Is sports talk radio dead?

Jon Marks is the latest Philadelphia sports talker to launch his own podcast. The former drive-time host on WIP, who was also on The Fanatic, joins Harry Mayes, Jason Myrtetus, and Mike Missanelli, in leaving one of the local sports talk stations for various reasons and starting their own podcast.

To quote the once familiar Mayes sound drop, “What is going on back there?”

This topic really caught my attention when I started noticing Stephen A. Smith’s YouTube show / podcast on the home screen when I’d go on the site. Smith is often described as the face of ESPN. I believe he makes a ton of money. Why would he do his own podcast?

Now, I heard Dan Le Batard, a former ESPN guy doing his own thing (I believe), say Smith’s contract is coming to an end and suggested he might want to have some leverage – my word, but that’s what he was saying. (I don’t buy it, but I guess it makes sense.)

I’ve been blogging at different levels of regularity for almost 20 years. At one point, I was making the Inquirer’s “Blog Zone” somewhat consistently and felt like I was at least competing with the “big boys” like The 700 Level. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. I even made a (very) few bucks when some offshore gambling sites wanted to put a link in my posts once in a while.

But I always knew I was just a guy hoping to build something or, probably more accurately, hoping to latch on to a bigger site. At times, I’ve wondered if I could get back in at the Inquirer. I had a very small role there after college thanks to some great people willing to give me a chance. Leaving to seek full-time work elsewhere, which I didn’t think was possible at the paper, I’ve often wondered what might have happened had I still been working for the Inquirer when blogs burst on to the scene.

Life moves on. When the “big boys” got scooped up by places like Comcast SportsNet and Andy Reid saying “I gotta do a better job” convinced me I couldn’t root for the Eagles for another 40 years, I moved on, too.

Coming back to sports blogging in the fall, I took another shot at latching on to a bigger site. Technically, I was a contributor for YardBarker for two or three weeks. When they rejected my first three submissions, including a preview of the Eagles-Vikings game that was spot on and a post on Aaron Nola needing to be in the Phillies playoff rotation despite late-season struggles that I put a lot of time into, I decided the $2 per thousand page views they offered wasn’t worth it.

I’ve enjoyed blogging about sports again, and having a few friends and family members “get in the comments,” as I started saying, has been awesome.

But I’m just some guy. I never felt comfortable calling into Mayes or Marks, so I’d e-mail them or tweet at them. I always got a kick out of getting a comment on the air. These blog posts are kind of the same thing. I take it seriously, and offer some writing skill, hopefully, but this is my way of talkin’ sports.

What the hell is happening when established guys in the business are doing the same thing?

I don’t begrudge these guys anything and I’m not criticizing them. I’m in the car less and less these days, and for whatever reason I just don’t turn the radio on for sports talk at home. Quite frankly (I know, I can’t say that without hearing Stephen A., either), the guys I listened to are gone anyway. Occasionally, I’ll put on The Best Show Ever? But I turn on the television, not the radio. Yet, if I’m on the computer not necessarily writing or maybe writing something light, I find myself going to YouTube and putting on a sports podcast to play in the background.

I actually reached out to Marks via e-mail in the hopes of getting some feedback and/or insights for this post. I haven’t heard back, yet. Maybe I’ll get lucky and have another post on this topic soon.

For now, I’m just left with questions. Is sports talk radio dead? Is this just a natural progression? Is this good or bad in terms of the type of coverage we get as fans? Are these guys really doing their own thing or just trying to bridge the gap to their next gig?

As always, I hope you’ll get in the comments and let me know your thoughts.