BSM Writers
Meet The Market Managers: Sarah Frazier, Audacy Houston
“It’s almost to the point where everybody can sell everything. I like that because what that means is the best sellers will win. The best marketers will win. The people that work hardest will win, and put me in that game any day.”

Published
2 years agoon

Audacy’s Sarah Frazier didn’t originally want to be here. Yes, she always wanted to work in the media in some aspect, but in college at the University of Kansas, Frazier thought she would be a broadcaster. Then, a very blunt professor named Tom Hedrick came into her life.
She was in a sports broadcasting class and Hedrick told her in no uncertain terms that she did not belong on a microphone. He thought Frazier should try sales if she wanted to work in the media business.
“It’s the best thing anybody ever did for me because I wasn’t good,” she told me. “And while I do love the reporting side and I do still love to fancy myself as a journalist, the truth is I’m much better on the business side. So he did me a favor.“

Fast forward to today and Sarah Frazier is entering her tenth year as market manager of Audacy’s Houston cluster. The city has a crowded sports radio landscape and she credits not only her sales team, but the energy that PD Armen Williams brings to the job for helping Sports Radio 610 stand out above the competition in town.
In this week’s Meet The Market Managers conversation, Sarah and I discuss a leader’s role in a crisis, what she would have done differently during the deepfreeze of two months ago, her relationship with the Houston Texans, and why seeing her PD dressed as Richard Simmons reaffirmed her faith in him.
Demetri Ravanos: Entercom recently rebranded to Audacy, and on our side of the business, it was done very well. Everybody knew what was coming and there were no hiccups. Just one day the brand new logo was revealed. But on the ground, what was that process like? Were there any challenges on the local level in terms of getting clients to understand these are the same people you’ve been dealing with all along?
Sarah Frazier: Well, first of all, our team did an amazing job. I think everybody who had worked behind the scenes for so long, I think that it was just so well put together on the back end. Then from the consumer customer facing side, I think everybody expected this. I mean, this is the natural evolution of it. We were so much more than radio.com.
When you look into the future and at all of the podcasts and everything that we’re doing, there’s just so much content. Radio.com just didn’t make sense. I think everybody immediately got it. The coolest thing for me was my 15 year old daughter, when the logo changed, she was like, “oh, hey mom, that’s really cool”. And all of a sudden what I did wasn’t outdated to her. It was now. And that, I think, is the epitome of everything that we’re trying to do.
DR: It’s interesting to hear you talk about the digital side and the idea of radio.com not fitting the future make up of the company. It can be perceived, certainly by people in the industry that I’ve talked to, that Entercom/Audacy is very much planting its flag in the sand that the emphasis moving forward is now on digital, and it’s moving away from broadcast radio. Does it feel that way to you or is there more to it?
SF: Well see, here’s the thing. I don’t think those two things are necessarily intertwined, I think we can play with the distribution for what we deem important. What I mean by that, it doesn’t matter how people are getting their content. It doesn’t matter to us. We’re going to be on those platforms.
What we do realize is that to make sure we’re everywhere, we have to be in the digital space, but that doesn’t make our over-the-air signals any less important. At least that’s what I believe. When you think about everybody that listens to us in Houston every day, most people are listening over the air. I really don’t think that’s ever going to go away. I’m passionate about free local press and I believe that is something that may even become more important as all of this diversification happens. You know you can trust us, and that’s what we’re finding. We’re seeing it in the research that people really trust local media and that’s becoming more and more important as we go.
DR: So as you look back on your whole time leading not just an entire building, but a sales staff as well, you’ve obviously seen digital products grow and grow in terms of their importance within the sales mix. I wonder, have you seen or are we past the point of those challenges impacting sellers? By that I mean, they understand better that they need to be skilled now at selling multimedia platforms not just radio?
SF: To your point, when we started, I was selling spots and maybe sometimes the live broadcast, right? And now, I couldn’t even tell you, Demetri, how many actual things we have to sell. I don’t think the question is, “do they understand they need to sell digital?”. I think the question is “how can we keep them up to speed on all of the different products, the specific uses of each one, and how to package that for their clients?”. When I sit down and try to think about a marketing campaign, which I still do, because I do love to make sure I’m doing the same thing as our sales people are doing so that I understand the challenges of it. But when I put together a campaign and I’m creating and thinking about what different tools I want to use in that media mix for the client, there’s so many that we have that it gets confusing for even me to remember all the things we have and what products do what. There’s just so many. I think that’s the biggest challenge.

