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From the Athletic Today. Appears he's going to hold off on making major changes....for now
On Sunday, Mike Thomas left Tom Waddle’s famous Super Bowl party in Lake Forest with two thoughts:
His popular afternoon host has a very lovely home.
The staff at ESPN 1000 sincerely like each other.
“It’s rare for people to hang out socially like that,” he said. “Especially to go to people’s houses. That’s rare. That says something.”
Thomas is the new Chicago market manager for Good Karma Brands, which in September entered into a lease agreement with ESPN radio to take over ESPN 1000. Craig Karmazin, who owns Good Karma, hired Thomas from The Sports Hub (WBZ-FM) in Boston to run the show, replacing longtime executives Jim Pastor and Adam Delevitt.
Thomas, 51, helped start The Sports Hub in 2009 as a competitor to WEEI and it quickly took off, changing the career path of the rock ‘n roll radio executive.
Thomas grew up in downstate Illinois and went to high school in Wisconsin Dells and all along he was a Chicago sports fan. Now he finds himself in his dream market with a big office overlooking the Chicago Theatre. What will he do with it?
ESPN 1000 has lagged in the ratings (depending on how you slice them) to The Score in recent years, but the station is in a good place. The three main afternoon shows all get along and they have their loyal audiences. David Kaplan and John Jurkovic were recently re-signed to deals that go into next year. Carmen DeFalco’s deal is up in the spring. The afternoon tandem of Marc Silverman and Waddle are inked through 2022.
Over at The Score, not long after Jimmy deCastro took control during the Entercom merger, he made sweeping changes, firing Jason Goff, demoting Matt Spiegel and letting Brian Hanley’s contract run out to promote David Haugh from fill-in to co-host of the morning show.
Thomas isn’t in a rush to follow that act.
“I’m a big believer in you have to take a lap around the track,” Thomas said during a breakfast conversation near the ESPN 1000 studios. “And I think it would be very naive for new ownership and new management to come in and be like, ‘Oh, OK, let’s look at these results, we’ve got to blow everything up.’ You’ve got to get to know what the situation is and know the talent and know what the strengths are, what the weaknesses are.
“I’ve been so impressed with everyone there. It’s a great group of talented people and I know that Craig has said the same thing. We had the same conversation when he took over the station in late September. He wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. Quickly, he felt the same way, really this is just a great group of people.”
In an hourlong interview with The Athletic, Thomas outlined what kind of changes listeners will hear on the station. From more “energy” to a different studio clock that should make for a faster-paced conversation to more hockey talk and maybe, in the coming years, a renewed interest in adding a partnership with one of the five teams in town.
On Monday afternoon, the station announced a new Saturday morning hockey show literally called “The Hockey Show,” hosted by NBC Sports Chicago veteran Pat Boyle, who already guest-hosts on “Kap & Co.” and Hanley, who is making his return to the Chicago airwaves.
Hanley, a Score original, won’t just be hosting that show, he’ll join the ESPN 1000 bench. Currently, Fred Huebner is the main substitute host, along with producers Adam Abdalla, Chris Bleck and Jeff Meller, who host shows on nights and weekends.
Jonathan Hood also fills in during the week, but he has his regular nighttime show “Under the Hood,” along with national radio duties. Mike North hosts a Friday night gambling show with DeFalco. Mike Murphy recently stopped doing his Saturday morning show with Huebner. Jason Goff is co-hosting national shows for ESPN, as does Bears reporter Jeff Dickerson.
Thomas said one thing he noticed before he started in January was that the station had a thin bench. So he’s looking to bolster it with complementary players who have the potential to be full-time, weekday hosts.
“We need to do more live shows on the weekend,” he said. “When you don’t have the bodies to do the shows, we can’t do the shows. That’s where the bench is going to come in. There will probably be some people we bring on board as part of that that you would never think of as sports radio people.”
He should think about adding at least one roving reporter to the station, something ESPN 1000 has been lacking in recent years. Aside from Jesse Rogers and Dickerson, both of whom just signed new deals to appear on ESPN 1000, the station doesn’t have any reporters in the Bulls, Blackhawks or White Sox locker rooms.
On Monday, it was announced that recently retired Bears offensive lineman Kyle Long is doing a test run with midday host Kaplan this week. Long has expressed interest in doing media in Chicago, and is poised to be a star. Then again, the seat next to Kaplan is always open.
“Kap & Co.” keeps losing the “company.” Co-host Shae Peppler is moving East to be with her husband Jordan Cornette, who is another former host of that show and is now a part of the ACC Network. With that in mind, this tryout bodes well for Long’s national media career. So does his enthusiasm.
Much like a new NBA coach, Thomas is big in talking pace and energy. He had a big staff meeting when he started in which he focused on radio fundamentals like getting in and out of breaks quickly and following a new schedule that called for shorter opens at the top of the shows. The purpose of everything was explained and it made perfect sense, according to staffers.
“I think the station today has a faster pace than it did a couple weeks ago and that all kind of comes from that meeting,” Thomas said. “I think that if you’re going to be the new guy coming in, you don’t just want to say, this is what has worked for me before and we’re doing it because it worked in Boston. That’s not smart. I think there are some practices that did work in Boston, but are also just good practices.”
