Making Media · Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Spike Eskin - What Sports Media Can Teach Us

·1 hr 9 min·4 clips

Spike Eskin says sports audiences care more about hosts being wrong than being right.

1. Making Media revisits how Spike Eskin applies sports-radio experience to podcast hosts, audiences, teams, and sponsorships. 2. Matt interviews Eskin, who runs programming at New York's WFAN and hosts The Rights to Ricky Sanchez about the 76ers. 3. Eskin's central question is which repeatable traits make an audio host worth spending hours with despite uncertainty and disagreement. 4. Eskin weights fearless, opinionated thinking at 60% of an ideal sports host, with likability at 20% and relatability and openness making up the remainder. 5. Eskin distinguishes audio from television by saying listeners in a car or on a dog walk feel they are spending time with the host. 6. Eskin divides podcasts into serialized storytelling, information or news, and two-person conversational formats. 7. Eskin uses The Mismatch, featuring Chris Vernon and Kevin O'Connor, to show how predictable differences can make recurring conversations work. 8. Eskin says podcasting has a low hit rate partly because hosts receive little coaching before discovering whether a format works. 9. Eskin argues that co-hosts need defined roles and must appreciate the friction created by their differences. 10. Eskin describes Joe DiCamera and John Ritchie in Philadelphia as contrasting a serious Philadelphia sports specialist with a goofy former NFL fullback who understands football mechanics. 11. Eskin says four hours of daily argument can strain even a successful relationship and compares it with repeatedly debating Sam Bradford with the same friend. 12. Eskin identifies accepting public wrongness as a major challenge because audiences remember mistakes and social media can replay them. 13. Eskin says a host's identity must be filtered into a concise set of traits that audiences can recognize. 14. Eskin warns that Twitter and email reveal hyperactive users rather than the full audience of The Rights to Ricky Sanchez. 15. Eskin recalls 500-person trips to Milwaukee revealing listeners such as a 58-year-old man, his son, and his son's wife who had never contacted the show online. 16. Eskin says podcast and radio numbers cannot explain why a weekly audience falls from 10X to 9X without additional research, making product judgment important. 17. Eskin contrasts a 76ers podcast that can discuss the team's seventh player with general sports radio, where casual listeners usually want larger storylines and basic statistics. 18. Eskin compares radio's local reach and frequency with podcasting's direct response, host-read endorsements, and narrower targeting. 19. The interview uses extended examples, practical coaching questions, and a conversational back-and-forth between Matt and Eskin. 20. Sports-media operators, podcast hosts, and audio producers should listen; listeners seeking non-sports topics might skip it.

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