I mean, there’s nothing that we can’t do. The level of data that we can get on on a target consumer is creepy. I mean, I could tell you right now who went for a run in my neighborhood and put a mobile message in front of them. Now, that is really trippy when you think about it.
DR: Right. That is a level of data mining that almost seems like it wasn’t meant for radio and television. Who could have foreseen that coming as part of our business?
SF: Yeah. It’s almost to the point where everybody can sell everything. I like that because what that means is the best sellers will win. The best marketers will win. The people that work hardest will win, and put me in that game any day.
DR: So it’s interesting you say that everyone can sell everything because that goes right to a note that I wrote down for one of these interviews a while back, but I’ve just never used. So I’ll ask you, because there is more and more every day that we can sell, do you see a place where your cluster or the industry as a whole can create new revenue? Are there potential products that we just haven’t tapped into yet?
SF: Well sure, I mean, we get something new all the time. The new stuff that we’re doing in the Amazon marketplace and how we can put clients products in that space, I don’t even quite understand that yet. One thing that I’m starting to do because we have so many products is ask myself some questions. What are the right ones that work for clients the best? What are the ones where we can really be competitive? Because I’m not going to use my credibility and sell a client something if that’s not the best thing that we do or that’s not the best fit for them. There’s enough for us to sell and find our way with among the things that we do best. That’s almost always rooted in the core of radio advertising. I mean, that’s our giant megaphone.
But yeah, is something coming down the pike? I’m sure. It’ll probably be here tomorrow.
DR: I often wonder if it’s going to be something that feels like, “Well, Jesus, we thought of that like forever ago.” Like if it becomes something such as putting stickers on local garbage cans. At this point it feels like we’re so far advanced in terms of what we can sell that the next big thing is something we are going to feel so dumb for not having thought of was still an option.
SF: Well, we do forget stuff like that. One thing that’s that’s funny and I’ve been thinking a lot about is that we for so long would just give away tickets over the air, and how we got to thinking that was kind of trite and old. We wondered, ‘how could we reinvent that’? And then here we are getting ready to launch into a bacchanalia of events and people going out, and the one thing they’re going to want more than anything are tickets to events. So yeah, what goes around comes around.
DR: Let’s talk about that for a minute. Texas and Florida have been operating differently, maybe a little more loosely during the pandemic than other states. Now we’re at this point though where nationwide everyone is opening up more and more a little each week. Is there a threshold you are waiting for before you guys are back at the point where live events come back into the sales mix?
SF: I am working through this as we speak. We have been working with Karbach, it’s a brewery here in town. They have this great outdoor space and one of their cornerstones is live music. That’s true for one of our country stations too, 100.3 The Bull. So we’ve been working together on how we can safely get people back out. And we’re going to start in May. We’re going to go on the air a week from yesterday with giveaways for a pod of either four or six tickets. We’re still looking at how they can safely do it the best, but under a pod for you and your friends. And then it’s going to start. We’re going to have a spring concert series. And I think the passion surrounding that is going to be off the charts.
DR: So from the sales standpoint, let’s move giving tickets away to listeners to its own category. You’ve got this opportunity, that is coming really soon, to hand out tickets to a game or to a concert to your most loyal clients again. What do you think that’s going to bring back that you’ve been missing for the past year?
SF: Our cornerstone is definitely the Texans, and I think for our clients, I foresee this Texans season as being a reunion of sorts. There are clients that we have gone through this together with. It’s almost like going to war with somebody. How is your business doing? What can we do to help? How is ours doing?

It just went crazy this time last year, and so our relationships are a lot deeper with those people. I can’t wait to see so many of those people. Our Texans games have always been the time where I get to see our key clients on a bi-weekly basis in the fall. I think that’s going to take on a whole new meaning this year, as I haven’t seen many of them in a long time instead of over Zoom. I just think the relationships that we’ve forged through this period, it’s different than anything I’ve ever experience before. I know these people. I know their families. I know if they had Covid. I know if their kid had to move their wedding three times. I mean, I know so much more about our clients, and I thought I knew him well before.
DR: Speaking of bringing everyone together to rally for the best interest of everyone. Texas just went through a major winter storm. We aren’t used to seeing a deep freeze like that in your state. What were the directives like from you to your programmers at that time in finding the balance of keeping your own people safe, but at the same time, fulfilling your obligation as local broadcasters to keep the community informed during important moments?
SF: Yeah, this one was really tough for me. I’m going to Monday morning quarterback myself in a not so pleasant light. I think that this one just, it completely blew our mind. I’m prepared for a hurricane. I’m prepared for tropical storms. I’m prepared for a zombie apocalypse. I was not prepared for a freeze in Houston, Texas. I have my family here. My parents moved down a few years ago to live two streets away from me, so I have elderly parents. Then we have all of these people and I go immediately into taking care of the human mode.
It was hard to communicate. Our phones were down. I was completely out of communication for a full day, which I have never been before. During Harvey, I got to the studios and I lived there. That’s eventually what happened in this situation, but I was a day late because I couldn’t go anywhere and I was trying to take care of family and and my parents.
The radio became really important because it was like what you talked about before, we pulled out our hurricane radios and cranked them up. People all over the city were in their cars charging phones. We have all of this crazy Texans news going on. So, on the FMs we are talking about the deep freeze, but what we also were hearing from the listeners during this point was. ” just keep the music coming, because it’s all we’ve got.” It was a real struggle. What content do you put on? Do you go into all news and weather or do you keep trying to entertain? What I decided in that minute was that the best thing for us was to keep doing what we’re doing. We kept trying to entertain on the FMs and talk sports on the AM, and still mention it occasionally so listeners know we’re aware of what’s going on. But it wasn’t something that was our focus.
I think in retrospect, I would have taken one of our sticks and went to news and traffic and weather consistently, maybe even just simulcasting our TV partner, just so people had somewhere on the dial to turn for it. A lot of people felt out of the loop and were desperately wanting that information. I wish I would have put one channel dedicated to it. I think I made a mistake there and I won’t make that mistake again.
It’s really hard to know sometimes. I can tell you that I hope we don’t have another ice storm. Then I won’t have to worry about that. But I’m sure there’s going to be a hurricane this year because, I mean, why wouldn’t there be? So we’ll be ready for that.
DR: Let’s go back to the Texans. You mentioned they’re your major play-by-play partner. Obviously, you want to do all you can to keep a good relationship with the team. If they win, more people listen, more clients buy ad time, everyone wins. But things change frequently in sports, and your audience is smart. With all of the news going on around the GM search and Deshaun Watson situation, I would guess there are some negative feelings among even the most diehard fans right now. How do you and Armen Williams discuss where the line is in terms of allowing talent and the audience to be realistic, frustrated, and critical versus worrying about might create friction with your partner?
SF: I think this is probably one of the most underestimated or underrated parts of the job for me, managing that play-by-play relationship and how delicate it is. When I got here in 2009, the team absolutely hated us. They wanted out. They weren’t going to sign the contract. They told us that. And it has been a work in progress ever since.

