BSM Writers
How Des Moines Stepped Up For KXNO
“We have plenty of national shows and you can get those anywhere. But there’s just this connection with local sports, and those are the ones who care about it the most.”
In the middle of such a dark week in sports radio, a silver lining emerged in an unlikely place. By now you know that many radio hosts across the country were laid off last week due to cutbacks from iHeartMedia. It was sudden, unfortunate and eye-opening, but also a stiff reminder of how brutal the business can be.
KXNO in Des Moines was among the stations that were affected, as six on-air employees, Heather Burnside, Travis Justice and Sean Roberts of Morning Rush as well as Chris Williams and Ross Peterson of Sports Fanatics and program director Andrew Downs all lost their job. It looked as though a small city in a ‘flyover state’ was going to be one of the many to lose the local content it craves. But at that moment, the people of Des Moines made a decision. They weren’t going down without a fight.
Local sports radio, especially in Iowa, is one of the most genuine you’re going to find. Whereas most national radio shows would never talk Iowa, Iowa State, and certainly not the smaller colleges in the states such as Drake or Northern Iowa, KXNO is a pillar in the community that people rely on for information and entertainment on a daily basis. Iowans live and die by their local sports and crave the outlets that give it to them on a daily basis. In many ways, it’s a lifeblood for the natives.
So when news spread that KXNO was among the major layoffs that were taking place, Iowans took to social media, almost in unison, and voiced their displeasure.
“I wasn’t surprised at the outrage, because I know what KXNO means to Iowans,” said former KXNO host Matt Perrault, currently with SB Nation Radio. “It’s built its brand on talking directly to people on what’s happening in their lives. That station has been so ingrained in the community for so long, that I knew there would be massive outreach. I just didn’t know exactly how folks would go about voicing it. They took to social media, and if this happened 10 years ago, I don’t know if the same outcry would’ve happened, because it’s difficult to pick up the phone and do that. It’s a lot easier to send text messages, emails, tweets and Facebook posts about it. Social media played a major role in the overall outreach.”
Daily life for many Iowans was about to be seriously altered. That didn’t sit well with the locals. Angry reactions came quickly from every direction to those in charge. Des Moines wasn’t going to sit back and let a corporate company take away what meant so much to them.
The backlash became so widespread that KXNO general manager Joel McCrea knew he had to do something. With the approval of iHeartMedia, all six on-air talents were re-hired and the station was restructured to be heard on an additional 25,000 watt signal, 106.3 FM. Not only had Iowans fought and won, but the product that was so essential to their daily lives, was now even better.
“People spoke up and I think there were two reasons,” said Andy Fales, co-host of the Murph and Andy Show. “First, they were mad about the idea of losing this connection and that Iowa was just going to get passed over again. But also, and this makes us feel the best of all, we hear from people that we are appointment entertainment for them. Their day, in many ways, is scheduled around our show. That feels amazing. Social media is great and it’s terrible at the same time, but at a time like this it’s really a useful tool that you just can’t do without. There was such a reaction from our listeners that reached the higher ups at iHeartMedia and they noticed.”
What program director wouldn’t kill to have an audience like that? Des Moines may not be a Top 50 market but you’d be hard-pressed to find very many across the country that are as loyal as that. There’s a lot of awards that are given annually in sports radio, heck, we at Barrett Sports Media, give out a couple ourselves. But if there’s an award that’s given out to the best audience in any market across the country, I sure know where my vote is going.
Fales and co-host Keith Murphy were the two on-air hosts the station, initially, decided to keep. But with six co-workers being laid off, the duo just didn’t feel it was right to carry on a show like nothing had happened.
“I’m happy that it’s over with,” said Fales. “I think we all want to sound tough and cool and like we’re this tough negotiator that goes in and draws a line in the sand, but when we were doing what we did last week, we didn’t know what was going to happen. We really kind of figured that we would be fired.
