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So, You Want To Be In Sports Media

“Jay Mariotti says journalism has been replaced by cooperative public relations and those looking to work in sports media shouldn’t allow it to completely hijack their lives.”

Jay Mariotti

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Ten, 12, 15 — I’ve lost count. Day after day the last several weeks, I’ve appeared on talk shows with hosts who’ve asked the same questions: “Was Michael Jordan really that (magnificent, sublime, G.O.A.T.-like)?’’ … “Was he really that big of a (tyrant, S.O.B., jerk)?’’ … “Why were Jerry Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf so (jealous, vindictive, joyless) in breaking up the Bulls?’’

But near the end of a show last week, a host snuck in a different query: “What would you tell a young person who wants to get into sports media?’’

I paused. Did he really want to go there? Now? Sports media is a wilted flower, a pot-holed wheeze down a one-way back road in a rusted jalopy, a relic exposed as the antithesis of essential during the COVID-19 catastrophe. It has been left naked and cold by dried-up advertising revenue, radical downsizing, crumbling journalistic bedrock, corporate raiders who buy and kill news shops, an over-reliance on sports leagues and franchises to stay afloat, athletes and teams that have their own methods to reach fans and — if major sports leagues do shut down in 2020 — zero employment prospects as pay cuts and furloughs turn into permanent layoffs. Even if Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NFL and college football return without spectators, one might have a more secure future as a drive-thru cashier at Taco Bell. Oh, and I should note that regular access to athletes and coaches, so vital to the storytelling separating good sports sites from charlatans, might not happen in a post-pandemic world of social distancing and no press boxes, thus requiring skilled writers to cover games off TV like the basement bloggers of yore.

Or, perhaps, do something else for a living.

Albert Dickens was a man of his Times - Chicago Sun-Times

For some reason, I then thought of the late Albert Dickens. Fortunate to spend much of my column-writing and broadcasting career amid the vigorous, thriving heyday of media, I viewed Albert not as an editorial assistant but as a daily symbol of the good times, a wise and pleasant soul who sat at his desk in the Chicago Sun-Times sports office and reminded us how we literally had life by the balls. Forget about the pathetic, mind-blowing farces evident even in those prosperous days: CEOs/publishers who skimmed profits and went to prison, editors who protected sports owners, fans who threatened your life because you didn’t always worship Da Coach, the newspaper guild that stood firm when the editor-in-chief forearm-shivered you into his office wall, the radio boss who canned you with great ratings because you didn’t agree in writing to stop criticizing his rights-holder teams, the baseball writer who gave an MVP vote to A.J. Pierzynski because he was a trusted source, the drunken colleague who wanted to fight in a Washington arena until Al Gore came walking by, the newspaper executive who asked the college football beat writer to pick up his free season tickets, the media rivals who couldn’t outwork or outperform people but certainly could outsleaze them.

“You’re alive and well,’’ Albert would assure me in his dapper sweater and tie, “and you’re making a nice living doing what you love.’’ He would deliver such a speech on a day when I’d take for granted the ESPN debate show I was taping that morning, the one that reached nearly a million viewers a day back in the best years of “Around The Horn;’’ and the column I was preparing for the next day’s newspaper, which might take me to Wrigley Field, Soldier Field or the Slaughterhouse That Jordan Built; and the expense account that allowed me to hop on planes and cover almost any event I wanted around Planet Sport. I welcomed his verbal nudges, those cues to smell the roses.

To me, Dickens was Media Yoda. And now, just days after his passing at 82, in a sports media landscape gutted by coronavirus fallout and facing a future unrecognizable when compared to the glorious past, somebody wanted to know what I’d tell a young person about a collapsing business. I would love to have replied thusly: Go read an entertaining Washington Post guest column by Rick Reilly, who doesn’t write enough, and realize that sportswriting can’t possibly be dying as long as he’s living.

If only the answer could be that simple. This was a young person’s life, and I could save it or ruin it. Years earlier, an agent asked me to have lunch at a Manhattan deli with a recent college graduate named Jordan Schultz, who said he wanted to be a sportswriter. Emerging amid the digital content boom of the 2010s, he thankfully has done well for himself as a basketball writer and Huffington Post columnist. Yet I wonder, in retrospect, if Jordan might have preferred the path of his father, Howard, the King of Starbucks. So my response to the radio host could not afford to be nuanced. I wanted to tout a sports media career as a blessing, as it has been for me for decades, but I also don’t want to add another dark statistic to the staggering U.S. jobless total. This is how I clapped back at our imaginary aspirant:

“Sure, pursue sports media as a sidelight gig. But you might think about writing code, not sports, until you have some money in the bank.’’

Sports Journalism the Povich Way - YouTube

From this point forward, I’m afraid, a volatile industry has only limited options, none as appealing as when I began at 19 as a fiercely independent rabble-rouser with a singular journalistic mission: No one ever would order me what to write or say. First of all, the very idea of pugnacious, nonaligned sports journalism is all but extinct, swallowed by media companies that prefer to secure business partnerships with leagues, franchises and programs and eagerly promote those entities rather than also covering and scrutinizing them — a frightening thought about a $200-billion industry rife with scandal.