It’s really hard in my chair because I sit between the listeners who think that we’re being homers and our on air team who wants to go full bore toward whatever and be authentic. And they should be. I want them to be! But they get mad because, the perception is that they’re sometimes being homers when the perception from the team side is that we’re way too hard on them. It is a real balance between those two things.
I think it just comes down to the relationship with the team. I was really thankful that I built a strong relationship with the president of the team, Jamey Rootes, and I was very thankful that they named Greg Grissom his successor. Those were relationships that I had worked on for a long time and there’s a lot of trust there. We can call each other and immediately say, “hey, today is going to be a tough day”. We’ve found a really good balance, which is an understanding that it’s not always going to be great, but it can’t be personal. There’s a big line between “this is terrible” or “he’s an idiot”. That’s a pretty clear line and that’s what we try to walk. Let’s talk about things and be objective and fair, but let’s not get personal.
DR: That relationship being one where you feel comfortable enough to pick up a phone and call the office and say, “hey, it’s going to be a tough day”, I would guess eliminates the opposite direction of them calling you at the end of the day and saying, “what the hell was that?”.
SF: Oh, don’t get it twisted, it happens. It is inevitably on a day that I’m not listening. So we have five seasons. There’s five days in a week. I try to listen to a different station every day, which means that four days out of the week, I’m not listening to sports. If I see that call come up, it’s “Oh, God. What is it?” because I don’t know. I’m not prepared.
Armen has been really great. He will text me and say, “The twenty second person just accused DeShaun. Heads up. This just happened”. And so that’s been helpful in making sure I know what’s going on and there’s no blindsides coming.
DR: Houston as a sports radio market I’ve always found interesting because if you count your CBS sports affiliated station, and David Gow’s SportsMap brand, we’re talking about five stations in the format in your market. That means all of those stations are offering sports content and battling for a share of the ratings which isn’t as large as some other places. So for you, what does major success look like for 610? Whether you’re talking about it right now under Armen or previously under Ryan McCredden, what is something that you believe someone coming in to lead the station has to understand in order to compete in Houston?
SF: That’s a really tough question. I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the sports landscape. I spend a lot of time thinking about the Houston landscape, because to me, our competitors are The Buzz (iHeart’s Alternative station in the market), and The Eagle (Cox’s Classic rock station in the market). I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about KBME, because their position is so different from us. They’re very focused on the Astros and Rockets, and quite frankly, I think our guys just put on better programing. Of course I do, right? I’m a tad biased.
When I think about the program director, I think it’s about telling a great story. I mean understanding how to keep the listener interested, telling them what they need to know, having a little bit of fun with it. Any station, whether it’s FM or AM, tends to take on a little of the personality of the program director. Armen’s got a terrific personality. He’s fun to be around. He’s energizing. He’s innovative. He comes up with great ideas. He’s passionate. He pushes me and that’s what I like. I like a partner who’s going to be like “this has to happen if we’re going to win” and he is constantly fighting and thinking.
That’s what I think I look for. I want somebody who’s going to want to compete and want to win, and that’s going to push me to do that and not do things the same way. I think that’s what comes across on the air. I think that’s why we’ve grown so much under Armen’s leadership because he’s relentless. He’s got a ton of energy. Holy God!
DR: Have you ever seen the photo of him from college painted head to toe in red and black?
SF: Oh, you bet I have. Well, you know, it’s that passion. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. That! !t’s a lot of fun. I think he’s won our Halloween costume contest twice. He is super competitive. I need to get you a picture of him as Richard Simmons.
DR: Please do send me the picture just so I can text it to him in the middle of the night to let him know that I do have it and it could go up on the site at any moment.
SF: You got it!
DR: So in recent years, Audacy and Entercom have made a real commitment to put women in market leadership positions, even in some of the biggest markets that they own. And it’s really interesting when this happens in a cluster that oversees a sports station, because Jason and I talk all the time about the lack of females in programming roles. If you look across the country, there are a few women in programming positions at national networks, but on the local level I can only think of Amanda Brown in Los Angeles who has that position. In your opinion, is there anything a company whether it’s Audacy or someone else, can do to change that, or is it a matter of starting even lower than that and developing the interest in being in this field and building those women up?
SF: We have a problem with female program directors, period. That’s on the music side and sports side. It’s going to take people developing that talent. I’m going through it right now. I would love to hire a woman, but there’s not one that is available for another position that I have that is ready and I don’t have a bench spot. And that is the problem. We’re so thin on the programing side, that there’s not much room for a bench. I think we’re trying to find those spots.
We’ve got a great APD on Mega in Liz, who is learning the ropes right now, and we’ve just promoted Mo to APD for 100.3 The Bull so that she can learn those ropes. I don’t know what’s being done everywhere else. Personally, I’m really trying to find those spaces. In sports, I think it’s really hard. We haven’t even had anyone on the air that would go into that role. So I think we’re going to have to really work toward it. But it’s tough.
To your question, there’s women overseeing clusters in a lot of our markets, and hats off to David Field, Susan Larkin, and Weezie Kramer, because they made a focused effort on making sure that the market manager position was much more equitable. I spent my first year at CBS being one of three female market managers. It was too few. It wasn’t right. Putting women in leadership positions like this, we will figure out how to fix that problem. But you’re right, it’s a problem and it does need to be fixed.
DR: I know there is no right answer to this question. I’m just genuinely curious how you approach it. I want to talk about the part of your job that involves managing up. What is your process or approach when you have to discuss bad news or maybe ask for a budget increase? In those conversations, is there a consistent thing you find yourself feeling you need to do or know before you’re ready to have that talk?
SF: I would say I’m like a lot of women in the fact that I really lean on evidence based data. I look at the numbers consistently and I know my numbers and I understand what’s causing things and I get data to support me because numbers don’t lie.
I guess the question really is, “when am I not managing up?”, because my job is to manage up and to manage down. It’s that critical link between corporate and the market. Without somebody constantly following information both ways, I think it’s really easy for a market to feel isolated, and for corporate to not know what’s going on in that market.

