Last Wednesday, Westwood One Executive Vice-President and Executive Producer Howard Deneroff went through a spectrum of emotions following the announcement that his 35-year run with the network had come to an end.  It was a literal “who’s who” in the sports media world that had so many great things to say about the legendary broadcasting executive whose contract was not renewed.

“I don’t know anybody who does his job better than Howard Deneroff,” said Cincinnati Bengals and University of Cincinnati play-by-play announcer Dan Hoard.  “His knowledge, attention to detail, and ear for what makes a great broadcast (and broadcaster) is unmatched.  If you’ve enjoyed the national radio call of a big sporting event, Howard was likely in charge.”

“Ian Eagle told me the more people who can take credit for your career, the better,” said veteran play-by-play announcer Kevin Kugler. “Howard Deneroff is one who takes a chunk of credit for me, hiring a guy calling D-2 sports in Nebraska & putting him on a big stage.  A risk for him.  One I hope he feels paid off.  Forever grateful.”

“Had the honor and privilege of working with (and for) Howard Deneroff,” said Dallas Mavericks play-by-play voice Chuck Cooperstein.  “Hearing of his leaving Westwood One Sports after 35 years is jarring to say the least.  There’s never been a producer more prepared or an executive completely committed to doing things right.”

That’s just a few of the tributes to Deneroff on social media and it was those words and so many others that certainly combined for a big giant tug on the heartstrings.

“Overwhelmed, appreciative, and emotional,” is how Deneroff described his reaction during a phone interview with Barrett Sports Media.  “I spent the better part of Wednesday upset that the run is over because I still want to work in this business, and it was almost as if I was reading my own eulogy.  They were wonderful comments, and I had no idea that many people felt the way they did. I’m thankful for it but sad that that part of my life is in the past.”

What people wrote and said about Deneroff should definitely not be construed as a eulogy and it’s clear that, while it’s the end of his long run with Westwood One, Deneroff still has the burning desire to work and to produce radio broadcasts that sports fans enjoy listening to.

After 35 years, Deneroff built many great relationships and hopes that he can continue at a new home.

“Players say this all the time…they miss the locker room,” said Deneroff.  “Broadcast crews are your second family.  I want to work.  I still think I can do this at a very high level but for the moment, I’ll miss working with all those great people and I will miss being at all those great events.  Hopefully I’ll have another opportunity to be at them in some other capacity.”

When the news broke last week, it was initially reported that Deneroff was “leaving” Westwood One, but that was not the case.  It was Westwood One that chose not to renew his contract and while Deneroff acknowledges that these are situations that come with the territory, especially in broadcasting, it’s still painful when it happens to you.

“We all know that most people don’t get to write their own exit but that doesn’t make it any easier,” said Deneroff who worked 35 Super Bowls, 25 NCAA Tournaments along with countless other big events for Westwood One including the Olympics, World Series, The Masters, the Kentucky Derby and the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

“They did not renew my contract.  They did not make me an offer which was incredibly disappointing after 35 years but that’s their right and that’s the way contracts go.  I’ve done enough contracts over the years and not renewed other people’s contracts so I understand that’s part of the business.  But, it’s still stunning when it happens to you.”

It has been a special career in broadcasting for Deneroff.

Growing up a huge sports fan, Deneroff majored in Broadcast Journalism at Syracuse University and then set out on a path to fulfill a dream.

Mission accomplished for Deneroff.

“I got into this business, truthfully, because I wanted to go to as many different sporting events as possible for free,” said Deneroff.  “That was the reason I became a producer.  To be able to go to all of these games was a dream come true.  I produced the games like a fan would want to hear.” 

When he started out in radio, Deneroff was able to work with the likes of Brent Musburger, Jim Nantz, Jack Buck, Vin Scully and Ernie Harwell and later on Marv Albert and Dick Enberg.  He would grow from being a young producer into a high network executive who ultimately became responsible for hiring some of the great play-by-play, analyst and studio host voices that you hear and see on the air today.