There are people who follow leagues and teams as beat reporters, people who excel in long- and short-form storytelling, people who host talk shows as couriers for teams on the station and people on TV who shriek about whether the Packers insulted Aaron Rodgers by drafting Jordan Love. But the hard-hitting columnists who keep the sports owners and power brokers honest are dwindling to dust, either too pricey for the payroll or too hot to handle for sites such as The Athletic, which lacks edge and somehow is trying to cover AND appease the Big Sports mechanism. And the days of ESPN hammering the NFL over concussions and player conduct cases are long past, replaced by a corporate need to butter up commissioner Roger Goodell and the owners and help the network land a spot in the Super Bowl broadcast rotation. As for local media operations, which once exposed Barry Bonds’ steroids sham and some of sport’s biggest scandals, most gave up on investigative reporting long ago, realizing the professional and college machines have enough financial and political clout to flick them aside, probably with one call from a team executive or coach to a stadium-suite-leasing media boss.

The 2020 survivalist mantra: Become a sports sycophant or die. I’d rather die, keeping in mind that no one should allow an industry capable of being so thankless and cutthroat — lowbrow, too — to define one’s self. If sports media were a shinier craft, yes. And it once was, with the Post calling it “a storied profession’’ in its own piece last week about the demise of the industry. But the world is very big, folks — travel, art, wineries, parties, sunsets, movie scripts and 22-mile ocean bicycle trails, assuming we’re allowed to resume those activities — and you’d be foolish to allow the sports media trade to completely hijack your life when inevitably, for reasons that have nothing to do with talent or production or work ethic, you’ll be blindfolded and tossed aside by someone working for someone who works for someone.

And whatever happened to the spirit of beatdown competition, whipping the rivals with a big story or a mightier column and making content better for readers, viewers and listeners? Does anyone compete anymore? Back when I arrived in Chicago, I made a point of calling the publicist of author Sam Smith and requesting an advanced copy of “The Jordan Rules,’’ the hot new book that revealed the dictatorial side of MJ. She not only sent excerpts, she sent some of the most controversial, which was great for the Sun-Times because we didn’t pay a penny for material that the rival Tribune — which employed Smith as a Bulls beat writer and compensated him with a salary and expense money — paid thousands of bucks to publish. Of course, I published a column about it first, embarrassing the Tribune and prompting Smith to call my editor, moping that I was trying to get him fired. To this day, Sam is cranky about it when, you know, he should have put the clamps on his publicist.

ESPN Tops Cable Networks in Key Demos in 2019 - ESPN Press Room U.S.

Maybe young people today clamor to be Mike Greenberg, an amiable TV and radio host. But if they want to emulate Bryant Gumbel and his reporting titans on HBO’s “Real Sports,’’ they’re out of luck because the show has only a few correspondents, and there’s no other program like it. And if they want to be Reilly — hey, he gets it, choosing scuba-diving each morning in Hermosa Beach over a regular writing regimen. He can afford to, you see. Such were the perks of sports media in the ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s and part of the ‘10s.

But not the ‘20s.

A reader of this column knows I’ve been alarmed, if not disgusted, by networks and sites that carry an amateurish, sappy tone of wishful thinking when “reporting’’ about the possible resumption of live events. I wrote about it last month, and because it doesn’t stop, I’ll run it back — as it pertains to the future of media. ESPN cannot speak sports into existence, but it certainly tries every night, with “SportsCenter’’ host Scott Van Pelt continuing as a mushy Disney character when, more than ever, we need journalistic clarity about the medical crisis of our lives. A series of critical issues should be addressed on each show: How will sports keep athletes and support staffs safe during an ongoing pandemic? … Are health risks worth taking just so leagues and athletes can recoup pieces of lost fortunes? … Does the whole thing go to hell if there’s a second wave of coronavirus? … Despite marked improvements in available testing, would enough kits be available over the months ahead — MLB alone needs 10,000 per week — for numerous pro and college inventories? … How can this be accomplished without depleting the national test supply and making sports leagues look uncaring and greedy? … What happens when athletes test positive? … Is MLB seriously going to quarantine a player who tests positive but NOT quarantine his exposed teammates, allowing the games to go on? … And will leagues be transparent publicly about every positive test or cover it up to protect their seasons and incoming revenues?

I rarely hear a mention of such protocol roll calls on ESPN. But I do get Stanford Steve, who joins Van Pelt on a frat-bro segment about past wagers gone awry. And I get a deceiving headline in the show tease — “PLAYERS TALK RETURN’’ — when there’s no certainty the NBA will resume play this year. So, kids, you’re basically stumping for sports leagues if you want to work in the biggest media shops. Even Van Pelt openly debated his purpose when he told CNN Business, “I have asked that question aloud and in my brain driving home some nights, where I think, `What are we doing?’ ‘’ The pandemic is one of those moments in time, like 9/11 and world wars, when sports media should want to be on the front lines. Instead, they’ve retreated into minimal-audience irrelevance. Why? Because the leagues expect media to be loyal partners in a time of crisis, to dutifully report what the leagues want the public to think, even if it’s tantamount to brainwashing that serves the bottom line.

