Welcome Matt: How much longer can sports-talk radio survive?

Toronto’s Fan 590 AM, the first 24-hour all-sports radio station in Canada, turns 30 today.

I owe that place my start in radio. Did some guest spots, panels, and fill-in co-hosting back in the day.

There were sports-talk shows before that, especially here in Vancouver where Dan Russell dates back to the mid-1980s, with Dave Pratt following a few years after that. Big Daddy visited us in studio today, and we had a fun time reminiscing about the format and how it built to the establishment of Team 1040 in 2001 thanks to the so-called Three Wise Men: the late Paul Carson, Tom Mayenknecht, and David Stadnyk.

We are asking how much longer the format lasts on our poll question today. I hope it continues on indefinitely, but that would be naive.

Sports-talk radio was underpinned by two things that aren’t what they used to be.

One, team radio rights, which used to provide a financial windfall for NHL teams and their broadcast partners alike.

They just aren’t as valuable anymore with screens everywhere. About the only people listening to games are those commuting in cars.

And that is the second underpinning: people in cars.

The pandemic ignited a work-from-home culture or remote working, and fewer people in cars, especially during the morning and evening rush hours.

Automakers have adapted, too, with modern vehicles making streaming from your phone as easy as one push of a button.

Throw in the terrible sound quality on the AM dial, the cost of running a 24-hour station in this specialty field, and longer commercial sets, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to make a business case for the sports-talk format.

Today’s co-host Jeff Paterson and I know that all too well, some 18 months since Bell Media turned TSN 1040 into Funny 1040.

More contemporarily, we are sitting here on Sept. 2 and we still don’t know if the Canucks are going to have a home on terrestrial radio this season, and an extension of their deal on Sportsnet 650.

As someone who loves sports, radio, and talk, all of this makes me very sad, although admittedly the emotions are mixed because we are entrepreneurs in the digital space who stand to benefit from radio’s demise.

The good news is that sports-talk itself isn’t going anywhere, and is only expanding in the podcasting world.