My relationship with Brian Purdy, it’s very unusual. I’ve been working with him for 19 years. There isn’t anything I can say that I think would change his opinion on who I am as a human being. He knows who I am. So I can be angry. I can be frustrated. I can be supremely candid. And it’s OK. I’m real lucky to have that relationship with him, and I understand that. It does give me the opportunity to say some things that some of my colleagues can’t. So often things will come through me up through Brian, that maybe it’s not safe for that message to be sent somewhere else.
Brian probably hates that. I love it because people can reach out to me and say, hey, will you send this message. You bet I will.
Then I have to sell my people up too, because everybody here does a terrific job and it’s really important for corporate to know who is doing what. I’ve been here long enough that I don’t need that credit. The credit can all go to them and I think it’s great to be able to shine a light on a great director of sales in Elena or a great programmer in Armen. I could talk about them all day. It’s the best. It’s the best group of people, and I’m just so lucky to work with them.

Demetri Ravanos is the Assistant Content Director for Barrett Sports Media. He hosts the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas. Previous stops include WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC. You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos and reach him by email at [email protected].
BSM Writers
Ian Eagle Showed Every Broadcaster the Value of Knowing Pop Culture
“Clearly it pays to be a Swiftie.”

Published
22 hours agoon
September 21, 2023By
Andy Masur
The internet was abuzz last Sunday when CBS NFL play-by-play guy Ian Eagle dropped a tremendous pop culture reference on air. During the Kansas City/Jacksonville game, Travis Kelce of the Chiefs caught a touchdown pass like he normally does. You’ve probably heard by now that Kelce and Taylor Swift have been linked romantically and Eagle took full advantage after calling the touchdown.
“Kelce finds a blank space for the score,” Eagle said referencing the song “Blank Space” from Swift’s 2014 album 1989.
A timely reference in the sense that the possible relationship is fresh in people’s minds and Swift has been top of mind recently with her ERAS Tour. It was a mention of something that many, many people would understand. Oh, and Kelce catches a lot of touchdown passes too.
“Clearly it pays to be a Swiftie.” Eagle told me via email. “My phone blew up after the Kelce touchdown grab, and the last thing I wanted to be was the ‘Anti-Hero.’” clearly Eagle can’t help himself.
I asked Eagle if that was something he specifically prepared for that moment?
“After all of the Swift/Kelce gossip last week, I knew going into the Chiefs/Jaguars game antennas were up.” Eagle said. “I don’t plan on anything specific but I do come prepared if situations arise, and when Patrick Mahomes hit his TE in the endzone it felt like an opportunity to tag the call.”
For those that watch Eagle on a regular basis, be it on a basketball or football telecast, this isn’t something new.
“I’ve always tried to sprinkle in some pop culture references when appropriate and have learned to trust my instincts. Of course, you run the risk of alienating a segment of your audience if you go the esoteric route, but this felt like the right line and the right time.” said Eagle.
Every play-by-play announcer tries them, to varying degrees of success. If it’s a good reference, the internet will explode. Conversely if it is not, you guessed it, the internet will also explode. The professionals know when the time is right and clearly Eagle was spot on.
“When I heard from my sister (who is not a big sports fan) I realized it had crossed over into the mainstream, a reminder that you never really know what’s going to resonate with viewers,” he said. “At this particular moment you can’t go wrong with Taylor Swift.”
That is very true. So, when should you try it and when shouldn’t you “go for it?” It’s not a cut and dry case. I like it when I hear a really good reference,. There is always room in a broadcast for a little levity, but don’t let the comedy overrun your broadcast. Pick and choose the moments carefully.
It’s also different when you’re broadcasting a game than it is during say, a television or radio sportscast. There is no script when it comes to play-by-play.