Chicago Bulls and White Sox Owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, Allen … | Flickr

That isn’t journalism. It’s cooperative public relations. And in the future, a bleak trend that started years ago will continue in full force: If you want to work in sports media, you’ll likely be working directly for the leagues and teams themselves, or for a company that remains obedient in covering them. And if you want to report a story they don’t want reported, you’ll be bounced out of town, if not out of the business. You may remember when wives of Houston Astros players were harassed by White Sox fans during a World Series game in Chicago, forcing the Sox to apologize; well, my column about the apology never saw the light of day, killed by editors intimidated by Sox management. On a higher level, this is how President Trump tries to bully the White House press corps, but enough media shops have remained strong and protected the backs of political reporters. Sports? I can count on one hand how many boardrooms would protect their people in a firestorm.

The New York Times is one. Bleeding from financial woes, ESPN was too busy making money off the UFC 249 pay-per-view presentation to investigate business partner Dana White, who made a debacle of testing protocols in Jacksonville and didn’t seem to care if COVID-19 was spread or lives were lost. A Times sports reporter wrote a critical and fair story, accusing the UFC president of flouting Florida safety and health guidelines — headline: “U.F.C.’s Coronavirus Plan Is Careful. Its Enforcement Has Been Spotty’’ — with White responding in his usual level-headed, mature tone.

“F–k that guy. F–k that guy,’’ he said. “You know what happened with that guy? That guy, who has never covered the sport ever before, was writing a story about (UFC parent company) Endeavor … What do you think happened when this guy and this paper covered the UFC when they had never covered it before? What do you think happened? The f—–g story was huge. They did killer traffic. Now they’re writing stories, three a week, and they’re posting live results I don’t give a s–t what that guy thinks, what he has to say or what he writes. Good for him.”

Was White concerned about fallout from the piece?

“I don’t give a f–k,” he said. “Don’t give a f–k.”

The Trump effect, call it.

Restarting UFC during a pandemic is 'expensive,' Dana White says ...

I suppose a sports media aspirant could work for White and serve as his publicity flack, assuming he or she wants to risk contracting the virus. Or, worse, you can work for one of these goof-bubba sites where you make weed money for a few years but ultimately embarrass friends, family and even rats in the attic. You know: the joints run by creeps who see sports and sports media as toilets, take massive dumps and turn the profession into a sewage clog, aiming content at burnouts while declaring war on smart, well-adjusted humans. Like most panelists who’ve logged thousands of airtime hours on ESPN, I was targeted by one such loser who wrote about me so often — pathologically lying to the end — that there had to be something seriously wrong with him. There was: He was a hard-core drug addict who wound up in rehab and wrote about it, which may have explained why he had me followed and offered money to any colleague with “dirt’’ when I began a San Francisco gig. Later, Hulk Hogan sued the guy and his affiliated website for an original award of $115 million, putting both out of their misery forever.

If you think I’m overly cynical, I could suggest The Athletic. The founders, propped up by venture capitalists, are fighting the good fight for the future of sportswriting albeit with a glaring obstacle — they’re relying entirely on subscriptions that likely have peaked after four years of existence and won’t be selling during a sports-crippling pandemic, meaning hundreds of talented writers could be out of work if sports don’t return or a second virus wave buries an attempt to return. Actually, Sports Illustrated, despite internal flareups and various dents on a once-sterling reputation, might have a better chance to survive as a smaller operation. There are even smaller sports sites, zillions of them, but you’ll have a better life drawing unemployment.

TV? You either become a full-blown company man and get bonuses every time you utter, “This is why we love sports,’’ or you twist and shout like Stephen A. Smith. Otherwise, the networks will keep hiring those who played, coached or generally managed the game, often preferring been-in-the-trenches faux cred to compelling, thoughtful discourse and going so far to pardon criminals in sports and real life, from Alex Rodriguez to Ray Lewis.

Documentaries? This would be my recommendation, having contributed to the Hollywood content churn myself, with “The Last Dance’’ docu-series inspiring a new batch of sports films available in coming days — the Donald Sterling racism affair; Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and the bogus home-run derby of 1998; the Lance Armstrong doping scandal; even a piece on Bruce Lee. But this isn’t sports media work, remember. It’s filmmaking, which means Jason Hehir, director of the 10-part Jordan series, is considered a far greater creative force today than Wright Thompson, thought to be the best of the current sportswriters and a guy ESPN actually has used — burp! — to chow down at college football tailgates.

The Last Dance: ESPN Series Director Jason Hehir on Michael Jordan ...

