Month: April 2024

It’s a tough time for the media business. You may have heard. Headlines of layoffs and closures or consolidations in the greater media industry appear way too often. Amidst the ebbs and flows of news and media brands over the years, Awful Announcing has continued on, serving a sports media and business niche, even as competition for attention and the whims of social platforms change the game.

I recently interviewed Ben Koo, CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and primary owner of Awful Announcing and its sister site The Comeback. I often hone in on a theme or two in podcast interviews in these posts, but Koo covered so many interesting topics, let’s touch on a handful of big subjects:

• Surviving as Social Media Platforms Discouraged Outbound Traffic
• The Polarization and Hot Takes that Social Media Encourages
• Understanding Public Sentiment When a Minority Drives Internet/Social Content
• Measuring Success in the Multi-Platform Media World
• Content Aggregators and Mooches
• The Present and Future of the Media Industry

Surviving as Social Media Platforms Discouraged Outbound Traffic

Social media was a boon in the early days, a significant source of referral traffic (I’m old enough to remember going to ESPN.com and browsing for the best stories to read). Then the platforms realized the best way to drive revenue was to keep users on their sites or apps as much as possible. The trend has only gotten worse for publishers and now some algorithms even penalize posts with outbound links.

For sites like Awful Announcing, each algorithm tweak and drop in referral traffic can have a meaningful effect on their business. Koo and his team have to figure out how to balance feeding the platforms with content that’ll drive engagement while still giving fans a reason to click through to the site.

“We’re trying to do more in video,” he said. “We’re trying to be smarter about headlines where we get people interested, but we don’t give away the full story; we’re putting out the most interesting thing about what it is [while] hoping that people want to see more…

“Since Awful Announcing is creating content for a specific audience who’s thirsty for more details it’s not as big of a problem. But it’s still kind of discouraging because we think more people want to [discover] our content, and when it’s being throttled down, just because of new initiatives algorithmically, I don’t think it’s serving the users of those social platforms who have opted in to see our content but are randomly seeing, like, the For You page for Twitter [full] of crypto bots and what have you and Facebook meme pages. I hope it’s a trend that reverses.”

Awful Announcing knows they produce unique content and there’s an audience out there that wants to consume it. It may be more difficult for that audience to discover them and their content, but AA knows if you reach them, they will come (a bastardization of the old Field of Dreams quote, eh?). Koo said their originality, cultivating relationships between the writers and readers, and dedication to expanding their platforms are all key to continued survival in this new era.

Here’s Koo: “I think original content and original voices and being accessible on more platforms, which is something that we’re slowly kind of prioritizing more and more, really good quality voices, and being on more platforms, whether that’s a TikTok, Instagram, we’ve been promoting our content a lot more on Reddit, because I think some people have kind of moved from Twitter to Reddit in terms of content discovery…

“We’re putting in a lot more energy into trying to be at the places where people are because the existing traffic mix has decided that it’s not good for them for other people to drift away from those social media platforms. So we need to be on more platforms. We need to have more original voices. We need to have direct relationships, not only from the site to people, but also writer to readers — so more people following their personal accounts. It’s a major effort and it’s going to affect everyone in media, so we’re trying to figure out the best we can.”

The Polarization and Hot Takes that Social Media Encourages

Social platforms and their prioritization of engagement to reach users have also profoundly affected media across all mediums. Content that elicits a reaction tends to get amplified, and we’ve seen that theme translate to countless debate shows and the rise of hot take artists, with some viewers/readers questioning the authenticity of such dedicated devil’s advocates. It would be easy for Awful Announcing to lean into it, but taking polarizing stances just for the sake of ‘engagement’ is not something Koo and his team want to be about.

“I think it would probably be long-term negative if we were just trying to be dishonest with our opinions for the sake of chasing it…,” he said. “People like to kind of chirp a little bit that we have favorites or this and that, but I just don’t see that. I think our reputation is generally neutral to positive with some nitpicks here and there.

“But we write so much content it’s impossible [to avoid]. I mean, we pissed off Stephen A Smith at South by Southwest. He said last night we should kiss his ass. And then he says Awful Announcing, first off they do good work most of the time, and then he went into [it]. But it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him complain, and it just comes with the territory. I think we do a pretty good job having opinions, covering the space, but not succumbing to the temptation of just hot takes for clicks.”

Understanding Public Sentiment When a Minority Drives Internet/Social Content

Awful Announcing still does lots of work related to its eponymous theme — identifying the bad and good (and otherwise notable) in announcing and sports broadcasting. But talk to any social/digital media professional and they’ll remind you that the vocal minority on Twitter and other social platforms and forums are just that — a loud minority. So while we may get seduced to think a couple dozen comments, let alone a single anonymous commenter, represent the opinion of the masses, the vast majority of the public is not expressing their opinion on these platforms. And even those who do speak up are predisposed to a polarizing take (you generally don’t go on Yelp to give a slightly above-average review, it’s either because you loved it or hated it). Awful Announcing can uncover some of the truth by watching trends and having diverse individuals and perspectives within their ranks.