“We’ve had a lot of people come up to us and congratulate us for taking this big stand. I don’t think I’ve ever heard back from more listeners, whether they organically came up to me or just reached out. They don’t understand that last week we were kind of taking a shot in the dark. It was on principle, we knew what we believed in and what we wanted to do. But we did not think we had some great upper hand that was going to ultimately work out.”
On Tuesday, KXNO was back on the air after its short hiatus. What’s welcomed them, has been more outpouring on social media from listeners, such as compliments on how good the new FM signal sounds. In an odd way, McCrea’s decision to terminate six employees, bring them back within a week and add an FM signal might be the best thing that could have happened for the station, ratings wise, especially now that football season for the local teams is over. Regardless, the on-air staff is thankful for the change of direction by McCrea.
“I’ve known Joel McCrea for 25 years,” said Burnside via her personal Twitter page. “He’s a straight shooter who owns his mistakes, and he just turned a big one into a huge win for our company, our staff and listeners and the community we built our station on. I’m very thankful to have him as a boss, mentor and friend.”
Others echoed those comments.
“Joel McCrea really did come through,” said Fales. “He did what needed to be done and worked to get this turned around. He’s owed a lot of the credit here. He’s fallen on the grenade for iHeartMedia and he wanted to keep us all along.”
Unfortunately, Burnside, Justice, Roberts and Peterson were unreachable for direct comments through email and social media. Williams declined comment via email saying, “It’s been such a hectic week. I’d really just like to stay out of the news for at least a couple of weeks until things settle down.”
I can’t say I blame any of them for not wanting to comment. With the emotional roller coaster each has been through in the past week, I may have done the same thing.
Though McCrea and the listeners deserve a lot of credit for putting KXNO back to full strength, advertisers of the station played a major role, too. Local businesses streamed out in support of the station and even threatened to put their ad money elsewhere.
By Wednesday of last week, that’s who Fales was thinking of when his show declined to go on the air. He felt he owed it to them, especially the ones who had been there since the beginning, to give the local businesses what they paid for. But after talking with Murphy, who unknowingly scheduled a vacation at an unfortunate time and was in Mexico during the whole process, the two decided to remain off the air. Instead, Fales found another way to reach out to his clients.
“Instead of doing the show, I sat down and wrote to every single client that I could think of,” said Fales. “I got in the car and stopped by a number of businesses and told them everything that was going on. I apologized for not representing their business the way that we said we would when they signed on. I said that we would make it up to them and then I thanked them profusely for being with us. The reaction that I got from them was every bit as impressive as the reaction we got from the listeners. Nearly every one of them said if you go, we go. That felt great.
“They weren’t sold on some greater principle, they listen to our show and wanted to buy into it. It really felt great and even empowered us. I knew if things didn’t work out we could leave and take almost all of our advertisers with us immediately.”
So what’s the lessoned to be learned here? What should the takeaway be from a situation where an audience and advertisers willed its way to make a station change its entire course?
“To me, the lesson is mid-size markets with established brands, folks yearn for people who understand what’s happening in their lives,” said Perrault. “They want to know what’s happening with their teams. They don’t want to know what’s going on Chicago, but what’s going on in Des Moines. I think KXNO has always built itself on being the voice of the fan and being a place where you can go and talk. I mean, it’s Iowa and we’ve been told for years it’s just flyover country. Well, that radio station has changed everything over the course of 15 years by saying we’re going to pay attention to you and we’re going to give you the news that no one else is going to give you.”
“If you have a show that you love listening to and you’re told it’s going to be replaced by some national programming, you know that national programming isn’t going to cover what’s in your community,” said Fales. “That’s going to be lost. That connection to the community is going to be separate. We have plenty of national shows and you can get those anywhere. But there’s just this connection with local sports, and those are the ones who care about it the most.”
Stories such as this show why local sports radio in mid to lower size markets are special and will never die. Not enough praise can be given to the loyal listeners and adversities of KXNO, but the real winner is the station, itself. It’s likely the added attention and FM signal will give the station a boost in ratings it’s never seen before at this point in the calendar year.