The takeaway: Unless you really like brisket, please avoid journalism school and enroll in film school. But even then, as Hehir knows, you’re at the mercy these days of iconic athletes — some with their own production companies — who want their legacies crafted their way, maximizing the triumphs and minimizing the gambling mischief and political limpness. See, you’re still working for The Man.

Talk radio? All you need to know is that Bernie Miklasz, the biggest sports media personality in St. Louis the last three decades, was fired from his talk show because he made too much money. And the story floated in the New York Post about the teetering fate of ESPN host Dan Le Batard? Much as Le Batard denies the story, he pulls down more than $3 million a year — and the Post media writer has strong Bristol sources. Anyone who makes real money in talk radio soon might be replaced by … wait, a kid out of college! There’s the answer for our sports media aspirant: Work cheap when the big-money guys are ziggied!

Dismiss me if you’d like. But one sunny morning in 2009, on a Wrigley Field rooftop, I told the legendary writer Frank Deford, a former boss of mine who passed in 2017, why newspapers would fade away if they didn’t adjust to technology and create a revenue balance between newsprint and an eventual digital takeover. A year before, I had opted out of a lucrative, long-term deal because the Sun-Times reneged on a promise to improve its website — a flaw that led to the paper’s quick free-fall. Deford, then hosting a “Real Sports’’’ segment about the troubles of print media, pointed to a copy of that day’s paper and asked, incredulously, if the newsprint product would cease to exist. I told him the entire operation, someday, would cease to exist. For now, the Sun-Times remains on life support, kept alive by the periodic financial largesse of Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz, which means a staffer can’t criticize the Hawks anymore without being Bullwinkled by Rocky. But truly, whatever was left of a once-dominant sports department died when Albert Dickens passed.

Ozzie Guillen

I remember the day when Ozzie Guillen, a crude baseball loon worthy of my nickname for him (“The Blizzard Of Oz’’), called me a “(bleeping) fag.’’ He was incensed because I’d criticized him, while on a road trip covering the NBA Finals and U.S. Open golf, for rebuking a kid pitcher who didn’t bean a Texas Rangers batter as ordered. This led to a national media storm that included requests for me to appear with Tucker Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, half-assed punishment from the commissioner’s office and interest-conflicted Sun-Times editors who cheaply exploited coverage of the flareup, including a sports boss who asked me to issue a statement for other media outlets. Um, wasn’t my “statement’’ contained in the column I was writing on Guillen? WTF?

Sometime later, I saw Albert at his desk. “You sure know how to keep the lights on around here,’’ he said.

It’s a lost art, kids.

Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ is the host of “Unmuted,’’ a frequent podcast about sports and life (Apple, Podbean, etc.). He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio host. As a Los Angeles resident, he gravitated by osmosis to movie projects. He appears Wednesday nights on The Dino Costa Show, a segment billed as “The Rawest Hour in Sports Broadcasting.’’

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Kim Mulkey Now Has Everyone Anticipating Washington Post Story

I can’t imagine what headline, under normal circumstances, the Washington Post would have to put on a Kim Mulkey story to make me want to read it.

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photo of LSU women's college basketball coach Kim Mulkey
Credit: Dailymail.co.uk

The Washington Post, you might’ve heard, has a story coming out about controversial LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey. The reason you might’ve heard is because Kim Mulkey told you. The Tigers coach read a fiery prepared statement just before her team started the Women’s NCAA Tournament. In the statement, Mulkey threatened to sue The Post for defamation before the first word was even published.

Now, I’ve never run a public relations firm but that did not seem like a good idea. The Washington Post story on Mulkey is one of the bigger stories in sports right now and nobody even knows what’s in it. The reason the story, apparently unflattering to Mulkey, is even on anyone’s radar screen is Mulkey herself.

It all started with an innocuous social media post by Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde right in the middle of the most anticipated two days in sports, the NCAA Tournament Round of 64. On his X account, Forde posted: “Hearing some buzz about a big Washington Post story in the works on LSU women’s hoops coach Kim Mulkey, potentially next week. Wagons being circled, etc.”

You know what generally will go unnoticed at 4:00 on the first Friday of the NCAA Tournament? A post on X about a women’s basketball coach. But don’t tell Mulkey, she saw Forde’s post and decided to fight fire with nuclear weaponry. The result: the average person like me now is really interested in what has Mulkey so incensed. By “average person like me” I mean that I can’t imagine what headline, under normal circumstances, the Washington Post would have to put on a Kim Mulkey story to make me want to read it. Maybe:

“LSU Women’s Coach Discovers Ark of the Covenant”

Or:

“Mulkey Reveals True JFK Assassin(s)”

Perhaps:

“Famed Women’s Basketball Coach Reveals the Mystery Behind Slow Drivers in the Left Lane”

Literally any of those catch my attention more than whatever will likely be the Washington Post headline about Mulkey. But now Mulkey is “Mad as Hell and is not going to take this anymore” so I now have an interest I would never before have had in this story. It has been fascinating to watch the online speculation about the subject of the article and all we really know, as of now, is that it will be written by Kent Babb. This is a dream come true for Babb; he writes an article that is, presumably, not flattering about Kim Mulkey and, before it is even published, she gives the article the greatest commercial anyone could give it. Babb couldn’t have entered into a business agreement with Mulkey and had this turn out better for him.

