This Sunday morning I drove to get bagels and flipped on WFAN in the eight o’clock hour, as I have done countless times since the station come on the air in the late 1980’s. The time in the early morning hours of a weekend was usually not filled by the constant white noise of sports talk about professional teams,,,it has been filled between seven and nine o’clock by some welcome voices and storytellers over the years…Ann Liguori talking golf, Ed Randall talking baseball, and on Sunday’s by Rick Wolff and his “Sports Edge” show, which covered an important but not sexy, and usually tough to sell, topic…high school sports, amateur athletes, coaching, parenting and the like. Now with Rick succumbing to brain cancer this week, would that spot held by a welcomed friend be gone to a sports betting show or another hour of a host talking Knicks playoffs with people who wait for hours to hear their own voice? I was prepared to listen and flip to something a little more valuable to me when suddenly there he was one last time.
WFAN chose to run a “best of” show honoring all the work Rick did over the years, and his voice and guests from the past big and small reminded me once again the value of doing little things, addressing niche areas, and giving sound thoughtful opinion through storytelling, even in a massive market like new York, mattered. It was great to hear our old friend one more time (read this piece, one of many about Rick’s amazing career and how he treated people, here) but I wondered what would be next for a show that did little things right…little things which may have a niche, but not a huge dollar value.
We have seen and literally heard how much the interest of spoken word has grown over the past half decade. Podcasts are everywhere. The question becomes who is pod listening, and what revenue can be driven to cover and expand the for profit costs around spoken word, and the show Rick did is a great example of risk/reward to commercial audio that is literally measured in share of voice by the minute.
Listening this morning made me remember a conversation I had, one of several with a senior radio executive in New York a few years ago. We had been talking aboiut some business colleagues and their interest in spending dollars against segments like youth sports programming and even sports business as a marketing tool. It also reminded me of a another conversation I had had with recently retired news personality Joe Connolly about his interest in doing a weekly sports business minute. The answer was the same…if it could be covered with a brand spend, it would be considered, but even with the brand spend, it had to hold a casual audience who would not flip elsewhere to hear yelling, gossip or whatever the sexy topic was.
All those ideas for valued content went by the wayside. There would be an audience, but how small and at what dollar value, when it is cheaper, and safer, just to open up the phone lines and have people start yelling so that they stay “loyal listeners.” The loyalty to a show like “Talking Baseball With Ed Randall” or “Golf Talk” or “The Sports Edge” is nice, but much smaller per se, than the person who wants to hear another opinion about the Mets or the Rangers. I get it, but it’s a shame.
Now there is always a market for niche programs and ideas and the conversations around them. That’s what audio streaming and podcasts can do. However for the mass market, these shows, no matter how interesting or valuable to the listener, become an issue of economics. Rick Wolff was a brand onto himself, a self contained dynamo who had built other careers around his show, and really used the show as a marketing voice for all the other ways he could build a career. He is the exception in a major market, not the rule.
So that brings us to what happens next for “The Sports Edge” and the high risk, highly volatile space of live radio today. Rick was “The Sports Edge.” Rare if ever was there a guest host. When Rick was off there was no show. With rick gone, is that youth voice silenced for good, replaced by yet another sellable handicapper or some syndicated hour taking calls to pass the time?
We shall see…or at least hear.
However with Rick’s passing it served as a great reminder of the value of doing things right, and speaking to and with an audience that wants to be heard. Rick always championed the little guy, gave a voice to many who did not have a chance to speak on topics that were not always headline grabbers, and as a result was a hero maybe not to millions, but to thousands of all ages every week. It is a classic example of forgetting that value of doing little things until that facilitator of those things is gone. Yes we will replace that time with something, and in spoken word it’s easy to literally flip the dial and move on ,especially on a spring Sunday morning. However are we better for it, or will we simply not know what we are missing because a hole was filled with something less valuable to us.
Personally as a creative learner I loved listening in on Rick’s conversations, because I always learned something. Many may want to be just entertained and will welcome the shouting and from callers just wanting to vent. I think there is already enough of that drivel and Sunday mornings brought a welcome friend and his audience of mindfulness tied to sports.
It would be great to see Rick’s hour filled with more welcome talk from new voices who may be able to continue the conversation. He probably would have loved that as a curious learner himself.
My guess is we go back to more of the same shouting and sponsored calls…risk averse and easy to slot in as the numbers will show. We won’t be better for it, but I get it.
I will find other voices on a Sunday morning if that happens, just like I did when Rick’s sow was on hiatus.
Let’s see what the market will bear.