There are certain things that Deneroff looked for during the last 18 years in the capacity of hiring announcers for Westwood One.  He has spent his entire career being diligent in making the right choices and has done a hall-of-fame job doing just that.

“I tried very hard to select announcers that could deliver the best description of what was happening along with the best passion and energy and the best perspective,” said Deneroff.  “To me, unless you can do all three of those, something is missing from a broadcast.”

Sometimes, announcers looking for work would send him a resume and demo tape and there were also times when Deneroff would find new talent just driving through different parts of the country listening to local play-by-play.  He knew what he wanted in an announcer and left no stone unturned in finding the right people.

“Play-by-play is a very specific art,” said Deneroff.  “I couldn’t do it.  I tried.  I couldn’t do it well but I know how it should sound and so I’ve spent 35 years trying to find who I believe are the best people to deliver that to fans like me so they could be excited and passionate about what’s happening.”

Deneroff was working the College World Series in 2003 when he met Kevin Kugler who was doing a local talk show.  Kugler didn’t ask for a job or express an interest in working for Westwood One.  He just wanted Deneroff to listen to his tape.

“I listened to the tape,” said Deneroff who would hire Kugler in 2004.  “From the first tape I ever heard of his I said this guy is really good and I want to hire him.  I’m thrilled that now he’s doing so many other things for Fox and everybody else because I always thought he was talented.”

John Sadak, Ryan Radtke and Brandon Gaudin are some other outstanding play-by-play voices that Deneroff brought to Westwood One.  Sadak was doing Delaware Women’s Basketball, Radtke was doing minor league baseball and basketball and football games for the University of Nevada while Gaudin was doing Butler Basketball when Deneroff first heard them. 

Deneroff also hired Jason Benetti as a play-by-play announcer and Jason Horowitz, now the radio voice of the Las Vegas Raiders, 15 years ago as a studio host.

While Deneroff brought all of those announcers on board, he believes if he didn’t find them, someone else would have.

“I should not be given credit for them,” said Deneroff.  “I just happened to hear them before someone else might have discovered them. I believe I helped them along the way and I gave them a forum to do their craft in which I felt they were really good, but I do think they all got better working with me and Westwood One.” 

There are so many other announcers that could be mentioned as part of the fraternity of voices who were hired by Deneroff at Westwood One.  If you wanted to draw an analogy to great athletes who have excelled on the field, court or ice, Deneroff has put up some impressive numbers when hiring announcers.

Whether you want to call it a completion percentage, shooting percentage or winning percentage, Deneroff has produced (no pun intended) and has produced in a big way.

“Obviously, I’ve hired a lot of people in 18 years and so if I’m forgetting anybody, they should all know how I feel about them if I hired them,” said Deneroff.  “I don’t think I made many mistakes over those years in hiring talent.  Nobody is perfect but if I hired them, they know my opinion of them.”

I’m proud to be in the group of announcers hired by Deneroff.  He took a chance on me in 2008 bringing me on as an update anchor for Westwood One’s Olympic coverage and I was proud and honored to work multiple Olympics for him.  To his point of making announcers better, I’ll certainly vouch for that.  I was already doing updates for other outlets, but I can safely say that my experience working with Deneroff made me a better announcer and I could never repay him for that.

It’s not that often when a marquee athlete becomes an unrestricted free agent available to any team that would want him or her as part of their team.  That also applies for sports broadcasting as you can be sure that networks will be lining up to inquire about securing Deneroff’s services.

So far, Deneroff has received one part-time offer but he has also been inundated with so many calls, text messages and e-mails that he has yet to get back to everyone.

“It’s been overwhelming and hundreds of people have contacted me,” said Deneroff.  “Anybody who knows me really well knows I don’t sit still so I’d like to work sooner than later because I love what I do.  For the first time since 1989, I’m looking for a job.  We’ll see what the future holds and hopefully I’ll be back at a stadium somewhere soon and continue to do what I love.”

