Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, January 19th.

Today on Forbes, Colin Cowherd cranks up the volume on his podcast network.

At 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time each weekday, the moment the herd goes off the air on Fox Sports

Television Network and across more than 400 local radio stations, Colin Cowherd's

job as one of the most well-known sports talk hosts in the country ends, and he immediately

begins working in a role he's come to enjoy perhaps even more, running his own media company.

If the 62-year-old Cowherd is like a franchise quarterback for Fox in the morning, he switches

positions to describe his work at the volume in the afternoon.

He says, quote, this is my NFL general manager job. I just own it.

Because Calhurt is earning NFL quarterback-sized paychecks from Fox Sports and IHeart

Media subsidiary Premier

Networks, which produce his show for TV and radio respectively, and pay him a combined

$16 million per year, according to Forbes' estimates.

Cowherd has chosen to build his company without taking a salary or a single dollar of

outside investment.

In this boom time for independent content production companies, in 2020, Spotify paid a

reported $250 million for Bill Simmons' The Ringer, and IHeart sheld out $200 million last

year to podcast Deity Charlemagne the God to build out his Black Effect Network, it may prove to

eventually be a far more lucrative venture. Since its founding in 2021, Cowherd has built the volume

into a podcast network with 60 employees and 25 shows, from hosts including ex-athletes

Richard Sherman and Jeff Teague, rappers Fat Joe

and Jadicus, and hot take artists like Fox Sports's Nick Wright. The company says it draws

...