For those who don’t follow Babb, he is a former NFL reporter who now is an award-winning writer for the Washington Post. In his 14 years with The Post, he has written sports features and authored a couple of books. One of those sports features stories was a deep dive into what he viewed as a large inequity in the level of pay for LSU head football coach Brian Kelly and his LSU players. It is this piece Mulkey described as a “hit piece” and, based on that piece, referred to Babb as a “sleazy reporter.” Babb, and many others, resented the fact his story was labeled as a hit piece. In fact, Babb essentially confirmed he was the author Mulkey was referencing when he shared the original article on X with the comment: “Hit piece?”

Whether a printed piece or a recorded interview, I can’t imagine a better promotion for it than the subject of the interview threatening a libel/slander lawsuit, especially before it is even released. That simply screams “This piece is salacious!!” Also, libel and slander suits get settled all the time, right? Of course they don’t, they seem to never even get filed. That little thing called discovery is a scary thing for most public figures.

The NCAA Tournament has been very entertaining, and I think the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight will be terrific. For only the fifth time ever, the top two seeds have advanced to the third round which sets up for a remarkable weekend. For me, I guess it will now include a Washington Post article, not a sentence I’d normally say.

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Ian Eagle Crushing It for CBS As Replacement for Jim Nantz

Eagle continues to be a shining example of what a network play-by-play announcer should be.

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Photo of Ian Eagle and the CBS Sports logo

I’ll admit, it’s been a little strange not hearing Jim Nantz during this year’s NCAA Tournament. Nantz stepped aside to concentrate on golf and the NFL after a long run covering the Final Four. Change is sometimes hard to accept, we are all creatures of habit, and I’m sure it’s a little weird for Nantz himself this time of year. But change doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. When it comes to Ian Eagle, not that I’m surprised, so far, so good.

Eagle is no stranger to CBS viewers. He’s been with the network since 1998 calling college basketball games and the NFL through the years. That certainly made the transition a little easier for everyone involved. CBS, the viewers and Eagle himself. Familiarity in these cases doesn’t breed content, it breeds a more comfortable broadcast and an easier handle on the change itself.

For Eagle, one of the other benefits for him was working with familiar folks, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson. Eagle estimates that he and Raftery have called 600 basketball games together, because they were longtime partners on the NBA’s Nets broadcasts. Eagle has also previously worked with Hill in college basketball, the same for Wolfson.

“To do this with Bill, Grant, and Tracy, it really is going to feel very seamless. In many ways, it will feel like we’ve been doing it together for many years,” says Eagle on a conference call before the Big Dance.

It sounds seamless too. It’s not underrated to have a good rapport with the folks that you’re working with. Everyone is trying to get used to a new voice and the idiosyncrasies of a new announcer. It’s much less of a chore, when you know and have worked with your co-workers and partners before.  You know what to expect from them, and they know what to expect from you. That’s good.

I think Eagle is killing it in his new role. You could even tell during the Big Ten Tournament that led up to the “Big Dance” that he was not only ready, he was ready to roll. It’s easy to hear how much he loves doing what he’s doing. That’s the case in all of the sports he calls.

Eagle continues to be a shining example of what a network play-by-play announcer should be. He has the ability to combine his talent with some personality, but never at the expense of the action he’s calling. His broadcasts always hit the mark, as he rises to the occasion when the moment calls for it.

What do I mean by personality? He manages to make us laugh, even in some tense moments of a game. He also manages to articulate our thoughts in some situations, like this example from the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. 

Sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson had a report during the UConn/Northwestern game about the superstitions of Huskies’ coach Dan Hurley. He wears the same red dragon underwear and suit as he did last year. Wolfson said Hurley’s wife travels with a portable washing machine to make sure his clothes stay clean. Leading Eagle to ask the question on all our minds:

“Who has a portable washing machine?! I didn’t even know that existed!”

Also in that game, Eagle had a couple of other great moments. UConn big man Donovan Clingan had a couple of swats on one play.

“Denied! Clingan! Denied! Two for the price of one!” Quick thinking and entertaining at the same time. Later when a ball got pinned between the basket and the backboard, Eagle said, “Oooh! A Brooklyn wedgie!”

Great stuff. None of his ‘ad-libs’ sound like they are forced. It’s within the flow of the action and just seem to come to him. It’s pretty amazing to be that quick on your feet, when you’re trying to make sure to get the call correct above all else. I’m sure we’re all in for many more treats like that along the way from Eagle.

