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Jeff Smulyan has accomplished a lot in his professional life, building a business, reviving a struggling radio station, buying and selling the Seattle Mariners, and establishing himself as an industry captain. In the 1980s, his company, Emis Communications, was America’s largest privately owned radio broadcasting company. It has since scaled back and recently sold all of its stations in Indianapolis to Urban His One.
But in the sports world, the 75-year-old from Indianapolis is best known as the father of sports talk radio. In 1987 he brought sports talk radio to the masses with WFAN There might not have been Mike and Mad Dog, Dan He Patrick, Colin He Cowherd, the local sports talk host of Indianapolis not. All other major cities in this country.
After playing golf with him at his club, the Broadmoor Country Club in Indianapolis — I promised him not to share the results of the match — I wrote about his recently published book, Roller Coaster Don’t ride upside down.” His life and times.
(Editor’s Note: Content has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
First of all, from the sports talk on the radio. where did that idea come from?
It was actually an idea that came to me one day in college (USC) while daydreaming. I always thought all sports radio was cool, Emis built it through his FM music station. I was asked what I was going to do with AM, and I said, “All sports.” It was perfect. Especially on the east coast, people are enthusiastic about sports. You have an affinity for East Coast sports that don’t exist in the West. i have lived it. We couldn’t do all the news because[other New York stations]were doing it. You couldn’t tell the whole story because (other stations) had that market corner. There was a big niche out there if we were going to do it.
People thought I was a crazy lunatic. We had a manager’s meeting and many wanted to do it (sports talk). You vote, but the vote was never meant to do that. So I was asked, “What do you want to do?” I said The next day they came over and said, “This is a really stupid idea, but let’s do it.” And initially it was a disaster. Everything about it was wrong. It should have been local, but it was national — too many updates, not enough interaction, not enough New York.
Jim Lampley was our first host. We bought an NBC station. Better frequency. We inherited (Don) Imus. Then we put (Mike) Francesa and (Chris “Mad Dog”) Russo together and everything was fine. One of my favorite life maxims is that there’s a line between being stupid and being genius. The fans (radio stations) went from geniuses to idiots, and the Mariners (who owned them) went from idiots to geniuses.
You’re considered the father of sports talk radio in this country.
I kind of laugh about things like that. I’m proud of it and I’m proud of the culture we had and the things we did. It was meant to be someone. But I am proud to have done it. Obviously, I’m surprised there are 500 to 600 (sports talk radio stations) in America.
Jeff Smulyan rolled the dice with Don Imus, Mike Francesa and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo and “everything went well.” (Courtesy of Tony Valainis)
After Lampley, you tried Greg Gumbel and Pete Franklin. they didn’t get along. What inspired you to put Francesa and Russo together?
Francesa, a producer for CBS TV, kept saying, I want to go on air,” he kept refusing. Finally, we gave him a shot at the weekend show and it was perfect. I thought, ‘This person can do more.
Russo was on the Imus show and we said, ‘I think this is going to work. So we threw them together. They didn’t want to go together. They didn’t really like each other. They didn’t talk to each other on air, but they were an odd couple and damn well worked out.
You said you adopted Imus. It had to be a wild ride.
I remember talking to one of our employees. I said There are dying radio stations. There’s a morning dude with a serious drug problem…what could go wrong? And Imus, he spent the rest of his life sober and all was well.I always liked the way he said at the end of his show. Including sports. After finishing these idiots, come back tomorrow morning at 6am for more entertainment. ”
He knew everything about me when I was dating. He called me a “hillbilly with a Rolex”. We got along well, but he was a difficult person to deal with at times.
You hired another interesting character in the early days of Indy, a guy named David Letterman.
David was the noon show guy. He was scheduled for a talk show. Letterman was vilified because he didn’t know much about politics. Guys his age laughed it off, but the 65+ crowd wanted him to talk politics.
David was great. One day he announced that he would sell Monument Circle to Guam for his 50-foot-long celery stick. He flew with young people. When David got the job, he said, I have a plan. I’d like to see if I can.’ So when he went there, we paid him to do some reports for us. It was the Rose Parade when he said he was. He said the pork stinks badly, but the all pork Minnie Mouse was very nice.
When and how did you fall in love with radio?
As a kid, I was a big baseball fan, Reds fan, Giants fan, so I used to listen to the games late into the night. And I loved rock and roll, so I listened to Top 40 a lot. I wasn’t normal. When I was younger, I knew exactly what I wanted. In fact, I started out as a writer and he spent three summers at The Star (in Indianapolis). I loved it, but I always loved radio and thought I could be an entrepreneur in the radio business.