I’ve tried it in both roles. In 2015, I was doing television games for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Before the game the crew and I were talking about the movie, The Big Lebowski, a cult classic.
They dared me to work in as many lines of the movie as I could in the broadcast. I thought, “yeah, this is going to be easy.” It really wasn’t, I worked in 8 lines and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure how many landed.

It’s hard to really know. The crew laughing in your headset is not a true indication, because they were in on it. Viewer feedback was non-existent. Would I try that again? Probably not.
Every year for the last 4, on Oscar Sunday, I do an “Oscars themed” sportscast at 11am. I work in the titles of all the movies up for Best Picture into the framework of my sports. For example:
- “The Madness of March continues today with more automatic bids going out with EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE on the line to get to the NCAA Tournament.”
- “Cubs faced the Dodgers and beat them 5-2…the win helped Chicago sports fans avoid a TRIANGLE OF SADNESS after the Hawks and White Sox lost their games.”
I do this ONCE a year and the feedback from listeners has been great. It’s a nice challenge and change of pace for me. It entertains the audience as well. It’s current references tied to an event that is watched by many, many people.
Eagle, in his CBS broadcast, didn’t force the reference in there. He picked a spot, knew the relevance and went for it. That’s another key. Make sure the reference fits the moment. Don’t just go using pop culture just to use it. We’ve talked a lot about that in previous columns, regarding other things as well. Make sure the reference isn’t coming at a critical time in the game.
Some broadcasters make pop culture part of their play-by-play calls. Randy Moller did it with the Florida Panthers several years ago. He spent 8 seasons with the Panthers and would yell out references to movies and television shows on some goal calls.
- “Mommmmm! The meatloaf! Panthers with a power play goal they get a 1-0 lead!”
- “Another shot by Moore! He shoots he scores! Time to make the donuts!”
Moller is now the team’s television analyst, but he would delight fans with those radio calls. But Moller was also careful. He wouldn’t fire off a Wedding Crashers line on every goal. No, the pop culture references were uttered after a goal when the Panthers were out of a game. Makes sense.
Don’t overload a broadcast with the things not everyone in your audience will understand or appreciate. Don’t overload the broadcast if it overshadows the game you’re broadcasting.
I mentioned earlier about it being a little easier to work in movie lines, television show lines and song lyrics into a scripted sportscast on radio or television. Some local tv anchors have had ‘theme’ nights over the years. Where they try to work in references to a movie or a show, in the flow of that day’s sports news. In scouring the internet, there was one example that I had forgotten about but is worth remembering.
In 2016, then Louisville sports anchor Adam Lefkoe (now of TNT) worked in 41 “Seinfeld” classic lines in a 5-minute sportscast. He used Twitter to crowd source the lines and he wove them in as easily as George double-dipped his chip. It worked. It was funny and made sense even within the framework of the cast. It was a bunch of ‘mainstream’ mentions. “Seinfeld” was one of the most popular sitcoms of all-time. Pretty much everybody, young, old and in between saw the show in first run or reruns. All of the references landed because it was familiar and known, not stuff buried in a ‘cult classic’ that only a handful of people would understand.
Comic references can be a great thing, but as I’ve pointed out, in the wrong hands, can flop in a big way. You have to know your audience. You have to make sure the reference is clear and known by a large amount of people, otherwise it’s useless. Don’t drop lines to amuse yourself or your crew, the game is not there for only your entertainment. Make sure the viewers will find it funny too. There is room in a sports broadcast for comedy. Just don’t go overboard. Have a feel for the game and the situation. Understand your audience as well. If comedy is your thing, remember just like in stand-up, timing is everything.

