned trust, respect, and appreciation for the work we do from a lot of important people. But in every business, if the support isn’t there, the publisher, brand or company has to choose what is and isn’t vital to operating. Folks may not like change, but it’s simply about the math. If the dollars and cents don’t add up, you’ve got to adjust or you risk being broke or out of business.
That’s what I believe this decision at the New York Times is about. You can take issue with their vision and the way they managed the situation but understand that an investment in The Athletic makes no sense if the Times isn’t prepared to prioritize its importance. You can question if they should’ve purchased The Athletic in the first place, but once that move was made, it was only a matter of time until something this drastic occurred.
But those who flocked to social media to suggest this is proof of people not being interested in reading are wrong. Each time I hear nonsense uttered about print being dead, I think of how often the same has been said about radio and television. I think about the film industry, which relies on written scripts, and in many cases, published books to create box office hits. I think of Canada pulling its advertising support from Facebook and Instagram over parent company Meta’s decision to restrict news content being available to Canadians. I think of our own growth at BSM and BNM, which is a result of people consuming our written content either online, on social media or in newsletters.
Interest in reading, learning, and mentally escaping from the world for a few is as strong as ever. We live on social media apps and our phones because we want to read what others say, and join the conversation. It all reinforces the notion that consuming written content matters, whether it’s on a website, on social media, in a text, in a newspaper, newsletter or magazine.
The only questions anyone should be asking is what must digital/print brands do to attract stronger advertising dollars, how much investment must a company make to deliver quality journalism and a large audience, and how much consolidation awaits the media world in the near and distant future? We can scream from the mountaintops all day about the decline of journalism and rip the New York Times for decimating its local sports department, but if the dough don’t show, someone or something is going to go.
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
The 3 L’s: Laugh, Learn and Likeability
During my time in St. Louis, I had the privilege of hiring Rick Venturi as a talk show host. Aside from being a very talented communicator, Rick had spent his entire adult life coaching college and professional football. More than 35 years were spent designing schemes, motivating players and gaining knowledge with the ultimate goal being to use it all to help the teams he worked for win a championship.
While Rick didn’t win a Super Bowl or National Championship during his career, he had a wealth of knowledge to share and after working with great leaders such as Bill Belichick, Mike Ditka, Jim Mora, Jon Gruden and Jim Haslett, I was curious to find out what made each of them and their teams unique and successful.
What I remember most was a discussion we had about the importance in every team having an identity and philosophy that was understood and shared by every member inside the organization. During our chat, Rick mentioned how he could look at a team in the NFL and know if they were a sound organization with a strong game plan or if they were a collection of parts just hoping to stumble into the right place. In most cases, he felt it was reflective of the Head Coach and GM’s attention to detail and overall vision for the organization.
I recall asking specifically about Bill Belichick because Rick had worked under him in Cleveland from 1994-1995 and following a number of Super Bowl titles in New England, I felt Bill knew a thing or two about winning and getting the most out of his players. Bill not only had a strong plan but he also surrounded himself with outstanding leaders who understood his vision and were committed to helping him realize it.
If you look back at the group that Belichick assembled in Cleveland it’s one of the best groups of all time. Nick Saban, Eric Mangini, Al Groh, Jim Schwartz and Kirk Ferentz were all coaches under Belichick and every single one of them went on to be a Head Coach. Inside the organization, the team employed Scott Pioli, Thomas Dimitroff, Ozzie Newsome, Michael Lombardi and Mike Tannenbaum. Each of them went on to become a General Manager.
While the Browns didn’t deliver on the field the way they should have given that amazing array of expertise, if you look at the Patriots of the past 14 years they’ve been one of the NFL’s most consistent and elite franchises. Once again Belichick surrounded himself with great people. Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weis, Bill O’Brien and Josh McDaniels all have worked under him and each has gone on to become a Head Coach too.
What jumped out to me when I spoke to Rick was how quickly he could tell you what a Bill Belichick football team looked like. He took me through the way Bill looked at various positions on a football team and what he expected out of those positions from a performance standpoint but even more important, he could tell you every detail of what the position should look like from the player’s height, weight and speed. If a player didn’t fit the description of what they looked for, more times than not they’d take a pass.
