Where is “a place that Dan Steinberg does not record sports podcasts?” (Barry Svrluga / The Washington Post)
Longtime D.C. sports radio personality Andy Pollin will become the latest Washington media member to jump into sports podcasting. The former ESPN 980 host, who helped launch Washington sports-talk radio 25 years ago, will debut his weekly D.C. sports podcast Monday July 3. The show will be recorded in front of a live audience at the Chatter studio in Friendship Heights., the podcasting hub built by Tony Kornheiser and his restaurant-industry partners.
Pollin’s weekly show, which will run between 50 and 70 minutes, will feature a weekly big-name local sports guest, who will sit in the studio for the lunchtime tapings. The show also will include Pollin’s trademark historical bent, with “Old-School Andy” segments and other retrospectives on local sports.
The show will join several other local sports podcasts that have launched in recent years, including Thom Loverro’s “Cigars and Curveballs,” Dan Kolko’s “Between Innings,” Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier’s “DC Quick Pitch,” CSN’s “RedskinsTalk,” and, of course, Kornheiser’s daily show.
(Full disclosure: Pollin is a Washington Post contributor.)
(Full disclosure: I keep bugging my bosses to let me do a D.C. sports podcast, even though I don’t have anything particular I’d like to say and my voice sometimes sounds to listeners like the melodious tones of a strangled drug-abusing rooster. Why do I want to do a podcast? I don’t know. I guess because everyone does a podcast. And I’ve run out of things to write, so maybe screaming about Nate Schmidt and anonymously critical Nationals players and runny cheese would be a better use of my time. I’m pretty sure a little part of every sports reporter’s heart is secretly dedicated to the belief that people would love to hear them speak for 50 to 70 minutes a week.)
(Full disclosure: If you bombard the sports department office with requests for a Washington Post sports podcast, it wouldn’t help. Not that you shouldn’t do it anyhow.)
(Full disclosure: Sorry, Andy, for taking over the space meant to promote your new podcast. Yours has at least one major advantage over mine, in that it exists.)
Anyhow, Bob Snyder — a former Washington radio GM who later ran ESPN Radio 1000 in Chicago — is now running a hometown podcasting group whose hosts include venerable Boston sportswriter Bob Ryan. The goal is for Pollin’s podcast to be for Washington something like what Ryan’s show is for Boston. The new show already has two local sponsors — Eagle Bank and the Top of the Yard rooftop bar overlooking Nats Park — and Pollin’s Monday recording plan would allow him to continue offering day-after reflections on the Redskins, something he’s done for most of the past quarter-century.
Pollin, it should be noted, continues to work in local sports radio — he and Loverro host a Saturday morning show on 106.7 The Fan — but time marches on, as they say.
“I’m not going to bite the hand that feeds me. I think there is still going to be a place for a long, long time for terrestrial radio,” he said. “But I also believe this is the way a lot of people are going. I don’t think it’s going to replace radio, but it’s a good supplement to it.”