In general, when fans are watching a tournament game, they probably aren’t thinking about the preparation that goes into a broadcast. Especially for a play-by-play announcer. The first weekend network announcers calling a couple of games in the same day. There’s also only a day in between the first and second rounds to prep for teams that you may or may not have seen during the college season.  The turnaround is quick and demanding.  

“It feels like an information avalanche in many ways,” Eagle said recently on 670 The Score. “The fact that I’ve done it for so long would make you think, ‘oh, he’s got it down, he has the system, he found the secret sauce.’ No, it feels the same way every year.”

Eagle says even veteran announcers like himself have to manage stress levels and work efficiently once they know which games they’ll call. “The two or three days leading up to the tournament, I must admit, are probably the most angst-riddled of the year because it’s a little bit out of your control.” Eagle told 670 The Score.

Yes, the stress level is great on the broadcasters, but how about what Clark Kellogg continues to do at the NCAA Tournament and the Final Four? For the 8th year, he’ll join Kevin Kugler and Jim Jackson on Westwood One’s broadcast of the Final Four and Championship Game on radio. At the same time, Kellogg will be a studio analyst for the television coverage. How does he pull it off? Following the pregame show broadcast on TV, Kellogg will make his way courtside to the radio broadcast position to join Kugler and Jackson. Then, he will rejoin TV for halftime before repeating the process in the second half and postgame. 

Working this tournament isn’t easy for these broadcasters. It’s a big stage for sure, but as you’ve read, there’s big pressure that goes along with it. The audience is usually huge, and announcers are constantly put under the microscope. Fans want to make sure that you know their team, pronunciations and all. Stories. Bios. All of it. Cut these folks a little slack, information gathering with little time to do it, isn’t exactly simple. They do a damn good job.

Eagle himself, is doing a tremendous job. The 3-man booth works so well because of his ability to keep it all together. He can set up either Raftery or Hill with a serious basketball question, or deliver a great ‘straight line’ to bring out their personalities. It’s a gift. Eagle has that knack for knowing when to go ‘rogue’ and go for that entertaining line, that seems to fit in perfectly. Speaking of fitting fine, those rather large shoes he had to fill, they’re becoming the perfect size.

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Andrew Salciunas Aims to Thrive in Morning Drive on 97.5 The Fanatic

“We are two radio guys that kind of know what we’re doing.”

Derek Futterman

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Andrew Salciunas
Courtesy: Beasley Media Group

When 97.5 The Fanatic midday host Anthony Gargano agreed to a deal to contribute to PHLY Sports, a local digital venture within ALLCITY Network, he was promptly suspended by Beasley Media Group and subsequently sued for breach of contract. Although the two sides eventually reached a settlement and officially parted ways, the future of the daypart was still in question. In the interim time period, the station granted Andrew Salciunas the opportunity to lead a four-hour solo program with producer Ray Dunne. Salciunas had served as Gargano’s producer in the midday slot and still has a strong relationship with the sports media personality today despite no longer working together.

The onerous aspect of the situation, however, was in recognizing that Salciunas was being afforded a chance to prove himself as a host in the marketplace. In the past, he had filled in when Gargano took vacations, but it was not for an extended period of time. Although he was familiar with the flow of a midday program, achieving a successful, yet sudden assimilation into a regular timeslot without a partner was an invigorating circumstance.

“I knew that it was going to be a learning experience because it’s one thing to host a show on Saturday or it’s one thing to host a weekly podcast and you have a week’s worth of content at your disposal,” Salciunas said. “It’s another thing to [be] hosting every single day and needing to come up with new ideas and new angles and new twists on things, so it was a challenge knowing that I was going to have to do that for however long the process was going to be.”

Salciunas received help from program director Scott Masteller, a sports radio veteran who has helped elevate brands and nurture budding talent. Several months later, Masteller asked Salciunas how he would feel about working with morning program host John Kincade. Salciunas replied by saying that it was something he would be interested in doing, and he later added that he already wakes up early and could easily work in morning drive. Salciunas was somewhat nonplussed when he discovered that Masteller’s intention was to have him anchor the program rather than Kincade, who has been hosting in the daypart since January 2021.

In the weeks and months ensuing, Salciunas and Kincade were involved in meetings to plan the new program, which officially made its debut on 97.5 The Fanatic last week and is titled Kincade & Salciunas. Both hosts knew about the program for roughly two months, and Salciunas is surprised that it was kept a secret for as long as it was. Outside of their scheduled meetings, Salciunas was able to speak with Kincade between their shows since they occurred after the other as well. From the onset, he wanted to make his thoughts about the program clear to ensure a smooth transition amid a quest to inform and entertain the audience.

“The first thing I told John when they told us that this was the plan moving forward was that, ‘This is going to be our show,’” Salciunas recalled. “Yes, I might be the guy running the ins and outs out of commercial breaks. I’m the guy that brings on the guests; I’m the guy that brings on the callers, but this is our show. We both have ideas, we’re both passionate about Philadelphia sports teams, we’re both high-energy people, we’re both opinionated and we’re also respectful of each other.”

