ESPN host defends value of sports radio

Few people in America have more experience doing national sports radio than Mike Greenberg, who has hosted shows for ESPN Radio since 1999.

Today, Greenberg hosts Greeny each afternoon for the worldwide leader and its affiliates across the country, where he continues to weigh in on top sports topics with the intimacy the radio medium provides.

All around Greenberg, his colleagues and rivals find massive audiences and financial windfalls in digital audio and video. From Shannon Sharpe to Bill Simmons, podcasting is now far more viral and trendy than radio in the industry. But Greenberg believes there is no replacing traditional radio.

In an interview with GQ released Friday , Greenberg explained his view of why “sports radio is going to be around for a long time.”

‘There is no substitute for immediacy,” Greenberg said. “Podcasts are wonderful. I listen to them all the time. But there’s one thing a podcast has a very hard time being, and that’s urgent.”

Not only is radio often more niche and personal, it is live.

Like sports and news broadcasts, real-time content is impossible to fully replace.

“I think there is and will always be a place for live programming of all kinds,” Greenberg added. “But there will never be a substitute for the immediacy of a live program. Podcasts can’t have the same level of interaction with their audience that radio does. The idea that it’s actually happening right now makes it more exciting to me than dialing up one that was done last Tuesday at 8 a.m.”

True to his point here, Greenberg is one of the only major talents at ESPN not to have a podcast. Of course his Greeny radio show is released in podcast form, but unlike other hosts like Stephen A. Smith or Scott Van Pelt or Elle Duncan, Greenberg has resisted the instinct to get into the podcast game.

Instead, on Greeny and Get Up , Greenberg gets to weigh in live for much of each day on ESPN airwaves on the sports news of the day.

[ GQ Magazine ]

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