Sports Media Markets Its Worst Self
“This SUCKS! Try It!”
A funny thing happened. On the podcast this week, Bomani Jones made points about the misalignment of incentives between talent and social media producers. One of Bomani’s points is that a show’s clips are usually designed to drive social media engagement, so they often create a falsely (and aggravatingly negative) simplistic impression of a more nuanced discussion. That’s fine for the social producer, whose success metric is social media engagement stats. It’s not so great for the talent, who gets “thrown to the Wolves” and pilloried over sounding like a blowhard. Maybe it would all be a fine tradeoff if the promotion made shows succeed, but Bomani is skeptical that the clip economy actually directs consumers to the source.
My producer Anthony Mayes, ever cheeky, decided to make an engagement-seeking clip of Bomani bemoaning the impact of these clips that seek engagement. I probably should have stopped him. Bo loves comedy, but in my experience, isn’t a huge fan of “I’m trying to get away with something by acknowledging I’m doing it” irony. I did not stop Mayes, though. I tweeted out the clip.
I stopped tweeting out clips of my podcast a long time ago for reasons that overlap with Bomani’s issues. Until very recently, I’ve avoided discussion on X, and the medium (understandably) punishes me with little distribution on posted story links. So I wasn’t expecting anything from the Mayes irony bomb, but boom, it got a reaction.
Who knows if “341K views” is a true stat, but I could clearly see that Bomani’s monologue was resonating with people in the sports media industry. Even and especially social media producers were into it.
The response to Bomani’s anti-rage-bait clip was overwhelmingly positive. This specific reaction is rare. Usually negative opinions attract more negative opinions. In my experience, when you criticize how social media workers do their jobs, they fight back.
The post went over well because everyone is dealing with the same insane problem. The best way to get noticed on social media in service of helping a product you’re proud of is…getting people to briefly hate you and that product.
With Bomani’s “rant” in mind, look at this SportsCenter post on Draymond Green’s viral insult of Charles Barkley’s Houston Rockets tenure.
By the time this post went out, it was clear that this moment had not gone over well on Inside the NBA. The joke didn’t land. It made Draymond look small. The reaction on set was awkward. Spreading this clip does not serve the talent at Inside, but posting it is sure to drive social media engagement connected to the show. People hated what Draymond said, and want to discuss how much they dislike him.
Does that clip make me want to watch Inside? No, actually. It causes me to wonder if a famously jocular property has gotten bitter and glum.
Which is too bad, because if you watched the entire segment on Draymond’s view of the current Faded Dynasty Warriors, it was complex and interesting. The overall conversation would make you think that Inside is the best platform on television for honest NBA discussion from the game’s most prominent figures. Instead, ESPN properties want to join a pile-on in reaction to Draymond Green being wrong and mean.
We almost take for granted how crazy the current media promotion conditions are. Advertising doesn’t usually work like this. You don’t see Jack in the Box spreading word that there’s shit in the chicken sandwich, even though there isn’t, because they understand that the reaction will go viral.
“All publicity is good publicity” is supposed to be a cope, not a credo. Media is the rare industry that mostly, aggressively, advertises the worst version of its product. Almost everyone is tacitly competing with the same branding of, “This SUCKS! Try it!”
But that’s what works on social, and there’s no other place to generate discoverability. We all know why shows do this. We understand the incentive structures. It’s just funny how self-defeating the whole process is, which is why Bomani’s monologue struck a chord with those who yearn to escape wherever we’re now stuck.
A social media Radio Ethan clip talking about OKC playing refball would do numbers right now.
I’m curious Ethan if you think Draymond can round himself into a good talking head?
I’ve always found it curious that many consider him the next charles barkley, as draymond doesn’t seem to have that level of charisma, lacks self awareness or the ability to be self deprecating, and although willing to say wild things he’s never been funny. he does however have some great insights on the game.
I do think he was great on pardon my take a few months ago because it’s the first time he let his guard down a bit, and am hoping he can adopt that mindset a bit more often