One of those good practices? More hockey talk. Yes, a sports radio executive south of the Canadian border and west of Buffalo wants more hockey. That’s why Hanley and Boyle are paired together, but it’s more than a weekend plan. Thomas expects weekday hosts to talk hockey as well. Heck, maybe Hood can finally interview Al MacIsaac.
Contrary to popular opinion, Thomas said, “I do not think that talking hockey is a tune-out at all,” and that he saw it work in Boston.
“I was surprised there wasn’t something like that,” in Chicago, Thomas said. “Hockey fans are incredibly passionate and even though the Blackhawks are what they are right now, they’ve had a tremendous amount of success in the past 10 years. And I was surprised there’s no show dedicated to not just the Blackhawks, but hockey fans. Let them have a voice. There was a real lack of hockey talk. I think that’s an area of growth.”
As for Hanley, he’ll be a welcome addition at ESPN 1000. He was one of, if not the most popular host at The Score among his teammates, and was a well-regarded, well-traveled reporter for decades at the Sun-Times. Hanley told me he’ll also be co-hosting with Huebner on Saturdays, along with his hockey show, and Thomas said he’ll be a regular fill-in during the week.
“I was really excited to get a chance to sit down with Mike Thomas,” Hanley wrote in an email. “His passion for hockey is contagious and refreshing. If I had a dollar for every time a radio exec said not to talk hockey, I could help the Hawks re-sign Robin Lehner. This will be the fans’ long-awaited show. It will be very cool to work with Pat Boyle, whose Hawks’ thoughts are appointment radio.
“Whenever I’ve been asked what my favorite Sun-Times beat was, hockey was the answer. And that was when the Hawks were going through coaches and general managers like line changes.”
Hanley’s arrival on The Score’s morning show with Mulligan gave that station a decided advantage over ESPN 1000 to start the day. Now that WMVP is out from under Bristol’s collective thumb, will they add a challenger to Mulligan and Haugh? Not anytime soon, by the sound of it. My guess is nothing will happen unless ESPN radio does away with its anchor morning show now hosted by Trey Wingo and the Golic family.
“It’s still a real strong partnership with ESPN,” Thomas said. “And Craig Karmazin, our CEO, he’s had a 20-year relationship with ESPN in several different markets. Plus we have a partnership on the digital side where we can sell advertising on the big ESPN app and that’s beyond just the radio markets.”
That’s a shame because it would make sense to start Kaplan around 7 a.m. now that he’s not chained to the desk at NBC Sports Chicago for Cubs postgame shows anymore. Or maybe Hanley could follow Larry David’s lead and open up a spite show.
(But speaking of the app, Thomas said they’re unveiling a new one this week. It will be very basic, just a home for the live stream and podcasts, but it will do away with the ESPN clutter.)
Thomas said he has kept tabs on Chicago sports radio during his decade of sports radio in Boston. He was the VP of sports for CBS’ chain of stations before the Entercom merger, so he’s well-acquainted with The Score and his new competitor Mitch Rosen.
“He’s a fantastic program director and we would talk,” said Thomas, who added that he called Rosen to congratulate him on placing first in Jason Barrett’s latest rankings of major-market program directors. “I feel like I’m pretty familiar with his station. In a city as big as Chicago, as good of a sports city as it is, there’s room for two sports stations. I think competition is good.”
While Rosen was named the best PD, The Sports Hub was voted as the best major-market station, beating out The Score, which was No. 2. ESPN 1000 was No. 17.
As for the Nielsen ratings that have mostly favored The Score in recent years, Thomas said those won’t be the end-all, be-all for any forthcoming changes, but he will be looking at them.
“I like to look at the scoreboard to see how we’re doing, but it’s not going to be everything to us,” he said. “Building partnerships and having relationships with the teams are going to be more important than the actual Nielsen ratings.”
Thomas hadn’t yet met with any local team executives, but that was going to start soon with the Blackhawks and Bulls. He wants to bring back play-by-play rights and conceivably all of the teams are in play in the next few years, depending on how much Entercom wants to pay to keep the Bears and Cubs.
WGN has the White Sox and Blackhawks and The Score took pity on the orphaned Bulls, whose radio broadcasts are better than the actual on-court product, when WLS radio pleaded for relief from the bankruptcy court.
“I hope we are part of the conversation,” Thomas said. “I’m very interested in being part of those conversations as those opportunities come up. Play by play gives you a lift in other ways. The amount of people it brings to the radio station, even if the team is not performing well, just the amount of ‘cume’ you get just because if you’re a true White Sox fan, win or lose, you’re probably going to tune in at least some point. I think play by play can really help a radio station. I’m a big believer in play by play.”
He’s also a big believer in putting his shows on the road. The “Waddle & Silvy” show was at radio row for the first time in nearly a decade. Kaplan parlayed his double duties at NBC Sports Chicago and ESPN 1000 to take producer Danny Zederman to the Winter Meetings. The station will have its usual presence at spring training.
Thomas got rid of the old furniture and office detritus that had cluttered the seventh floor of 190 N. State St. over the years. An old office will be a break room. A new paint job is forthcoming.
After a change in management, the staff at ESPN 1000 feels good about the direction the station is heading. We’ll check back in a year to see where it’s at.
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