While there is natural disagreement between Salciunas and Kincade on a variety of sports topics, they make sure not to fabricate their discussions and engender debate for the sake of the show. Instead of feigning their contrarian discourse, there is a legitimate willingness to be genuine with their audience while continuing to put radio first. Salciunas, Kincade and show producer Connor Thomas all contribute ideas for the program to appeal to the audience and continue building the show as a whole. Thomas also had familiarity in working with Kincade since he served as an associate producer on his previous morning program.

“I’m not a former journalist; he’s not a former professional athlete,” Salciunas said. “We are two radio guys that kind of know what we’re doing. Even though our opinions might differ on sports-related stuff, we see doing radio in a similar way.”

Upon Kincade officially joining 97.5 The Fanatic, he demonstrated his magnanimity and commitment to his colleagues by offering to take all of them out to lunch individually to learn more about them. It was a gesture that surprised Salciunas and something that stuck with him, ultimately helping familiarize themselves with one another and subsequently creating a viable on-air product.

“He’s one of those guys who likes getting to know people, and I think that’s helped a lot,” Salciunas said. “We already had that sort of knowledge of one another [and] we already had that relationship, and because we’re just both so bought in and both so hungry, that’s made it so much easier that we’re willing to do whatever it takes to make the show work.”

Before arriving at 97.5 The Fanatic, Kincade had worked at sports radio both at the local and national levels while also hosting a podcast with Hall of Fame center and Inside the NBA studio analyst Shaquille O’Neal. Bringing him back to his home marketplace and realizing success in the morning daypart was valuable as the sports media ecosystem underwent stretches of change. Transitioning to the new morning show iteration without colleagues Bob Cooney and Pat Egan presented its challenges, but Salciunas has had no qualms that Kincade was invested to win. As a result, the transition has been relatively simple in terms of building palpable chemistry among the on-air team.

“He believes in anybody that he works with,” Salciunas said of Kincade, “and knowing that somebody has worked that long as long as he has in sports radio that he values the young person’s opinion, not just in sports but in terms of radio, that goes a long way.”

There is constant communication between the morning show team leading up to a program outside of typical pre-show meetings and twice-weekly conversations with their boss. Salciunas arrives at the station well before the start of the program and compiles ideas from the previous day into a document, along with ideas from others that come during their commutes. Additionally, they continuously monitor the news cycle and determine what to address on the air while also interviewing special guests throughout the week.

Effectuating a fully prepared show rundown by 6 a.m. EST has been marginally difficult, along with the fact that it can be difficult to book guests on short notice before sunrise. Because of this, the program frequently outlines its guests early in the week and makes adjustments as necessary while maintaining fealty towards conveying their true, authentic personalities.

“I’m a little bit more energetic on the radio because I understand the entertainment portion of doing what we do and having to properly express myself,” Salciunas said. “I’m probably not going to scream at a bar, but when I converse with callers; when I converse with John [or] producers… that’s who I am as a person. There’s just a microphone in front of me.”

When he first started working at 97.5 The Fanatic as an intern, Salciunas did not have a goal of eventually becoming an on-air talent. He was content with his role as a producer, which was borne out of an internship where he worked with Jon Marks and Steve Vassalotti. Both station members served as mentors that he utilized to gain information and advice, a fortuitous outcome after Salciunas impetuously applied for the opening.

While Salciunas was matriculating at Temple University, he needed at least three internship credits in order to qualify for graduation. Reflecting back on his education days, he does not regard himself as the best student and recognized that he needed to intern with the radio station to set himself apart. Honing his focus in sports media took time since he had varied interests in areas such as reporting, podcasting and play-by-play announcing, but he ultimately gravitated towards the sports radio format during his time in Philadelphia.

Salciunas made a favorable impression on those with 97.5 The Fanatic and ended up being hired as an associate producer where he learned more about the format and its programming. Eric Camille, a former executive producer at the station, is someone Salciunas regards as seminal to his professional development.

“He was the guy that hired me out of my internship, and then once I started working, he really helped me,” Salciunas said. “He kind of took me under his wing and helped me out a lot.”

Once Salciunas was hired as a full-time producer, he began to work with Mike Missanelli on his midday program, providing an invaluable learning experience to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the sports media industry. As a veteran host who has captivated Philadelphia sports fans and media consumers at large, Salciunas noticed that collaborating on Missanelli’s program was a different experience than the other shows he had done. Whereas a morning drive show is oftentimes one of the first points of reaction on a given day, Missanelli knew that he would need to approach his daypart differently and adopted a paradigmatic style implementing second-level topics.

“It’s not just going on the air and reacting to an Eagles loss,” Salciunas explained. “It’s reacting to a storyline within an Eagles loss or reacting to a storyline within an Eagles win that may generate conversation. Trying to figure out topics that generate conversation but are not just the, ‘Oh wow, I’m angry they lost today,’ and give out the phone number. It’s [trying] to find topics that make people think and make yourself think and make the audience think.”