Andy Masur is a columnist for BSM and works for WGN Radio as an anchor and play-by-play announcer. He also teaches broadcasting at the Illinois Media School. During his career he has called games for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox. He can be found on Twitter @Andy_Masur1 or you can reach him by email at [email protected].
BSM Writers
Meet the Podcasters – Mike Golic, DraftKings
“I’m sixty years old, I’ve seen the change, but in all honesty, to me, you turn the microphone on and I’m just doing a show.”

Published
2 days agoon
September 20, 2023
You won’t find Mike Golic on the radio anymore. That may be a little hard to believe for some of us. He was one of the constants of ESPN Radio through so many different eras and iterations of the lineup.
He is still doing a morning show though. Gojo & Golic features himself and his son talking about life and sports. It airs live on DraftKings Network and is distributed digitally each morning.
The new platform means Golic had to learn some new tricks. It also means that some of what he was doing all along worked well enough that someone wanted to pay him to keep doing it as the sports media industry changed.
The key to his success has been recognizing which mindset is the right one for each situation.
Demetri Ravanos: In the podcast world, we talk a lot about the power of niches, right? It’s a crowded space. Everybody has a podcast, so you’ve got to find your way in. But you and your son are doing a big, broad show. So what efforts are you guys making to make sure you stand out in that crowded field?
Mike Golic: I don’t know if we particularly sit there and say ‘we need to do something to stand out.’ Let’s be honest. When I was on the radio years ago, there wasn’t a lot going on in talk radio, and then as we went on, a lot more, different talk radio came out. Now, as you just mentioned, we’ve got podcasts and streaming and every which way you can you can get shows out there. The way I’ve always done it is I’m always just doing it like a show. The microphone hasn’t changed in front of me. The show Mike and I did when we were at ESPN, it’s and the way Mike does the show when he was doing it on his own and the way I do a show that hasn’t changed. We’re not reinventing the wheel.
I know when new shows come out, they say ‘we’re going to do this’ or ‘we’re going to do that.’ We’re just doing the show. We’re just doing the show that we’ve done and it’s getting distributed in different ways now. To me, that’s the only difference. It’s not changing the way I do a show.
I was used to 23 years of 6-10 doing morning radio in Phoenix before I got to ESPN. Mic goes on at six and mic goes off at ten. Now, Mike and I are back. Our show is a podcast, but it’s also live from 8 to 10 Eastern every morning on Samsung TV Plus and DraftKings’ YouTube, DraftKings Network, and it’s going to now start to be broader, I think, starting next week with more outlets. So we’re back to doing it’s kind of a live show, but obviously, it still gets turned into a podcast.
DR: You know, you, you do bring up something though, that I wonder about because you were in radio for a long, long time, local before national. A lot of us that came from a more traditional media world, it took a while to see that podcasting or digital media was this viable space. Maybe it is less glamorous, but the ability to find an audience is just as strong. Do you remember the moment that you started to realize that like, “Hey, this digital thing isn’t the future. It is right now”?
MG: Oh, yeah. Not only from the digital side but doing Mike and Mike all of a sudden getting into Twitter and getting instant feedback. You start talking about a topic on air and you get instant feedback on Twitter.
For me, I keep goofing around and saying it. You know, I’m sixty years old, I’ve seen the change, but in all honesty, to me, you turn the microphone on and I’m just doing a show. I’m not when I go on to do Gojo & Golic, when I go on God Bless Football with Stu and Billy and Mikey, and when I go on with Golic and Smetty for DraftKings, I’m just doing what I did since I started doing shows. It’s just different time segments for me. Mike (Jr.) Is probably better to talk to about this than me. I and I’m probably not giving you great stuff of what you want, but I don’t really view it differently. I still a mike goes on. I’m doing a show and then the show ends.
Probably one of the biggest differences for me is, I did a four-hour show. I think the average listener was like 22 minutes in the car or they were at home getting ready, watching on TV. Then they jumped in the car to listen on radio was 22 minutes. So we would have to repeat the headlines. Here, on streaming or podcasts, you don’t really do that. You don’t really repeat the lines and keep re-introducing the guests. So there are some technical differences in doing podcasts and the live streaming now as opposed to the radio show, but those are stuff you just kind of pick up quick.
DR: Do you think not having to re-set the headlines is the strength of digital content for the audience? Particularly with the NFL, there is such an appetite for content out there that there has to be things that the digital space can do that traditional media cannot. I wonder if it is that ability to say over the course of 2 hours, we aren’t going to repeat ourselves. We’re going to have a two-hour discussion of this one topic.
MG: That’s probably the biggest thing out there. When you go from a headline where we talk about Aaron Rodgers getting hurt – we talked about it once off the top and we may have sprinkled it in there in a different way on some other parts of the show, but it’s not completely resetting the whole Aaron Rodgers story at the top of an hour and then the top of the next hour, starting again with the whole Aaron Rodgers story. We don’t do that. That is definitely a big difference of how people take this in. I always I still sit there and wonder, “Should we be hit the Aaron Rodgers injury again?” or whatever the big story is.
Our show is two one-hour podcasts. You know it’s not a two-hour podcast. So it’s all split up differently. Minds a lot smarter and more current than mine know the best ways of how to divvy up the conversation. That’s why I do lean heavily on Mike (Jr.) as far as kind of the make up and way we run his show. That’s something that has definitely changed over time.
Content is still content. We’re going to talk about we’re going to give our opinions, we’re going to take people inside. We’re going to talk about things going on. Now it’s just how it gets dispersed has changed from my years in radio.
DR: Well, let’s talk about that content, because you are working under the DraftKings heading and the goal of any show is to be a compelling personality that people want to come back to over and over again, right? But being attached to a sportsbook, how much of Gojo & Golic feels like just the two of you talking versus having to come in with an education on things that may move the line in a game one way or the other? Not hardcore betting talk, but at least you can’t get that stuff wrong.
MG: Basically, how we’ve approached this because yeah, that was a thought process when I signed. I told them, “Listen, I don’t know the in-depth parts of gambling” and they said, “We don’t care. We want to become a sports media outlet as well.” They have vision and others who could talk.