I asked Rick to provide a few examples and he was able to do so without missing a beat. He mentioned how Bill would look for physical running backs who could take a toll but wouldn’t necessarily be the fastest guy on the field. He liked wide receivers with a chip on their shoulders who weren’t afraid of contact. He liked taller corners who could play man to man and punish a wideout for 60 minutes even if they weren’t the fastest at their positions and he preferred heavier defensive tackles who could clog the middle and stop the run, even if it meant less ability to sack the QB.
When I took a look at Belichick’s teams I was blown away by the similarities. From Andre Rison in Cleveland to Randy Moss and Wes Welker in New England. At RB he went from Leroy Hoard, Tommy Vardell and Kevin Mack in Cleveland to Kevin Faulk, Antowain Smith, Corey Dillon and Laurence Maroney in New England. All very much similar type of players from a height, weight and style standpoint. If you log on to Pro Football Reference and look at some of those Browns and Patriots rosters you’ll be really surprised at how many similarities exist for players at each position.
Now when you ask Rick about his time with the St. Louis Rams, it’s not something he enjoys spending much time talking about. While he liked and respected Scott Linehan and was grateful for the opportunity to coach with the Rams, Rick knew the team was in trouble the first day he walked into the locker room.
He’d recall how each position had inconsistencies when it came to player attributes and styles. The vision on draft day would be cloudy which caused confusion on what the team was trying to become and when it carried over to the field, the organization lacked an identity and as a result finished with an 11-25 record under Linehan.
That isn’t to suggest that Scott Linehan can’t coach because he did a nice job for the Detroit Lions as their offensive coordinator and now he’s the passing game coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys but it illustrates the importance in knowing what you want your team to look like, feel like and ultimately play like in professional sports.
When you think of how that applies to sports talk radio, the comparisons are endless. Every detail inside an organization is critical to having success and it’s very true that much of the personality of the leader is reflected in the mindset and overall attitude of the team.
When I started programming radio stations I didn’t think about this at all. I was just trying to focus on helping guys out with doing a good show while also trying to convince myself that I was ready for the opportunity I had been handed. I didn’t know what I wanted out of each position on my radio stations, I just knew I wanted to win.
While that goal was one that everyone shared, having a plan for how to do it was absent. I certainly didn’t have enough of the right type of people around me to reflect my vision, but that wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I didn’t create the identity and brand vision that was needed for everyone to have success.
Since that time, I’ve grown a lot as a leader. It started at 101 ESPN in St. Louis and has continued for me in San Francisco with 95.7 The Game. The best thing to happen to me was going through a bad situation at 590 The Fan in St. Louis. Because the end result was failure and a 6-month stay on the beach, I used my free time to analyze every aspect of my game. I thought about what I wanted to accomplish if I got another chance, and who would be part of my team to carry out my vision if I got the call.
What I ultimately came up with was, any Jason Barrett programmed radio station was going to carry with it the identity of the 3 L’s. While there are other things that are important to a show or radio station’s success, these are the core principles that I believe in and seek out of my personalities. If I don’t feel an individual possesses these traits, then it’s difficult for me to bring myself to adding them to my team.
Learn: On the radio station’s that I have programmed, I have hired on-air personalities who possess the ability to help our audiences learn something new about the subjects were discussing. Any talk show host can throw out a basic statement and get an audience to react if they do it with passion. I want my hosts to dig deeper and give me some piece of insight I can’t get anywhere else. I should always feel as a listener that the host on the radio station is smart, prepared and informed and gives me things to think about that I can use with my friends to make myself look good. A few examples of hosts who’ve worked with me and fit this bill would be Bernie Miklasz, Greg Papa, Ric Bucher, Chris Dimino and Randy Karraker. There are plenty of others too.