“[Thinking about] where does the real sentiment lie — one thing is it’s good to have a good group and a diverse group in your own newsroom and on Slack. Kind of like, ‘Do we all hate this person? Oh, there are 3 or 4 people who don’t, and seven people who do, that’s interesting.’ So that is always helpful. I think if we were to put a Twitter thread or a Facebook poll or whatever on just about anyone — Tony Romo, Gus Johnson, Joe Buck, you’re going to get a big cluster of people who are fans, a big cluster of people who are some type of neutral and a big group of haters.

“Announcing is super subjective…Having a good newsroom with diverse opinions, being fair when we do write an opinion piece or critical piece, or putting other people’s comments — like people hated how this person called the end of the game. Another thing is just trends. So sometimes we do polls and we get 4000, 5000 replies and we’ll say ‘Rank the four NFL A booths that are not Amazon.’ So ESPN, ABC, CBS, FOX — which one’s your favorite? And if you saw Romo and Nantz a few years ago when that thing was at 40%, where there are four options, and then a few years later they’re in second or third and they’re at like 20% there’s a trend that we can kind of talk about that more people are getting annoyed with Tony Romo.

Measuring Success in the Multi-Platform Media World

Everything gets more data-driven with each passing year. Writers once were (and at some publications still are) beholden to page views and subscriptions from their individual stories. That’s what pays the bills, and paying the bills, at the end of the day, is pretty much all that matters. There is some nuance for Koo and Awful Announcing, and metrics have evolved a bit for them to define successful content. As someone who loves a good long-form Wright Thompson article (and who lives with data in my day job), it’s good to see the value and insights in different types of metrics for Awful Announcing where, yes, page views matter, but it’s not always that simple in the chase for continued success and revenue.

“We are making investments in video and hiring and whatever, but we are probably more locked in to page views because that’s just what keeps us paid,” said Koo. “We do like front page home page traffic as a big indicator where someone either typed into their [browser] AwfulAnnouncing.com, or they read a story and then clicked on the logo or the home to see what else they could find. Pages per visit is always encouraging to see if we’re doing better there. Time on site helps us with advertiser retention and higher programmatic ad bidding. When people see that people are on here, they’re seeing your ad units for 45 seconds or 2 minutes or three minutes as opposed to 17 seconds.

“[On social media], retweets, impressions on Twitter — how much did this tweet about an article or a piece of video get seen? Generally, as long as we’re profitable and growing, we’re happy. And I try to not have our team too focused on a million different statistics, but I think for us, we’re a little bit different because we’re not part of a larger entity.”

Content Aggregators and Mooches

We’re in the age of aggregation. There are lucrative newsletters based on aggregating headlines and summarizing articles. There are countless social media accounts making hay from lifting a notable quote or anecdote from a robust story by a publication (not to mention the Dov Kleimans of the world, mostly just reposting others’ content). News breakers like Adrian Wojnarowski and Adam Schefter are as well-known as ever, but their ‘bombs’ are merely the first spark for a conflagration of derivative articles, columns, podcasts, and posts. Some question the ethics of professional aggregation, but the bigger issue may be how it affects the ROI of putting resources into original reporting. This excerpt represents a small portion of the discussion with Koo about the themes within aggregation (including a great story involving the Bishop Sycamore story and subsequent documentary), as he touched on how the existing paradigm affects his business decisions around original reporting.

From Koo: “I think as long as you’re referencing where the quotes are from, that’s kind of fair. You’d like to see some links if they use it in an article…

“[Original reporting] doesn’t monetize that well. Every once in a while — we did this story about Kevin Brown, the announcer, getting suspended by the Baltimore Orioles. That story was great. We got a lot of traffic, [and] we do have 2 to 5 original reporting stories, where we’re trying to scoop something, per month, I’d say. Some of them get not that much traffic at all…Whenever we think we have something, we go for it, and as long as someone’s interested and wants to do the work, we go for it. But is there a monetary return on that work? You know, that’s where it’s good to have institutional backing, subscriptions, stuff like that. Because from an advertising standpoint, it’s hard to justify. But we do it because it’s important.”

The Present and Future of the Media Industry

Awful Announcing is nearly 20 years old. In this media environment, that might as well make them a gray-haired lady. So Koo and his team have surely been doing something right over the years. Sitting at the helm of the business for most of the site’s lifetime, Koo has seen much of the media crumbling around him while Awful Announcing keeps going. So it was interesting to get his take on where the greater media and publication industry is headed and what will separate the survivors from the rest in the years to come.

“Niche things that have subscriptions and events seem to be doing well. I think what hasn’t done well is scale for the sake of scale, and that’s like BuzzFeed merging with a bunch of things. I think Vox Media got really big. Complex just sold to a new place…you have basically seen all of these jobs that have been taken away and infrastructure at companies chasing scale for people who were not creating content. I look at us and every dollar that comes in, almost every dollar, a huge percentage goes to people creating content.

“I’m not seeing media as a great investment…even the successes in our space, which are few and far between, if you look at the price tag and what they thought they were going to be, they don’t really [turn] out as big successes, to a certain degree. So yeah, content’s going to be in an interesting place because it definitely helps to have money given to you to become something big and notable and influential, but do the economics work for investors to get their money back? A lot of places have come and gone…”

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Thanks to Ben for his thoughtful and articulate conversation on several compelling topics! The media paradigms may be evolving, but there will always be stories to tell, conversations to start, and content to consume, no matter your interest.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BEN KOO

READ THE SNIPPETS