Amidst what was a dark week of layoffs for sports radio, KXNO still found a way to emerge a winner.
Tyler McComas is a columnist for BSM and a sports radio talk show host in Norman, OK where he hosts afternoon drive for SportsTalk 1400. You can find him on Twitter @Tyler_McComas or you can email him at TylerMcComas08@yahoo.com.
BSM Writers
Robert Griffin III Wants to Tell Your Story the Right Way
“Even if I do know you personally, I’m not going to bring that to the broadcast because that’s not my job.”
During last season’s VRBO Fiesta Bowl, Robert Griffin III was part of ESPN’s alternate telecast at field level alongside Pat McAfee. Suddenly, the Heisman Trophy winner took a phone call. Once he hung up the phone, Griffin divulged that his wife had gone into labor and proceeded to sprint off of the field to catch a flight. An ESPN cameraperson documented his run and jubilation as he returned home to welcome his daughter, Gia, into the world. It encapsulated just what motivates Griffin to appear on television and discuss football, and why he is one of ESPN’s budding talents with the chance to make an impact on sports media and his community for years to come.
“This was an opportunity for me to go out and be different in the way that the media covers the players and truly get to the bottom of telling the players’ stories the right way,” Griffin said. “I look at this as an opportunity to do that.”
Griffin was a three-sport athlete as a student at Copperas Cove High School, and ultimately broke Texas state records in track and field. In addition to that, he played basketball and was the starting quarterback for the school’s football team as a junior and senior, drawing attention from various schools around the country. He ended up graduating high school one semester early and quickly became a star at Baylor University in both football and track and field.
Robert Griffin III’s nascent talent was hardly inconspicuous, evidenced by being named the 2008 Big 12 Conference Offensive Freshman of the Year and then, three years later, the winner of the Heisman Trophy. In the end, he graduated having set or tied 54 school records and helped the program to its first bowl game win in 19 years.
Ultimately, he transitioned to the NFL in a career with many trials and tribulations, but through it all, he never lost his sense of persistence. Nearly a decade later, he returned to college, but this time as a member of the media covering the game from afar. Unlike a majority of former players though, Griffin did not formally retire from playing football when inking a broadcasting contract with ESPN.
“I haven’t retired yet at all,” he said. “I tell everyone that asks me the question that I train every day [and] I’m prepared to play if that call does come. I’ve had some talks with teams over the past two years; just nothing has come to fruition.”
While Griffin’s focus as a broadcaster is undeniable, he never thought about seriously pursuing sports media until his broadcast agent pushed him to do so. He was urged to take an audition at FOX Sports. Griffin broke down highlights and called a mock NFL game alongside lead play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt. He was not prepared for that second part, but impressed executives and precipitously realized a career in the space may not be so outlandish after all.
Griffin then moved to ESPN where he experienced a similar audition process, this time calling a game with play-by-play announcer Rece Davis. Once the audition concluded, it was determined that Griffin would not only begin working in the industry, but that he would be accelerated because of his ability to communicate in an informative and entertaining style.
As a player, he saw the way media members covered teams – sometimes bereft of objectivity – and therefore saw assimilating into the industry as a chance to change that. Now, he is focused on telling the stories of the players en masse while being prepared to pivot at a moment’s notice.
ESPN’s intention was to implement Griffin on its studio coverage, but once executives heard him in the broadcast booth, the company had a palpable shift in its thinking. He was told he was ready to go out into the field and start calling games immediately, something of a surprise to him. FOX Sports felt similarly. This led to a bidding war between the two entities, which ultimately concluded with Griffin inking a contract with ESPN. He appeared over its airwaves plenty of times as a player, and even participated on a variety of studio shows in 2018 where he was almost permanently placed on NFL Live. This time around though, Griffin was suddenly preparing to work with Mark Jones and Quint Kessenich on college football games. He did not have time to consider the implications of the decision, instead diving headfirst into the craft and remaining focused on what was to come with producer Kim Belton and director Anthony DeMarco at his side.