Laugh: Let’s face it, the audience looks to us to take them away from the stress of their day. We are in business to entertain people. If you can’t laugh at yourself or with the audience, then what’s the point? Sports is supposed to be fun. So is doing a sports radio show. We’re not digging ditches or searching for the cure for cancer. Those are tough jobs. This is a labor of love, a passion play if you will. If you don’t have the ability to laugh, make people laugh, be vulnerable, and make an audience feel like they’re entering a sports bar to have a beer and shoot the shit with you, then you’re missing the point. Laughter brings people together and our job is to form a bond with our audience. When I think of hosts who deliver the laugh trait consistently I immediately think of John Lund, Zack McCrite, Whitey Gleason, Tim McKernan and Damon Bruce. Once again, I’m leaving some others out.
Likeability: This is the toughest of the 3 because the audience ultimately decides whether or not you’re likable but there are some factors that I look at that play into it. For example, are you willing to put your heart and soul into your content and let your audience into your world? If so, that matters to people. Can you acknowledge you’re wrong when you miss on an opinion or statement? It’s OK to be wrong in this business. You can strive to be right but need to be smart and own up to it when you’re not. People appreciate it because it tells them you’re human and you make mistakes just like them. Last but not least, are you approachable when you’re in front of people or are you the person who can’t wait to break away from the crowd? We’re in the people business. If you don’t like being around people, then that’s going to make it really hard to build lasting relationships. When I think of some hosts I’ve worked with who have the Likability characteristic, D’Marco Farr, Chris Duncan, Rob Ellis, Guy Haberman and Frank Cusumano all come to mind. Yes I know, I’m leaving a few others out too.
While I may seek personalities for my brands who possess the 3 L’s, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to be successful if you have them. You could have a slow pace show that bores the audience. You could conduct 30 minute interviews each hour that fatigue the audience. You could talk fast and loud and cause the listener to only listen in small doses. Or, you could use references to help your positions that the audience simply can’t relate to.
In each of those cases, I believe coaching can help make a difference. Having the ability though to make an audience laugh and learn and come across as someone who’s likable is something you either have or don’t. It’s kind of like following the Belichick system. You can check all the boxes but if you’re not a good football player eventually you’ll be exposed.
The purpose of this exercise isn’t to instruct you to go back to work tomorrow and implement the 3 L’s, it’s to get you thinking on what makes you or your brand unique and what strategies you plan to use to help you further establish that philosophy.
Think about how it compares to sports since that’s what our format focuses on 24/7. Bill Walsh teams were known for playing the west coast offense and the players who were picked to play for his teams either fit that system or they played elsewhere in the NFL.
This didn’t mean that other players like Dan Marino, Lawrence Taylor or Marcus Allen couldn’t adapt and fit in, it just meant that the people who were already in place fit the system so well and helped the team win so much that there was no need to worry about changing anything. The same applies to the radio business.
There are always talented people out there who could help us perform. The question you must ask though is, do they fit the organization and my philosophy or not? If they don’t then it doesn’t matter how good they are because the end result will be your own dissatisfaction. That’s not just for a PD either. It can be a Host’s view of a Producer. A Producer’s view of a Board Operator or any other part of your organization.
Yes we all want to win but we also want to win with people who we enjoy working with and who we believe reflect the values and mission statement of our brands. Having an understanding of who you want to be and how you’re going to become that type of team is essential to determining whether or not you’re built to succeed or fail. Knowing or not knowing could be the difference of whether you become Bill Belichick or Scott Linehan.
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
The 2024 BSM Summit is Coming To New York City
“The 2024 BSM Summit, will take place March 13-14, 2024 at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in New York City.”
During today’s Barrett News Media Summit in Nashville, Barrett Media President Jason Barrett announced plans for the company’s next sports media conference. The 2024 BSM Summit, the Sports Media industry’s premiere annual conference for broadcasting professionals, is returning to New York City. The Summit will take place on Wednesday, March 13th and Thursday, March 14th, 2024, at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th Street, New York, NY. This will be the company’s sixth BSM Summit and the third time the popular destination event for sports broadcasters originates from the big apple.
Tickets to the 2024 BSM Summit in New York will go on sale on Monday, October 16, 2023, on the event website: https://bsmsummit.com/. The full lineup of speakers, panels, and special events will be announced later this year.