I know how to talk lines. I can give my opinion on whether I think one team’s going to beat another team by five and a half points or score over 50. I mean, that’s that’s been around forever. But anything more in-depth than that we’re not expected to do that.
I think that’s the biggest thing in getting that out with DraftKings is, yes, it’s a sportsbook like FanDuel, but DraftKings is also trying to get in the sports media market as well and eventually have a 24-hour network that will have shows like Mike and I and more traditional gambling shows as well that will come from VSiN, where they’re stationed in Vegas or from DraftKings in Boston. In all honesty, that’s just about repetition and just letting people know that our show is out there every day and that every day, this is a sports show just like we did together at ESPN. That’s what it is.
Way back in the day we just picked games, Greeny and I would simply answer who was going to win or lose. We didn’t really do the line. It was almost like gambling, it was coded amongst the old-time play-by-play guys. “There’s a reason to keep watching this game late in the fourth quarter” and everybody knew what they were talking about. Now it’s all out in the open.
It’s kind of like NIL. You took the bag of money under the table and you put it on top of the table. The NFL finally learned how much money you can make in gambling. It’s exploded becoming legal in state after state after state now. So that’s one of the things Mike and I we’re real happy with DraftKings is they want it to obviously be a big part of the market in that. But also they don’t want to just be that. They want to be where sports fans are. Sports fans do gamble, but sports fans like sports talk and they like sports stories, so why not try and give them both? So that gave DraftKings the idea to say. “Just do a sports show! If every now and then you have a gambling segment, we’ll get you a guest to talk about that, to dive in deep to it!.” Just like, back in the day, you’d have to get a guest to dive into fantasy football to break it down. We definitely are not a gambling show. It’s just going to be a matter of getting that out of the minds of people that just will just naturally think, “Oh, if it’s DraftKings, it’s got to be a gambling show.”
DR: You were part of one of the shows, maybe the show that pioneered putting radio on television. Now we’re in a world where, in the digital media space, having video is almost a necessity for a podcast to really reach its maximum audience. Are you, even this many years later, still surprised that people want to watch audio on TV or the Internet?
MG: Oh, without a doubt. We learned that when we started over on ESPN News and ESPN2. Greeny and I, a couple of years into the show, it was different. Now it’s not different anymore. It’s the norm. You have to do it. Nobody just wants audio. They want something to look at and then it becomes “what can you put with it? What graphics, what video, what pictures can you put with it to make it entertaining?”
The biggest thing we wanted to do, and I still think it kind of needed to be that way, when we were going from radio to TV, I personally had NFL Tonight, I was like, “Oh my God, You know, every studio, TV show at ESPN, you had to put on a tie.” When they said, your radio show is going on TV. I’m like, “Oh God, do I got to put on a coat and tie?” And they were like, “No, this is a radio show on TV. So treat it like that.”
I was happy about that. It’s a little more loosey-goosey. It’s not the traditional studio show where a host comes to you and you have 45 seconds to make your one-shot point to the camera. This is free flowing conversation that just had video around it.
That’s the way I’ll always look at it, that we are still telling stories, giving opinions. It’s still a talk show, but with video around it, but don’t turn it into a segmented type of a TV show where you talk then I talk. The best show is a conversation, even studio shows. Make it a conversation. Bring people into your conversation. That’s never going to change.
DR: You guys had a great moment of that I thought. It might have been earlier this week where you and Junior were arguing about whether or not you had the right to claim a shirt he left at your house as your own. I thought that was a very relatable moment.
MG: And that’s never going to change, you know? Like I said, I still treat it like radio. I have always, always said, especially in the morning, you’re getting people that are that are on their way to work however they’re digesting. It could be at work, could be at home getting ready to go to work. My thought has always been take them somewhere they can’t go. The mind of an athlete on the field, of an athlete in the locker room, of an athlete in any sport, and make them laugh a little bit, make them smile a little bit, or talk about something that’s relatable to them. You know, taking shirts or taking clothes or food or things like that. That has not changed since day one.
All my gigs have basically been in the morning since I started doing this. People are starting their day. Let them smile or laugh about something, Don’t be blue. I never cross that R-rated line because I know people are driving their kids to work. That’s still one of the greatest responses I got over the years. A guy would say, “Me and my dad or me and my mom were with you on the way to school. We didn’t have to turn the station.” That doesn’t change. The idea of what you’re going to do doesn’t change. Entertain people, give them information, make them smile a little bit. It’s just the way they’re delivered may change a bit.
DR: So I want to wrap up with you on a question about your podcasting history in general, because the Golic family has been really quick to embrace the format, even back at ESPN when you guys were doing your family show. I wonder how you look back at that because from the outside, it was a very interesting thing. Here were two guys, you and Junior, that I know from this network that I watch all the time talking about sports, but you found this weird way to cross podcasting with reality TV in a way that I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone else do on a grand scale even since.
MG: That and the Sorry In Advance podcast, our family podcast, was all my wife’s idea. We’re a very close family anyway, but it was kind of a fun thing to do every couple of weeks to actually all be together just to talk about life. You get the stories of my daughter-in-law, Jenny, thinking rotating tires, is just putting the car on a jack and spinning the tires or, other stories that just kind of kind of make you laugh but are relatable. It’s not talking down to anybody. We had fun doing that. It just got hard. My daughter is married. She’s pregnant. Her husband, who used to play in the NFL, was in med school. Jake and Jenny are running two businesses and they now have a baby. It’s just it’s tough to get everybody together again. We ran into issues doing that.
I would love to have some help from somebody on how to go about the business part of it, because this was truly from scratch, and doing it on our own. We started to get very little help toward the end of it. It would really be a lot of fun if we had backing in this and a little more professionalism around us because God knows we’re not professional in helping and guiding us to this and because we’d like to keep doing it.
To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at [email protected] or 513-702-5072.

