Public radio gets back in the game with ‘Sports in America’

A new show from WHYY aims to fill a gap on public radio schedules with a weekly look at the world of sports.

Launched in September, the Philadelphia station’s Sports in America is the only nationally distributed public radio program dedicated to sports. The system has lacked such a show since 2020, when WBUR ended production of the long-running Only a Game. 

That’s a problem, according to WHYY Audio GM Joan Cherry Isabella, who said she has been “thinking for a long time” that public radio needed a sports show.

“I don’t think that listening to Morning Edition means you don’t like sports,” she said. “That’s not how it works in the real world. And I think for a long time, public media shied away from sports. But I think … that may have been a mistake. People love sports.”

The show’s host, former Morning Edition anchor David Greene, is a self-proclaimed “insane” sports fan, he told programmers at the Public Media Content Conference in August. Sports in America “recognizes the fact that sports are one rare thing that we still all show up for together,” he said during an event hosted by PRX, which is distributing the show. 

“Sports are a place where there are just extraordinary stories everywhere, and we learn lessons that really reflect back on us and teach us about ourselves and our society,” Greene said. 

In an email to Current, Greene said he wants the show to appeal to sports fans and non-fans alike. 

“I want this show to resonate with listeners who love their pro sports teams so much they’ll spend hours listening to sports talk radio — but then will come here for an immersive experience they can’t get over there,” he said. “I want this show to resonate with people who don’t identify as diehard fans but end up discovering lessons about themselves as they listen. They come for the powerful conversations and leave realizing there’s more to sports than they first thought.”

The program has launched as stations are rethinking schedules and looking to save money following the rescission of federal funding for public media. PRX and WHYY are offering the program for free to stations. So far, more than 60 have added the program, according to a PRX spokesperson. 

One is WESA in Pittsburgh, Greene’s hometown. “We’ve heard from many listeners that they take pride in David as a local product,” Mike Sauter, VP of broadcasting, said in an email.  “Beyond that, though, the Pittsburgh area is a strong sports town, and that’s a coverage area that we’ve been trying to serve more intentionally.” 

The station has also been “trying to find more change-of-pace programming at a time when some listeners have been stepping back from being immersed in news coverage,” Sauter said.

Why WHYY?

Six episodes of the hourlong show have aired so far. Greene has interviewed athletes including NFL wide receiver Chris Godwin and Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who was the first transgender woman to win an NCAA Division 1 title. 

Earlier episodes have primarily featured interviews, but the most recent installment took on more of a newsmagazine feel with a look at sports betting. Greene talked with an author and expert on the subject who had written a memoir about gambling. He also opened the show on a personal note by discussing his complicated relationship with gambling. In his youth, his mom’s sports betting and other gambling raised concerns about whether she would be able to pay the rent. Later on, betting on sports also brought him and his mom closer.  

These early episodes of Sports in America have drawn on In the Moment, a sports podcast previously produced by media company Religion of Sports and distributed by PRX. About two years ago, In the Moment co-EP Adam Schlossman asked WHYY’s Isabella about bringing the show to public radio, but then Religion of Sports cut its podcast department. Schlossman told Isabella she could contact Greene if she wanted to pursue the show.

“We’ve been talking ever since, trying to figure out how to make this happen,” Isabella said. 

The Philadelphia station is using updated material from In the Moment under a licensing agreement as a “building block” to start Sports in America, said Tom Grahsler, director of digital studios at WHYY. So far, about 30% of the show has featured archival material. 

The archival content was a “big piece” of WHYY being able to launch Sports in America, Grahsler said, offering a “runway.” 

“Then we can sprinkle in new interviews so that the first kind of quarter that this [show] is running will have kind of a mix of repackaged and updated stories … but then totally fresh reporting,” he said.

At the beginning of next year, the show will consist of “entirely new, weekly, always-on reporting,” Grahsler said, and could incorporate pieces from stations and independent producers.

The show’s team is also thinking about producing for multiple platforms, Grahsler said. The program includes “blocks that are built up so that when we get to radio, there’s a billboard in the front and then there’ll be a news hole. But then that doesn’t appear in the podcast ecosystem,” he said. Starting next year, excerpts from interviews will be posted to YouTube as well.

Bringing people together

WHYY decided to take on the program in part because Only a Game “was hugely, hugely popular,” Grahsler said.

The show brought sensitivity to its storytelling and avoided being “a brash, typical, ripped-from-the-headlines, two guys chatting about what happened the night before” kind of show, he said. “It felt like public radio. I think that those are the lessons that we want to be able to kind of integrate into what our show is.”

Internal WHYY surveys show that 63% of the station’s listeners are very interested in at least one sport, and 86% of listeners said they consume sports media. The station has also found that a podcast it licenses about the Philadelphia Phillies, Hittin’ Season, has been “hugely popular,” Grahsler said. 

WCMU in Mount Pleasant, Mich., added the program because “sports are part of Michigan’s DNA,” said Mike Horace, the station’s radio program and operations manager, in an email. He added that at “a time when our society feels more divided than ever, sports continue to bring people together, reminding us that we’re not that different after all.” 

“Listener feedback has been very positive so far,” Horace said. “We’ve had several listeners tell us they appreciate the depth of the storytelling.”