Prior all-star speakers at the BSM Summit have included industry executives Jimmy Pitaro of ESPN, Eric Shanks of FOX Sports, Meadowlark Media’s John Skipper, and Barstool Sports’ Erika Ayers Badan, popular on-air personalities Pat McAfee, Mina Kimes and Paul Finebaum of ESPN, Colin Cowherd, Joy Taylor, Jay Glazer, and Craig Carton of FOX Sports, Al Michaels of Amazon Prime Video, Jim Rome of CBS Sports, WWE’s Shawn Michaels, and Sports Radio icons Mike Francesa and Chris ‘Mad Dog’ Russo, best known as ‘Mike and The Mad Dog’, plus Sports Radio’s sharpest programming minds including Spike Eskin of WFAN, Jimmy Powers of 97.1 The Ticket, FOX Sports Radio’s Don Martin and Scott Shapiro, Cumulus Media and Westwood One’s Bruce Gilbert, 670 The Score and BetQL’s Mitch Rosen, and many more.
Jason Barrett, President, Barrett Media, said: “What started as a small gathering in Chicago in 2018 has blossomed into one of sports media’s most fun, insightful, and professionally beneficial events. We pour our heart and soul into this show to help industry professionals stay in tune with where the industry is going, and to unite and celebrate folks who help make the Sports Media business one of the best, most passionate, and professionally important spaces in all of media.”
Barrett noted: “I’m excited to return to NYC and operate on the large stage at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, treating our attendees to the best-in-class speakers and presentations they’ve become accustomed to seeing and interacting with at our shows. Last year’s BSM Summit in Los Angeles delivered a homerun, and I’m eager to see if NYC can help us raise the bar again when we return to the Big Apple for a third time in March 2024.”
To stay up to date on speakers, tickets, sponsorship opportunities, and other event surprises, visit https://bsmsummit.com/.
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
Cheers to 8 Years of Barrett Media, and a Look Ahead to 2024
“To be here after 8 years, still able to share my passion for sports and news broadcasting with you, and earn your time and attention is an honor..”
Each September, I look forward to writing this column. Not because I need a pat on the back but because it signifies another year in business. When I launched this company in September 2015, I didn’t expect to cover every layer of sports and news media. I knew the radio business well, built a lot of relationships, and enjoyed writing and speaking my mind. I just thought it would be cool for sports radio folks to have a website focused on it. If it led to a consulting client or two, even better.
I wasn’t planning to hire website editors, writers, social media and newsletter directors or create annual conferences, a member directory and advertising packages. Fortunately, we did good work and it caught on with industry professionals. As interest grew and opportunities presented themselves, I was wise enough to seize them. It’s why we’re here today celebrating 8 years in business.
Creating a brand that people like, respect, learn from, and enjoy spending time with is one of the best things I’ve ever been a part of. It’s even more special because we built this without corporate funding. When I entered the consulting and publishing space, I believed this could be my last job. I still feel that way today. This consumes my life M-F from 7am to 11pm. I’ll take a break to eat, talk to family or maybe watch a game or TV show but aside from that and a weekend timeout or vacation, I don’t shut off much. I wish I could at times but it’s how I’m wired. To run a successful business, you’ve got to be all-in and willing to sacrifice, and I do whatever it takes to keep us moving forward.
Growth also requires having a good staff, and supportive clients, advertising partners, and members. It’s easy to run websites with minimal content and low expectations but if the goal is to grow an audience and revenue, generate nationwide respect, and expand into new areas, then you’ve got to have support, a strong team, short and long-term vision, and an ability to consistently deliver. That means recruiting, investing, pitching, and knowing when to pivot.
During our 8 year run, we’ve produced larger monthly and annual traffic than some trade sites that I read and admire. We’ve also established a valuable industry event, and are about to make it two when we host our news summit next week. We’ve earned respect by breaking news, creating original content, helping partners, and refusing to value clicks over people. We may write things sometimes that folks don’t like or agree with. That comes with the territory. Just as long as we’re fair and accurate, I’ll manage the rest. I’m obviously biased but when it comes to sports and news media coverage, I’ll put our team up against anyone. For those who ask, ‘how can we help?’ The answer is simple, RT or share our content, advertise with BSM or BNM, retain us for consulting work or buy a membership or ticket to a summit.