… radio, you can create anything. With television, you tap into what the network has to offer, but with radio you can create forms, ideas and the theater of your mind. He was very entrepreneurial. We had a great time creating a really fun format. First All Sports Station. He has performed on the two biggest hip-hop stations in the world. we did all sorts of things. It was a very different business back then because it was so important to people.
With so many entertainment options, what does the future look like for sports talk radio?
I think it’s good. The radio business is a challenge as the commercial load makes music stations uncompetitive with Spotify and Pandora. But[Karl]Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses. I think he is a sport. People love to talk about sports. They are interested in sports. They argue about it endlessly. Of all the formats, I think News and Talk are in the best shape because they are local and people are passionate about them. So there should be a market.
The whole challenge of the radio business is to have a strong local presence and talk about what people are passionate about. The problem now is that people have so many choices. We had her three TV stations when we grew up. Now we have 600 channels and 15 streaming services and everything is fragmented. But you can be nervous in a community, and whenever a sport does that, you can thrive.
You are very successful in business, especially in radio. Now let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum: ownership of the Seattle Mariners. You bought them in 1989, sold them in 1991, and became a bit of a pariah in the Pacific Northwest.
We were turnaround guys back then. I bought station after station with no ratings and turned them around. By 1989, he had stations in New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Los Angeles. So we were looking around for what to do next. … I love Seattle, the most beautiful city in the country, and they were looking for someone who could fix their marketing. … one thing leads to another, and suddenly people say your company is worth X and you have the ability to do it. So we did.
People always thought it was the ego. We have never done anything that the economy doesn’t make sense for. We love economics, we modeled everything, but we got it wrong. The franchise has lagged behind more than expected due to its lack of affinity with baseball. By then they were his 15-year losing team and nobody cared. What could we have done differently? I don’t know; after buying a baseball team in Seattle, the dice are rolled. You couldn’t turn it around without revenue sharing or the ability to score huge cable deals.
Then there was that, in addition to the team’s problems, as the economics of radio changed. When we bought it our goal was to have a competitive salary, when we bought the team their salary he was $7 million. If he reaches $20 million in three years, not 14,th On the American League payroll, it’s (about) 7th and should be competitive.th In the league, we were even more behind (AL competitors). Mathematics is impossible.
… I mean, I had a hard time saying that if you’re going to own Mariners, Royals, or Pirates, you have to be a millionaire. A moderately successful paper route is all it takes to own the Yankees or Dodgers.
Jeff Sumrian’s book, Don’t Turn the Roller Coaster Upside Down, is set for a 2022 release. | | https://t.co/xUWPSffFLK pic.twitter.com/mCMArJ0t9q
— InsideRadio (@InsideRadio) November 3, 2021
You were Public Enemy No. 1 for a while…
I always say everyone should be an outcast once in their life, and I was. And the reason why I became a revealer is that the day we acquired the team, we said we were going to do our best and do everything we could. It was the best management I’ve ever done. We invented a lot. If you go to stadiums today, many things have been invented, including video clips and games. If you’re promoting the Boston Red Sox, your marketing campaign is “The season starts him April 4th. Come to the ballpark.” You can’t do that in Seattle. I thought we did something great for the average fan and changed the perception of the team, but no one cared. They only care when you win. It’s a wonderful town. I want to do anything in the city except own a baseball team.
Years ago there were rumors that Indianapolis would buy a Major League Baseball team, and you were always part of the conversation. Has it come close?
There was an opportunity to move the exposition here, but there were territorial issues that could not be overcome. The problem is, if you go 80 miles northwest, you’ll find the Chicago market. Go 50 miles southeast to Red’s Market. There is no TV market here, no population. i love this cityit’s my house but we’re 40th in population. We would have lived by the day as a franchise, and I had already done that.
You’ve had a lot of success in business, but what do you tell your students about your failures…
Failure is a great teacher. I tell college students that I once thought life was a straight line from success to success to success. And what you’ve learned is that I don’t care who you are, you fail. And the point about failure is to learn from it and not let it kill you or crumble into a mountain. Impossible. I strongly believe that arrogance kills. I’ve seen people go out and have some success going on.
(Photo of Mariners owner Jeff Sumrian and Mariners star Ken Griffey Jr., 1990: Gary Stewart/Associated Press)
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