The radio talk show host’s dilemma: How do you talk sports in a time with no sports?
In these unsettling times, everyone is facing job challenges.
Though ultimately trivial in a world consumed with containing the coronavirus pandemic, let’s ponder the vexing dilemma currently facing radio sports talk show hosts.
How do you talk sports in a world where there are no live sports currently being played?
I asked three of Kentucky’s prominent radio talk show hosts how they plan to navigate a world without games.
“You’ve gotta be adaptive and think outside the box,” says Tom Leach, whose daily “Leach Report” is syndicated on radio stations around the commonwealth. “If you can’t be topical, you can still be interesting.”
Lachlan McLean, host of “The Midday Rush” from 10 a.m. to noon on Louisville’s WHBE-AM 680 each weekday, says, via email, that “in general, sports talk radio is about posing a never-ending series of unanswerable questions. It has been less than a week (without sports) and so far I haven’t run out of hypotheticals. I’m sure it will get harder and require more creativity as time goes on, but the number of random questions you can ask is really unlimited.”
In the commonwealth, where college sports are king and we have no major league professional teams, the summer months are always barren of live games involving teams of local interest.
“I am kind of trying to treat this like it is the middle of the summer,” says Dick Gabriel, host of “The Big Blue Insider” from 6 to 8 p.m. nightly on Lexington’s WLAP-AM 630. “We just have to be creative and find interesting people to talk to and tell their stories.”
Having to start “summer programming” in March, however, carries an obvious risk.
Says Gabriel: “I’ve filled summer shows for quite a few years, but the summer for me has always started in the summer. It’s never started in March. So, yeah, I’ve been asking myself, ‘OK, I can treat (March) like summer, but what happens when summer gets here?’”
Leach, who is also the radio play-by-play voice for Kentucky Wildcats football and men’s basketball, hopes his talk show is at an advantage because it is heavily UK focused.
“The good thing for my show … we are not a sports show so much as a Wildcats show,” Leach says. “Historically, every year for my show, the ratings have been just as good in the summer as they are at other times of the year — which is a testament to Kentucky fans.”
McLean, working in the Louisville market, hopes his show is at an advantage because he can draw from both UK and University of Louisville topics to hold listeners.
“The good news for me is that I have the UK universe to choose from AND U of L,” McLean says. “As long as I scratch enough itches, I should be able to continue to find content.”
One thing Leach plans to draw on are past interviews with Kentucky sports luminaries that he has on tape.
“I think I have an interview with Cawood Ledford in there somewhere,” Leach says of the late Kentucky radio broadcasting icon. “I think there is part of an interview with Bill Keightley (the late, former longtime UK men’s basketball equipment manager affectionately known as “Mr. Wildcat”).”
McLean hopes a sharply-focused choice of topics will carry his show. Will Kentucky basketball have a transfer? Did UK’s epic comeback win at Florida, in what turned out to be the last game of the season, distort the way the season is viewed? What should be Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart’s number one priority moving forward?
“So every day I simply have to find four or five angles like that,” McLean says.
Gabriel says he may expand the scope of his show to include more national guests and topics, especially the NFL, as well as authors of sports books.
“Right now, the NFL is the gift that keeps giving,” Gabriel says in reference to the current period of free agency that has seen some of pro football’s biggest stars switch teams. “The question I have, that’s all very well for yesterday and today. What are we going to do next week?”
Even as they face the challenge of talking sports while it is not being played, the hosts feel there is a need in these uncertain times for what their shows provide.
Says Leach: “Especially now, people are looking for diversion and things to, maybe, get away from (the news). We all have to be up on what we need to know about the virus, but you can get inundated on that stuff.”
Adds McLean: “Sports talk radio shows can be a valuable respite from the constant anxiety of today’s life. The coronavirus is all you hear about every day — there needs to be a place to get away from it and talk about something that you know is completely irrelevant.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2020 at 5:54 PM.
