ESPN Audio boss says something that explains everything: The listener is in charge

Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated interviewed Traug Keller, who leads ESPN Audio, for, as the headline puts it, “An in-depth look at ESPN Audio and the future of sports talk radio.”

It’s a good interview, with Keller talking about ESPN’s top radio personalities, what the four-letter considers “the line” that its radio talent shouldn’t cross—”Whatever you do, don’t make anything personal”—and what ESPN could do better in the audio world.

Deep in the article, on Page 3 if you land there without being sent to a single-page version by someone nice like me, is Keller talking about the changing nature of the radio landscape:

There had been 10,000 program directors at 10,000 radio stations telling you what to listen to. But what is happening now is the fan or the listener is really becoming in charge. What we need to keep thinking about it is having as wide a net as possible but putting out as much diverse and different programming, even simultaneously. You may want Colin Cowherd or [ESPN Chicago's] Waddle and Silvy and it’s now your choice. On the ESPN Radio app you can listen to the network stream or a local show in Chicago or Cleveland, or a podcast of Matthew Berry or the audio version of PTI. Now the listener is in charge and that is a fundamental dynamic change that is going on.

That’s a very succinct and very useful description of a massive change in media that’s happened in the last two decades. I think it can’t be overstated. It’s the fundamental fact on which the whole business is built: The listener—reader, user, viewer—is in charge.