“These guys took me under their wing, and I’m beyond indebted to them for that,” Griffin said of his colleagues. “They taught me everything that I know about the industry. They taught me everything I know about how to present things to the masses to where it can be easily digestible. They’ve allowed me to allow my personality to shine through.”
Demonstrating his personality was a facet of his makeup Griffin felt was inhibited by playing professional football, but he knows it would have been considerably more difficult to attain a chance to cover the game had he not laced up his cleats. Calling college football games with Jones accentuated his comfort in the booth because of Jones’ adept skill to appeal to the viewers and penetrate beyond the sport.
“He has the way to connect different generations of listeners to hear what he’s saying and perceive it in the same way,” Griffin said. “To me, that’s what we all strive to do in this industry is to be able to find the connective tissue between the fan who is 60 or 70 years old, and the fan who’s in their late teens or early 20s.”
From the beginning, everyone told Griffin to be himself and not adopt an alternate persona in front of the camera. That advice has guided him as he approaches his third year working in the industry.
“It is so hard to maintain a character or try to be someone that you’re not, but if you are who you are every single day, then every time you show up on camera you will be that person,” Griffin said. “I’ve made sure that when I stepped foot in front of that camera, I was going to be myself.”
Griffin identifies his style as pedagogical to a degree, critiquing players as if he was coaching them on the sidelines. He will never look to penetrate beyond football with his criticism, as drawing conclusions and using unrelated parlance could be viewed as indecorous. In short, Griffin III knows what it means to represent ESPN.
“We’re not a gossip website. We’re supposed to be critically acclaimed, prestigious journalists, and at the end of the day, that’s how I try to approach the job that I do. That’s why I got into the business – because I felt like there was a little of that going on, especially during my career, so I would never do to somebody else what was done to me.”
Over the course of his NFL career, Griffin was subject to immense criticism that went significantly beyond the gridiron. For example, sports commentator Rob Parker suggested that Griffin was not fully representative of the Black community and proceeded to question if he was a “cornball brother.” The incident resulted in Parker receiving a 30-day suspension from ESPN, and after he defended his comments and blamed First Take producers in a subsequent interview, the network decided not to renew his contract.
“My goal as a member of the media is to tell players’ stories the right way, and if I don’t know you personally, I’m never going to make it personal,” Griffin said. “Even if I do know you personally, I’m not going to bring that to the broadcast because that’s not my job.”
In addition to broadcasting college football games with Jones on ESPN and ABC, he also appears on-site for Monday Night Countdown, the network’s pregame show leading up to Monday Night Football. Making the decision to add NFL coverage to his slate of responsibilities meant that Griffin would be able to tell more stories and utilize his knowledge of players during their collegiate careers to enhance the broadcast.
The energy that he felt attending tailgates and interacting with fans at the college level gave him a unique skill set to translate to the NFL side, leading him to present the production team with an unparalleled idea for Week 1. He wanted to race Taima the Hawk, the live game mascot for the Seattle Seahawks who flies around Lumen Field prior to the start of each home game. It was an outlandish idea, but one that made sense for television because of the visual appeal it can present.
“If you know anything about hawks, they can fly up to 120-140 miles per hour, so they’re like, ‘There’s no way he’s going to beat this hawk in a race, but we’ll do it,’” Griffin said. “To that crew’s credit, they never once balked at any of the creative ideas that I brought to the table because they want to try different things and be exciting and have fun on the show.”
Griffin ended up winning the race, commencing the new season of Monday Night Countdown with immediate excitement before the Seahawks’ matchup against the Denver Broncos. He thoroughly enjoyed his first year on the show and having the chance to work alongside Suzy Colber, Adam Schefter, Booger McFarland, Steve Young, Larry Fitzgerald and Alex Smith.
“They always tell me, ‘Hey, anything you’re not comfortable with, you just let us know and we won’t do that thing,’” Griffin said of the show’s producers. “My answer always back to them is, ‘Well, I won’t know if I’m uncomfortable with it if I don’t try.’”