It’s just not realistic to think that Howard Deneroff will be on the open market that long.  His resume and accomplishments at the highest level of sports broadcasting speak for themselves and it shouldn’t be too long before we find out about the next chapter of his storied career.

Media rights for live sports have never been more valuable. That isn’t news. You can read any undergrad level paper on the state of the media and that line will almost certainly be in there. 

Because that line of thinking is so prevalent, I have noticed many people framing this time in history as a bubble. Sports rights are no different than the housing market or dot com businesses. What goes up must come down and everyone wants to be able to say they saw the crash coming before it actually happened. They want economists to mention their names in the same breath as Michael Burry’s.

It’s time to knock that off. Recent news proves that sports are as valuable as ever to media companies. Trying to predict when that reality will change is a fool’s errand right now.

Both the NBA and NFL shared news recently that told the rest of us that things were just fine. They aren’t doing business as usual, because every time they cut a new deal, it’s for an amount and to do things that we’ve never seen before.

Speculation about the NBA’s TV future swirled for more than a year before we finally started getting some news. Many assumed that the league was facing some hard truths. Why weren’t ESPN and TNT bending over backwards to get new deals done? Surely, it meant Adam Silver had an inflated opinion of the NBA’s value when he entered negotiations.

It turns out that Silver, even if he wasn’t 100% correct about being able to land $70 billion for the league over the lifespan of its new deals, knew what he was doing. ESPN and TNT were never going to get a deal done quickly, because it behooved the NBA to let that exclusive negotiation window close.

Now, look at where things stand. ESPN got a new deal done, Amazon has come on board as a new partner, and there’s a bidding war for the NBA’s least valuable TV package. By the time we learn about the future of NBA League Pass and the In-Season Tournament, Silver might just be serving the rest of us crow pie as we add up the total value of all of these new deals.

Then there’s the NFL. Every time we think the league has zagged too far away from the zig its fans and media partners want, its media strategy pays off. The league is adding more streaming exclusives. Why? Just look at how the Wild Card Round game between the Chiefs and Dolphins performed on Peacock. In the streaming world, where everyone not named Netflix is struggling to maintain and grow marketshare, NFL games are priceless resources.

Actually, it should be pointed out that there’s one other streamer not struggling to keep its head above water – Amazon. Do you know why that is? I’ll give you one guess. It shouldn’t be that hard. Do you even know anyone that watched that Lord of the Rings show that cost the company nearly half a billion dollars to make?

It’s Thursday Night Football. I loved Fallout and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. The Boys is a franchise that will be generating content for years to come. None of them delivered an audience half the size of what a meaningless Week 8 game will each football season.

Speaking of Netflix, it appears that the NFL got the company famous for not wanting to do business in the live sports world to budge off that position. Even just one day of action is valuable enough for Netflix to tread in new waters.

Netflix preferred for years to be sports-adjacent as opposed to being in business with leagues and carrying live games. The company’s Drive to Survive and other documentary content was enough to satisfy its audience’s desire for sports content. The streamer had a presence in football, auto racing, golf, tennis and so much more without having to pay huge rights fees.

Then the WWE became available. Netflix saw the best fit for its philosophy. It would have made sense to stop there, but then the fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson was announced. Adding the NFL would be a logical next step.

Netflix waited and watched. It watched Apple botch a deal with the NFL. It watched the clunky roll out and performance of that company’s deal with the MLS. It watched the NFL, the Premier League and college football turn Peacock into a must-have for cord-cutting and cord-never sports fans. 

It could draw a blueprint, watch something similar play out in real time and then break out the eraser to make necessary changes. Netflix didn’t dive in. It waited until it saw a way it could be competitive in the game.

Even Major League Baseball is mining new territory for sports rights. A deal with Roku could open up a new world. When we talk about streaming deals for America’s four major leagues, we have largely kept the conversation to the major platforms. Could this be the start of Roku and other FAST channel providers making their presence felt in rights negotiations? If so, it would mean that the bubble on rights gets bigger, not smaller.

