After leaving Grantland and ESPN, Jonah Keri is quickly becoming one of the busiest men in sports media.
Earlier this month Keri announced he was joining Sports Illustrated and MLB Network. It was later revealed that he would be doing a podcast for Nerdist. Now CBS Sports will make it official today that Keri is joining them to cover baseball, and perhaps more interestingly, pop culture, for CBSSports.com.
Seeing Keri at CBS is important and newsworthy for a couple reasons. First, CBS just parted ways with MLB insider Jon Heyman, who was the site’s go-to baseball authority. Keri immediately fills that void, albeit with a much different skill set. Second, the signal that Keri will cover both sports and pop culture is a signal that CBS is pushing into more diversified areas of content.
In talking with Jeff Gerttula, SVP/GM of CBS Sports Digital, the shift towards picking up where Grantland left off and doing more pop culture is a sign of where the digital age is going with more traffic coming through mobile and tablet than ever before and more focus on moving beyond just traditional sports content.
“We see changes in content consumption and consumer interests happening at a fairly rapid rate. The last five years there have been a lot of changes in what people are consuming and how and the Jonah Keri hire plays into that. We’re looking for people who can work cross-platform whose content resonates on mobile and on desktop, people who are strong on video, who can drive content on social,” Gerttula said.
CBS is arguably the most traditional sports network on the television side of things, known for not rocking the boat and sticking with tried and true veterans and straight-forward coverage of sporting events. But their digital arm has shown it isn’t shy to try new things. The @CBSSports Twitter handle has broken from other major networks and focused more on social memes to gain further traction and reach new audiences.
Gregg Popovich will coach the Western Conference All-Stars and is probably ecstatic. pic.twitter.com/BY9VI3f9oh
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) January 27, 2016
It’s no accident to see CBSSports.com move in this direction. According to Gerttula, it’s part of a plan that includes social, mobile, video, and even over-the-top streaming to reach sports fans in new and more modern ways. And pop culture is a big part of it.
“The pop culture angle, Grantland drove the boundaries there and advancing that pop culture meets sports content. What we’ve seen is that content works on mobile and with younger audiences and we see a shift in that direction.”
So far, the intentional shift in strategy has been working, at least from a numbers standpoint, as CBS has risen to 4th in the latest comscore rankings. But from a perception standpoint, the Keri hire is also significant as it shows CBS can still be a destination for major sports media personalities instead of merely a pit stop before heading elsewhere.