While Griffin had what looked like a seamless assimilation into the broadcasting world, he had a difficult moment when using a racial slur on live television in discussing Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts. The clip quickly gained traction across the internet, and Griffin issued an apology on his Twitter account for using the pejorative language and claimed that he misspoke.
“I was shocked that it came out in the way that it did, and I immediately jumped on it and apologized because there’s no need to deny,” he said. “You messed up. You move forward, and I think that’s the easiest way to get over those types of things and to get back on your feet.”
The football season at both the college and professional level is undoubtedly a grind, and it requires a combination of dedication, passion and persistence few people possess. Robert Griffin III has garnered the reputation of being an “overpreparer,” often partaking in considerably more information than necessary to execute a broadcast. The information he consumes and conclusions he draws combined with his experience at both levels has cultivated him into a knowledgeable analyst who makes cogent, intelligible points on the air.
“I over-prepare for everything, and 70% of the information that I soak in going into a game or going into a broadcast for Monday Night Countdown, I don’t use because there’s just not enough air time,” Griffin III said. “There’s not enough opportunities to talk on it all.”
At the same time, he makes a concerted effort to make the most of his time with his family and separate himself from the field, engaging in activities including playing ping pong, going to the movies and supporting his children. He also embarks in charity work through his RG3 Foundation and strives to teach his daughters the importance of giving back. The mission of the nonprofit foundation is to discover and design programs for underprivileged youth, struggling military families and victims of domestic violence, and it has made a significant impact since it was launched in 2015.
“Trying to end food insecurity; making sure that our under-resourced youth have access to the things that they need just to survive – talking about food, clothes, books, the ability to learn [and] putting on these after-school programs,” Griffin elucidated in describing the organization’s mission. “We want to have an impact on our community. We mean that with everything in us and have shown that to be the true case of why we do this.”
Griffin’s wife, Grete, serves as the executive director of the foundation and also runs her own fitness business. Staying physically and mentally in shape is something they actively try to accomplish in their everyday lives, and lessons they are passing down to their daughters.
“I’m 33 years old right now, so if I want to continue to train every single day, I can do that for the next 10 years if I need to,” Griffin said. “Not taking hits and being physically fit is also a good thing for your own health, which is something me and my wife are extremely passionate about.”
Although his experience is in playing football and working in sports media, Robert Griffin III does not believe in limiting himself and would consider exploring opportunities outside of sports and entertainment. He wants to become the best broadcaster possible no matter where he is working in the industry and continue finding new ways to be distinctive en masse.
“We’re storytellers,” he said. “We’re here to break down things [and] to tell people a story the right way; things that people are interested in, and that expands across all media levels. We’re not closing the door on anything from that standpoint.”
While he was playing in the NFL, Griffin dealt with a variety of injuries that ultimately kept him off the football field and made it difficult to display his talents. Ranging from an ACL tear, shoulder scapula fracture and hairline fracture in his right thumb, staying healthy was a challenge for him over the time he played in the NFL.
Through surgeries and rehabilitation, he learned how to face and overcome these challenges. It has shaped him into the broadcaster and person he is today as he looks to set a positive example to aspiring football players and broadcasters everywhere.
“The eight-year career that I was able to have thus far didn’t come without roadblocks in the way [and] didn’t come without adversity. Learn from the adversity that you go through and learn from all the things and the lessons that you have that sports teaches you, and then go be able to present that to the masses.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Sports Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on Twitter @derekfutterman.
BSM Writers
Pac-12 Pushing Enhanced Access, Deion Sanders Reeks of Desperation
What good is enhanced access for TV broadcasts or the star power of Coach Prime if those game telecasts aren’t seen?
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
Ryan Brown is a columnist for Barrett Sports Media, and a co-host of the popular sports audio/video show ‘The Next Round’ formerly known as JOX Roundtable, which previously aired on WJOX in Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter @RyanBrownLive and follow his show @NextRoundLive.