Glenn Younes: Super Social - Media Access (Super Bowl)
With the big game lurking and media swirling in New Orleans, big sports outlets like NFL Network and ESPN thrive on access to players, coaches and inside info. It's what propels them, gives them credibility and news & makes them the go to for sports.
But in 2013 and expanding (at the speed of a 14 year old tweeting) access to athletes is much easier than ever.
In previous years big time players and coaches wanted their privacy, relationships, children, pets and cars a thing to keep at home. Today's player (& sometimes coaches) send that info out to a bazillion people and double that with a share and retweet.
Social media has its many downsides (crazy people), but its a pipeline to active thoughts, feelings, furniture and furry friends.
Guys are much more open because they fully control the message. There are no hosts/ interview questions or pushy reporters (that they have to answer to anyway.) They can talk whenever they want & as much or little as they want. Lots of love and hate but they control the full flow.
It makes opinions even more important in sports and moreover radio...
But it has to be real.
You see a ton of push back from the audience when they can tell news or hype is trumped up. Opinions need to be real too or they look fake. A strong opinion on a variety of topics on the fly and educated opinions about them is the secret.
The networks have always had better access than most and today they don't. Guys like me see the crack in the armor and I'll exploit that with my strong opinions, something they can't do for fear of losing their access... Which they've already done.
Follow me on twitter @gunitradio.