I’ve always tried to be transparent with our readers and clients, so if I’m being honest, this year has been harder than others. The good news is that we’ve grown a lot. We’re busier than ever, and our reach and influence keeps rising. I absolutely love the clients I work with but with more work comes a need for more staff. With more staff comes increased conversations, and it isn’t always easy for me to find time for my crew when I’ve got to listen to and help stations, build conferences, sell sponsorships, and manage websites and newsletters. It’s why having good editors in place is important.
If all I had to do was help clients, the job would be easy. But I don’t just consult. I oversee our websites, newsletters, social media, events and 20+ people. It can be exhausting sometimes. Then there are the unexpected situations that arise. Case in point, having to navigate web hosting issues, social media platforms restricting reach, Google impacting BNM after it split off of BSM, restrictions on 1-2 writers, plus new hires not panning out, and veteran contributors signing off. It’s what you have to deal with when running a company.
On the positive side, the BNM and BSM writing teams continue to kick ass, Alex, Andy, Garrett and Demetri are working well together, and our first news/talk summit has been well received. Stephanie Eads has also gotten more involved on the sales end, and after the BNM Summit, she and I will be holding meetings with groups regarding our 2024 plans.
On that note, we reach a lot of people each day with our two brands. Many are high earners and key decision makers. Most of our partners benefit by advertising with BSM and BNM but there are some in marketing departments who haven’t invested in us nor taken the time to learn about us or respond to an introduction. The last thing I want to do is have to make a tough call one day like Joel Denver did earlier this year with All Access but breaking news, telling stories, running events, and helping partners grow their business takes time and resources. I’m comfortable sharing our story and results. I just hope more will take a closer look at working with us because I know we can help.
Looking ahead to 2024, I can confirm we will host another BSM and BNM Summit. We’ll reveal our host city and location for the 2024 BSM Summit on September 14th. Our plans for the 2024 BNM Summit will be made public in the months ahead. We’ll also release the BNM Top 20 of 2023 on December 11-15 and December 18. The BSM Top 20 of 2023 comes out February 5-9 and February 12th.
In addition, I’ll be posting a column tomorrow on BNM laying out the entire BNM Summit schedule. I’ll also be hiring an Executive Editor in Q4. More on that shortly.
As far as future goals are concerned, I’d like to eventually increase our newsletter distribution to AM and PM delivery, add a few new features writers and columnists, hire a second seller, introduce a new content series for BSM and BNM, and rework our social media strategy. I’m also planning to return to the podcast space next year although not with 5-6 programs per week.
At some point I’ve got to review our member directory and make it valuable for both sports and news/talk professionals. I’m also hoping to dig through our summit video content and eventually create a super ticket for folks to consume any session they want from the past 6 years of conferences. There’s a few more possibilities being explored too but I’m not ready to dive into those details yet. When I am, I’ll share it here on the website.
One situation I am comfortable addressing involves an important upcoming change. When September ends, Demetri Ravanos will be transitioning from FT editor of Barrett Sports Media to a weekly columnist and features writer for BSM. This is something that has been planned for months, and I know Demetri is excited about it.
Demetri joined BSM in August 2017, and has been a valuable member of our team. He’s been a great help to me and our staff, but if you ask him he’ll tell you that being an editor was never what he really wanted to do. He’s done it because he’s a team guy, loves the brand, enjoys sharing ideas with our writers, and likes staying busy but cleaning up columns, editing features, writing headlines and news stories, and listening to stations was not his dream gig. He’s going to be working with Joe Ovies, Joe Giglio, Lauren Brownlow and their Raleigh based podcasting network, which will give him a chance to host and produce close to home. You’ve likely seen some of his work already on social media.
Having spent 6 years together, I can’t say enough good things about Demetri. He’s worked hard for BSM, listened and learned when I educated him on stuff, and he’s become a great friend. He’s someone I’ve put a lot of trust in, and that’s not something I hand out to everyone. It has to be earned through time and consistent effort. We’ve talked a lot the past few years about this scenario being likely at some point, and when the topic came up in May, we both knew it was the right time to start the process. I’d write more about him if he were vacating BSM but you’ll still be able to read him on Monday and Wednesday. In fact, he’s launching a new series here tomorrow called Meet The Podcasters presented by Point to Point Marketing.