When Missanelli left the station, Salciunas began his stint working with Anthony Gargano where he began occasionally hosting select programs. The rationale behind his decision to go behind the microphone was that when the Eagles won a Super Bowl championship, the station needed someone to host from 2 to 5 a.m. Salciunas decided to volunteer for the program, presuming that it sounded fun. From that shift on, he continued his work as a producer while also refining his craft behind the microphone in a major market. It deviated from a philosophy perpetuated by former program director Matt Nahigian of limiting the amount of time producers were on the air, assuming that consumers listened to hear the hosts.

“Now you have to be a producer,” Salciunas affirmed. “You look at both radio stations in Philadelphia – a lot of the hosts now were former producers, and so you learn so much of the craft and then you figure out your own role. You figure out how you handle yourself as a host, so I think producing first before becoming a talk show host should be the way to go moving forward.”

Beasley Media Group’s 97.5 The Fanatic shares the Philadelphia marketplace with Audacy-owned SportsRadio 94WIP, and both stations have had intense battles in the ratings over the years. Salciunas shared that most people between the two stations have worked with their competitors at some point in their careers, and there is an evident respect that exists between the two entities. With both outlets introducing new morning shows within the last two years though, Salciunas understands there is a chance to gain ground on the WIP Morning Show, which finished ahead in the four Nielsen XTrends quarterly ratings books last year.

“Clearly if somebody’s behind a microphone in Philadelphia, everybody’s talented, and we’re going to do whatever we can to try to bridge that gap a little bit, and we’re seeing some good strides already,” Salciunas said. “I think having a new show is a big part of that trying to grab that initial audience, but then it’s holding on to that initial audience.”

Being able to achieve this outcome, however, requires a commitment to showcasing talent and different personalities. Salciunas referenced how there was a point in John Kincade’s stint hosting mornings in the daypart’s previous iteration where he gained ground on his crosstown competitor Angelo Cataldi with WIP. Kincade, of course, used to work with Cataldi’s show as a contributor and received a chance to take the air while with the outlet.

“I’ve seen the turn of tides of ratings over the years for every show [and] every time slot, so there’s always an opportunity, but that means we always have to be on our game; that means we always have to be doing the best show possible,” Salciunas said. “We can’t go in the next day and say, ‘Wow, that show was really good yesterday. Let’s have some fun today; let’s make this a lighthearted show.’ No, we always have to be thinking about, ‘Alright, what can we do next to put on another great entertaining four-hour radio show?’”

Over the last several years, there have been several leadership changes at 97.5 The Fanatic responsible for overseeing the slate of programming and station operations. Scott Masteller currently leads the outlet, someone in whom Salciunas has confidence that he can continue to elevate the standing of the station. In his earlier years working with 97.5 The Fanatic, Salciunas had an innovative spirit but was discouraged from taking steps to align with the multimedia evolution. For example, when he offered to do a podcast several years ago, someone at the station questioned his judgment and the reasoning behind the idea.

“I was told by someone, ‘What’s the point in doing that? We’re a radio station,’ and I knew back then that that was a mistake to say,” Salciunas explained. “You shouldn’t say, ‘We’re a radio station;’ that was years ago, so seeing that bosses and market managers and hosts and producers all realizing, ‘Alright, we have to adapt,’ that excites me.”

Possessing the background as a producer lends shrewd and calculated judgment on how to include members of the audience into the program. While there are still open phone lines for callers to chime in, the program has introduced a text line and also engages with the audience through the live chat functionality of YouTube. Having Thomas as a producer of the show has helped in this area as well, with Salciunas sharing that he has a strong understanding of how to create and optimize content for various platforms of dissemination.

“We have a great YouTube audience where they basically have their own community all of a sudden,” Salciunas said. “They’re constantly talking about the show, and sometimes we grab what they’re saying on that YouTube feed because that’s another area of today’s new media where you have another avenue to communicate with people.”

As Salciunas grows accustomed to the early start on 97.5 The Fanatic and his new colleagues in morning drive, he is filled with enthusiasm and the prospect of possibility. The radio station has been the only outlet by which he has been employed since the start of his media career, and he hopes to work there for as long as possible. National radio and television intrigue him going forward, but his priority centers on thriving in the new role.

“I want to try to get 97.5 The Fanatic – because it starts in the morning – back up in the map; back in the top five of the ratings books – and that’s going to take some time,” Salciunas said. “We’re a new show – we’re going to have to figure each other out.”

Salciunas expressed that the last year-and-a-half has been “hectic” in the midday daypart, but there has also been excitement surrounding the ephemerality as well. Taking the microphone in a major market with a dedicated sports fanbase such as Philadelphia is a privilege he does not take for granted, and he aspires to continue excelling in the marketplace for years to come.

“I just started, so I’m not thinking about the next step just yet,” Salciunas said. “I want this to last for a long time – for a very long time. If I never have to leave, that would be great.”

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