I had a post a while ago about how sports talk radio is a fiercely local medium and with few exceptions, you can make it where you are or not make it at all, and since most people who got in on the ground floor are still there, you won't make it at all. I should try to find it.
Beardown wrote:
In the melodramatic, odd, weird cry and love fest between Goff and Larry yesterday, Goff, once again, dropped an "I might be going to Miami" comment. He's done this a handful of times. I've asked before with no answer but is this some stupid inside joke that means nothing or is Goff really considering a radio gig in Miami?
You can't go town to town, up and down the dial doing local sports talk. It's the most provincial media we have, and nowadays, it's for established local media personalities and people who were in the right place at the right time when sports talk broke big. That's really about it. Everyone jumped on Drew Hayes's ass when he may or may not have issued his edict about newspaper/television guys guest-hosting ahead of producers, but Drew Hayes is no radio dummy, and gets that sports talk as a format has crystallized so much in the last twenty years that it's just not enough to have A Guy aimlessly grousing about local sports teams anymore. The internet has replaced radio as the refuge of the uncredentialed, uncensored, and uninformed, and now we look to the more established medium for more premium content, insofar as anything about sports talk radio can ever be called "premium." To summarize: if Mike North were to begin his broadcasting career in December 2011, would you think anything other than "what the ever-loving fuck is on my radio"?
It's tough enough as it is to make the jump from a producer to full-time talent when everyone else is one of the aforementioned. Vis-a-vis sports-page veterans in Mulligan, Hanley, Boers, Rozner, and Rosenbloom; or Score lifers like McNeil, Boers again, and practically Bernstein; or Grobstein, who is a category and institution unto himself, who, in that grand scheme of things,
is a Jason Goff? Does he hold enough capital with the listenership beyond being Dan and Terry's sidekick? I ask because I seriously don't know. It's daunting, but at least he has some outside shot to move up from within.
To listeners in another market, why should they care about a lifelong Chicago guy who is extremely versed in Chicago sports? Even if he were to style himself into a leading authority on Milwaukee sports or Miami sports or Omaha sports, who's buying?So yeah, sports talk kinda sucks for upward/lateral mobility. You can do a cliche FM Radio Voice between Katy Perry songs anywhere in America. Talking about local sports teams here, there, and everywhere is much harder.
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