When we created this transition plan in May, I moved fast to get the word out that we’d be hiring an Executive Editor. I did so because I knew it’d take time to lure the right candidates, and between running a news/talk event on September 13-14, and Demetri stepping away two weeks later, I wanted to get ahead on it. I conducted 60+ interviews in May-August, and talked to many well respected, highly accomplished people, but as the summit drew closer, I started to realize that this hire was way too important to rush into. This is someone who I have to have complete trust and confidence in to run and grow our company’s digital brands. I didn’t like the idea of hiring someone and having limited time to train them, brainstorm big ideas, and develop a 2024 strategy due to needing to focus on building a big event.
So I told a few candidates that we’d resume discussions after the Summit, and if it means having to take longer to hire the right person, then so be it. I care about making the right hire, not a fast hire.
To make sure we don’t miss a beat, I’ll be diving in with Garrett Searight on October 2nd to make sure BSM and BNM’s content remains strong each day. We’re fortunate to have Garrett, Derek, Ryan, Jordan, Ricky and Eduardo contributing news stories and Alex handling our social media so it’ll be business as usual. My goal is to make a hire during the 4th quarter and set up the company for stronger success in 2024.
One thing I’ve learned during the editor interview process is that there are a lot of people who know our brands, love sports and news, and enjoy writing and broadcasting but don’t have the knowledge about sports radio or television beyond a few markets or shows. Many see the word ‘sports’ or ‘news’ and assume we’re going to write about those issues. I tell them all ‘we don’t do sports and news, we do sports media and news media‘. It’s important to know the difference. We’re more in line with a Sports Business Journal, Front Office Sports or All Access than we are ESPN, Yahoo Sports or Sports Illustrated.
What matters most here is a passion for writing, a nose for news, industry knowledge and relationships, and a desire to educate the industry. I live and breathe the broadcasting business and need others around me who share that same passion for the industry. I know there are talented writers and editors out there, so since this process isn’t resolved yet my email is open if you want to send a resume and cover letter. Be advised that this is a FT salaried, remote position.
There will always be obstacles to overcome, successes to celebrate, people coming and going, and new opportunities and difficulties to navigate when running a business. To be here after 8 years, still able to share my passion for sports and news broadcasting with you, and earn your time and attention is an honor. I’m grateful for your support and look forward to seeing where we are when I write this column next September and raise a glass to 9 years of excellence.
Thanks for taking the ride with us. Here’s to finishing 2023 strong, and making 2024 even better.
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].
Barrett Blogs
The New York Times Sports Saga is About Dollars and Cents, Not a Lack of Interest in Coverage and Reading
“You can take issue with the vision and how the situation was managed but an investment in The Athletic makes no sense if the Times doesn’t prioritize its importance.”
Call me asleep at the wheel, out of touch or an aging broadcaster who has it all wrong, but I firmly believe that people still like to read. I know the popular thing is to talk up video, audio, streaming, etc., and I love all of those options, but I don’t buy that people don’t have time or interest in reading.
For many, especially in the media business, it’s how you start and end your day. I’ve heard people pronounce last rites for print for well over a decade, only to see social platforms and media outlets thrive off the written word, newsletters rapidly rise, and text become the main form of communicating. Clearly, written content still matters.
It’s ironic that I’m telling you this in print as you read it on the BSM website. In fact, more than nine million visitors have stopped by this site over the past three years, reinforcing why I remain convinced people value learning and enjoying a mental distraction.
As much as I love audio and video, there’s something therapeutic about reading a story. There are thousands of shows flooding the daily content cycle, many discussing the same topics and issues. Some could say the same exists in print, but there are countless examples of in-depth storytelling and reporting that can’t be duplicated on radio, TV or even in a podcast.
