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Sports Talk Host Should Not Discuss Non-sports Topics
- Thread starter BruceNYC
- Start date
What happens when a star athlete drags the pundits into politics. We seen this in the past year with Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving in the past month. Sometimes sports pundits have no choice but to go there. Then again it's a case of personal talk and sports talk combined to keep the listeners interested.
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Kyrie Irving addresses controversial posts, defends right to share | NBA.com
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What do you think sports talk hosts talked about in March 2020 when there was no sports going on? Sometimes sports talk becomes "guy talk". If there's not a game this week, or you live in a place that doesn't have a major college or pro team, that happens.
Somewhat related. Scott Van Pelt & Joe Buck got into a non sports discussion after Monday Night Football. Joe was miffed that most of Scott's questions were directed at Troy Aikman.
Sports talk is really guy talk. Remember, WFAN achieved its best ratings in NYC with Imus in the morning, not pure sports.
Sports radio needs "guy talk" diversions -- be they related to relationships, food and drink, pop culture or (yuck) politics -- to keep its programs from becoming repetitive.
While it may seem that hosts on major market sports stations have an infinite number of topics to talk about every day, the reality is that once the "on air" light goes on and the phone lines are open, the listeners only want to talk about a couple of things: a particularly exciting or sucky game played by one of the local teams the night before, or speculation on which players one of the local teams should sign, draft or trade in order to suck less and excite more. (This also includes discussion -- shouted, preferably -- of which coach or general manager must be fired as soon as possible.) This can get boring in a hurry, with the hosts and callers rehashing the same complaints, invective and imagined solutions for hour after hour. Conversation could always be directed toward another local team's previous game, but the listeners have already shown they don't care as much about that. So much for that strategy. Sidetracking the conversation to pizza or bad dates or show-biz beefs might not be what some listeners want, but make it funny and limit it to one segment and chances are the listeners will stay tuned and be in the mood for more sports talk -- even further discussion of potential trades and firings -- after the commercial break.
I was a big fan of Tony Kornheiser's show back in the day. The main topic was always sports-related, but Tony and his producer knew just when and how to keep monotony at bay and it made for great talk radio, IMO, that always returned to sports.
While it may seem that hosts on major market sports stations have an infinite number of topics to talk about every day, the reality is that once the "on air" light goes on and the phone lines are open, the listeners only want to talk about a couple of things: a particularly exciting or sucky game played by one of the local teams the night before, or speculation on which players one of the local teams should sign, draft or trade in order to suck less and excite more. (This also includes discussion -- shouted, preferably -- of which coach or general manager must be fired as soon as possible.) This can get boring in a hurry, with the hosts and callers rehashing the same complaints, invective and imagined solutions for hour after hour. Conversation could always be directed toward another local team's previous game, but the listeners have already shown they don't care as much about that. So much for that strategy. Sidetracking the conversation to pizza or bad dates or show-biz beefs might not be what some listeners want, but make it funny and limit it to one segment and chances are the listeners will stay tuned and be in the mood for more sports talk -- even further discussion of potential trades and firings -- after the commercial break.
I was a big fan of Tony Kornheiser's show back in the day. The main topic was always sports-related, but Tony and his producer knew just when and how to keep monotony at bay and it made for great talk radio, IMO, that always returned to sports.
You haven't lived until you've heard Knoxville sports radio when it's "fire the coach NOW!!!" time.
Boston sports radio is even less rational right now. Red Sox fans not only want the general manager fired, they want the team's billionaire owner to "sell it NOW!!!" The host asks, "OK. To whom?" and the callers have no answer. They just want the team sold. To anyone. Now. Or shut down entirely. Now. Because, of course, the billionaire who owns the team now knows nothing about owning and operating a professional sports franchise -- or at least less than Andy from Medford and the guys in his office know about it. (The RadioDiscussions counterpart of Andy from Medford, of course, is the poster who calls for a radio station to be sold or its license turned in because it isn't playing enough "real rock.")
I don't think most anyone minds if sports talk hosts talk non-sports stuff, especially if it's general stuff about what they did over the weekend, upcoming plans, general chatter about shows or movies they've seen and liked, etc. or even news events. Where it sometimes goes off the rails is if they get too deep into politics as they risk turning off a portion of their audience...Either the members of their listening audience who have a different political opinion than theirs, or those like me who know where to find political talk if they want it, but who sometimes purposely turn to other programming just to get a break from political talk and drivel.
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