There will likely be a day when sports are not as valuable to broadcasters and streamers as they are right now. It’s an inevitable reality, but predicting it is nearly impossible. Every time we think the dollar amounts have become too high or the offering for said amounts have become to small, we quickly discover someone wants to pay.

I still believe that the value of personalities is largely artificially inflated. I can’t imagine being able to justify a huge raise for someone like Stephen A. Smith in the new television landscape. Maybe that is a bubble bursting that we can point to. For live games though? The more we try to look smart by predicting the beginning of the end, the more we are all proven foolish.

The topic of our sales meeting this week is trying new ways to get your job done. When is the last time you tried something new when it comes to your job in media sales? I mean with prospecting, getting meetings, selling or closing deals? When is the last time you tried doing it in a different manor than you always have?

Better yet, when was the last time you tried something bold, a way to stand out amongst your peers? We all know there is more media competition than ever before. So, how do you stand out?

I was at a conference once where the person speaking gave a great example of a salesperson who tried something new. This particular salesperson was stuck in neutral and needed a new way to get out there and meet with some new businesses. He felt like he had asked all of his current clients for referrals and that well had dried up.

The seller began to think about what a referral really is and came up with a great idea of how to use those referrals even if it wasn’t someone their client knew. Yes, ideally the referrals would come with a warm lead you can reach out to and say, ‘I have helped Mr. or Mrs. X with their business, and they said you would be someone who might be able to benefit from my services, so I wanted to reach out and schedule a time with you where I can learn more about what you do and how I might be able to help.”

With the warm lead out of the picture, this seller did something unique. He called a bunch of his clients and said he was going to come by one day that week, and he wanted them to think about why they like working with him and what it has done for them and their business.

As the week went on, he popped into each of their businesses and pulled out his cell phone. He started the recording and simply asked each person to say what they came up with.

What the salesperson ended up with was a handful of short videos he could now use for testimonials. As he walked into new businesses, he would use the videos to try and get meetings. His idea was, if you are a business owner, and another business owner tells you they are doing something that is working, wouldn’t you at least want to listen?

What this seller did was bold, and it was different. Rather than having his clients write the testimonial, he decided he wanted to stand out and do something he hadn’t seen anybody doing before. Now, not only did he have these whenever he needed them, he was also making a very unique introduction of himself to new prospects making him more memorable.

A seller who worked for me once asked if she could buy live endorsement commercials from one of our talent to promote her as a top sales rep. I turned her down for fear all of the salespeople would want to do it and it wouldn’t make any impact. The salesperson, however, would not take no as an answer. She asked her favorite host to record the ad anyway and even though it never aired on the station, she would send it to prospects with a ‘Message from (the host).’ Pretty smart thinking, I thought.

I knew someone once who used fortune cookies as a way to endear himself to prospects. He found a company that made fortune cookies where you could choose the messaging that went inside. He, of course, made the messages things about their marketing and what a meeting with him could do to change their ‘fortunes.’

Another person I worked with once tried to get through gatekeepers on the telephone by being honest about why he was calling, but offering something in return for why they should listen. He would start the call off with something like, ‘Hi there, I’m a salesperson calling and who doesn’t want to get bothered by a salesperson on a (day of the week)? But I am not just any salesperson, I am one who comes with a joke…’ and then he would proceed to tell them a joke. Annoying if you are sitting near him, but I tell you what, his calls were memorable and when he did get meetings, his conversations with the person who answered the phones were always about how they said he was different than anyone else who had ever called.

What’s your schtick? How do you stand out? What are you doing that is different than anyone else to get people’s attention or to keep people’s attention?

Know your audience and be careful not to come off as super annoying and desperate but rather fun and imaginative. We are in sales and as we all know we are generally just selling ourselves. So, put some thought into what makes you unique and different and what you bring to the table and find a creative way to spread that message. Remember, your skills and talents are most of the added value.