Think for a second about the majority of sports information that people react to each day. It comes in written form. If you’re an NBA fan, you rely on tweets from Woj and Shams. If you crave the NFL, Schefty and Rapoport keep you informed. Even those seeking sports media news get it from Marchand, McCarthy, Ourand, and BSM. Whether it’s delivered in a tweet or an online article, the bottom line, you’re reading it.
Though I remain bullish on the power of print, I’m not naive to the fact that the business has been challenged. If the revenue or costs don’t produce positive results for a company, they are going to do whatever is necessary to strengthen their business.
Recently, the New York Times chose to throw in the towel on its local sports department, relying instead on The Athletic for its local sports coverage needs. It was a decision undoubtedly influenced by dollars and cents. As expected, many in the media took exception.
In a statement issued to the Times’s newsroom, the newspaper’s executive editor, and deputy managing editor emphasized that the changes would result in more direct focus on distinctive, high-impact news and enterprise journalism about how sports intersect with money, power, culture, politics and society at large. What they felt no longer needed attention was coverage of games, players, teams and leagues.
Interesting. This follows the Los Angeles Times recent decision to remove box scores, game stories, standings, and TV listings. These are things that sports fans have cared about and paid attention to for decades.
These two newspapers believe your interest in knowing the details of a game, and how your favorite team is performing compared to others, no longer matter. Either that’s the viewpoint or they’ve waved the white flag and determined people would rather go to ESPN, Yahoo and other online destination for that information. It’s easy to see why these decisions drew the ire of Adam Schein on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio and Jessica Benson on Grind City Media.
I don’t believe people who love sports don’t care about the things the Times is eliminating. Maybe interest in those items is lower when compared to news and in-depth storytelling but sports fans have always had interest in statistics, schedules, transactions, and standings. To suggest they don’t matter anymore is foolish.
You can debate if the newspaper’s vision for covering sports is right for the future or not but what made this situation worse is the way their executive team managed the situation with the sports staff.
It was reported that employees sent a letter to management the day prior, asking for clarity on the future of their department. Though the Times said in a letter to staff that no plans existed for layoffs, they ignored the fact that The Athletic had 20 staff members eliminated last month, and 20 more transferred to other roles. The transfer approach was also their solution for the sports department, hoping moving staffers to another department would help avoid the wrath and a bigger fight with their union.
But when news trickles in from the outside that plans are in the works to eliminate a department, and those skilled at covering sports are offered roles that remove them from what they enjoy doing, why would they stay? If someone took away your sports job and told you you’d continue being paid but now have to write obituaries, what would you do? Some will see this as creating a structure that encourages people to quit. That’s one way to eliminate costs without being on the hook for breaking a promise to not eliminate jobs.
Though I think the management team at the Times has royally screwed up their handling of this situation, let’s remove emotion for a second, and look at this from a business perspective.
The New York Times’s parent company started this process in January 2022 when it invested five hundred and fifty million dollars in The Athletic. Were they not supposed to prioritize the sports brand they purchased? Were they supposed to continue funding two operations with the same content focus even if it meant losing money?
One could argue that the newspaper could’ve moved its best sports writers to The Athletic, but to expect both to operate as is isn’t realistic. You can also criticize the decision to stick with The Athletic after the brand lost $7.8 million last quarter, $12.6 million in the second quarter last year, and $6.8 million in February and March of 2022 despite having 3.3 million subscribers. By the way, that information was shared by the New York Times in public filings.
Love it or hate it, when a company has resources tied up in two places for the same thing, you can rest assured they’re going to eliminate or reduce one of them. The changes don’t happen right away either, they usually come a year or two later.
This isn’t exclusive to the print industry. Look at what happened to the pro wrestling business when Vince McMahon acquired WCW from Turner. He didn’t run two companies long term. He kept who he wanted, dropped the others, and a lot of people in that business were left without work. It happens in radio too when a station eliminates local shows for national programming or companies take over a new market or entire organization. You may not love hearing executives talk about finding ‘synergies’ to operate more efficiently, but they’re not going to pay twice for something that requires one investment.