Demetri Ravanos is the Assistant Content Director for Barrett Sports Media. He hosts the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas. Previous stops include WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC. You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos and reach him by email at [email protected].
BSM Writers
Is ESPN New York Giving Up or Getting Stronger?
I go back to the same question: Is giving up your FM signal a waving-the-white-flag moment, or is it putting your resources elsewhere?

Published
2 days agoon
September 20, 2023
A massive sports radio story dropped on Tuesday. 98.7 ESPN New York is dropping the 98.7 next year.
It seems like curious timing, no? At a time when AM radio is fighting for its life, it’s rare for a station to drop its FM signal instead of its AM.
On the surface, to be frank, it appears to be a cheapskate move. Good Karma Brands making a decision to pocket a reported $12.5 million every year to not have an FM signal sounds like half-assing a radio station in the nation’s largest market.
But then, when you look at the decision through a different prism, I keep going back to the same question: Is giving up your FM signal a waving-the-white-flag moment, or is it putting your resources elsewhere?
If the 98.7 ESPN New York actually does put those resources elsewhere, then yes, it makes sense. If the move becomes something other than just a way to pocket a couple million bucks each year, then I’m all for it. Investing in more local talent, bigger on-air promotions, stronger play-by-play rights, or better video channels/equipment all make sense with newfound millions in the budget. But I’m skeptical that it isn’t simply a cost-saving measure.
However, the reasoning put forth does make sense. The station claims more than half of its audience doesn’t listen on the 98.7 FM signal. That, in and of itself, should be reason enough to at least examine what you’re doing as a company.
I’ve long been a proponent that sports radio has long needed a digital revolution. I also strongly believe in recognizing that in today’s media landscape, you need to put your content on as many distribution channels as possible. AM/FM Radio, websites, mobile apps, social media, Twitch/Rumble/YouTube/linear or cable television, are all must-have outlets in 2023. I just never imagined that FM radio would be the first one to go.
Obviously, Good Karma Brands believes it can make this work. The company operates stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland strictly on the AM band and digital platforms. And in an ever-increasing on-demand world, maybe making your content primarily available through digital channels is a smart bet.
I just can’t help but wonder if it isn’t a decision five years too early. There are still millions of listeners in the New York market that utilize FM radio. That number isn’t likely to experience a steep decline in the coming years. But AM radio will, in my opinion.
The station is likely to lose or see significant alterations to its play-by-play rights with the New York Knicks and New York Rangers. Who knows what will happen to the rights of the New York Jets? One could imagine that if those franchises wanted to be on AM radio, they would go with one of the many other, more widely listened to, options in the market like 880 WCBS, 1010 WINS, 77 WABC, or 710 WOR.
Make no mistake about it, the move is a gamble. And it feels like a gamble with no middle ground. Either this move works wonders and Good Karma Brands ends up looking like radio visionaries, or they’re making a decision that will ultimately lead to killing a strong brand. There’s no in-between. Let’s see how it plays out. I’ll be watching. Closely.

Garrett Searight is the Editor of Barrett Sports Media and Barrett News Media. He previously was the Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH. He is also a play-by-play announcer for TV and Radio broadcasts in Western Ohio. Reach him at [email protected].