When cuts are made and a department is weakened, it’s hard to express enthusiasm. Why would one be optimistic about the Times’s ability to cover the world of sports when they have less of a presence, and are minimizing coverage of games, players, teams, and leagues? If you’re at the New York Daily News, New York Post or Newsday you’re using the moment to remind New Yorkers that you remain committed to local sports coverage with a locally focused staff.
It’s more than fair to question if this the Times is making a smart decision, but for anyone to suggest this confirms a lack of interest in reading and sports coverage is foolish. These decisions are always about one thing, and one thing only, money.
The bigger issue with print isn’t a lack of interest. It’s the cost to employ and retain a talented staff while grappling with the challenges of generating advertising and subscription revenue. Think the fact that the sports desk at the Times was unionized, and The Athletic was not might’ve mattered in this case? You’re nuts if you think it didn’t.
In May of this year, the New York Times missed estimates for quarterly revenue. That led to a 6% drop in their stock price at the time. The Times said they expected digital ad revenue to decline by low-to mid-single digits, which was confirmed when they revealed they were nearly 9% down in digital ad revenue for the first quarter, and off by 11 million dollars for total annual revenue.
As a publisher myself, I know how hard it is. We are fortunate to have some excellent, loyal advertising partners on this website but truth be told, we don’t have enough of them. More months than most we spend more than we take in to run our websites, and newsletters. Consulting remains our top source for revenue, leaving me to ask many times if modifying our content approach is needed or if we’d be wiser running a business without an online focus.
We put a ton of time and effort into educating the industry. I take great pride covering brands and people, telling their stories, trying to help folks learn about each other and the daily happenings across the media landscape. We pump out 30-40 stories each day between our two websites, promote them across social media, and deliver them to more than 10,000 inboxes via our BSM 8@8 and BNM Rundown. And that’s just the content side.
We also spend countless hours creating packages, pursuing new business, and taking meetings to demonstrate our reach and value in order to gain advertising support. We build conferences across the country, and risk a lot financially to do them, hoping to earn enough to cover the expenses and get many of the right industry people in the room. But even that can be difficult. For every partner we gain, there are many who don’t come on board. Most who do have seen the benefits, but I understand that a weakened economy makes decision makers nervous.
That said, if this site disappeared tomorrow, many would be upset. We’ve earned trust, respect, and appreciation for the work we do from a lot of important people. But in every business, if the support isn’t there, the publisher, brand or company has to choose what is and isn’t vital to operating. Folks may not like change, but it’s simply about the math. If the dollars and cents don’t add up, you’ve got to adjust or you risk being broke or out of business.
That’s what I believe this decision at the New York Times is about. You can take issue with their vision and the way they managed the situation but understand that an investment in The Athletic makes no sense if the Times isn’t prepared to prioritize its importance. You can question if they should’ve purchased The Athletic in the first place, but once that move was made, it was only a matter of time until something this drastic occurred.
But those who flocked to social media to suggest this is proof of people not being interested in reading are wrong. Each time I hear nonsense uttered about print being dead, I think of how often the same has been said about radio and television. I think about the film industry, which relies on written scripts, and in many cases, published books to create box office hits. I think of Canada pulling its advertising support from Facebook and Instagram over parent company Meta’s decision to restrict news content being available to Canadians. I think of our own growth at BSM and BNM, which is a result of people consuming our written content either online, on social media or in newsletters.
Interest in reading, learning, and mentally escaping from the world for a few is as strong as ever. We live on social media apps and our phones because we want to read what others say, and join the conversation. It all reinforces the notion that consuming written content matters, whether it’s on a website, on social media, in a text, in a newspaper, newsletter or magazine.
The only questions anyone should be asking is what must digital/print brands do to attract stronger advertising dollars, how much investment must a company make to deliver quality journalism and a large audience, and how much consolidation awaits the media world in the near and distant future? We can scream from the mountaintops all day about the decline of journalism and rip the New York Times for decimating its local sports department, but if the dough don’t show, someone or something is going to go.
Jason Barrett is the owner and operator of Barrett Sports Media. Prior to launching BSM he served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He has also produced national shows for ESPN Radio including GameNight and the Dan Patrick Show. You can find him on Twitter @SportsRadioPD or reach him by email at [email protected].