Sports Media Roundtable: Are the Knicks returning to the Finals of national interest, and Pat McAfee lands multiple sport commissioners.
Sports Media with Richard Deitsch
Audacy
4.5 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
Episode 626 of the Sports Media Podcast features a roundtable with Jon Lewis, editor and founder of Sports Media Watch; Armand Broady, the co-host of the Sports Media Watch podcast and a contributor to SMW, and Derek Futterman, a multimedia writer and producer for Sports Media Watch. In this podcast we discuss the NBA Finals; why the Spurs being in the Finals would be much better for viewership; whether the Knicks have viewership juice because of New York City; why Wemby is such a TV draw; ESPN's Pat McAfee landing multiple league commissioners; why the league heads went on McAfee; why McAfee's juice continues growing at ESPN; the NHL having a renaissance season; how much interest we have in the Rafa Nadal doc on Netflix, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Sports Media podcast. |
| 0:09.4 | I'm your host, Richard Deich. |
| 0:10.3 | My producer, James Jackson. |
| 0:11.7 | This is the annual Saturday. |
| 0:14.1 | It's not really an annual. |
| 0:15.0 | This is the weekly Saturday. |
| 0:16.8 | Media roundtable. |
| 0:18.2 | And we have the regulars back. |
| 0:20.0 | Three of the regulars back. John Lewis, |
| 0:21.9 | founder and editor of Sports Media Watch, Armon Brody. Polly gets Sports Media Watch. He does it all there. |
| 0:27.4 | Has this Derek Futterman at Sports Media Watch. As I've continued having you guys on, I feel like I've |
| 0:33.2 | shortened your titles every week. My apologies on that. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to devalue Derek and Armand what you do. But John, it's just so easy to do. Founder and editor is like so perfect. Anyway, well- I'm all for efficiency. There you go. Welcome to the three of you. All right, so here we'll start with this. We're taping this on Friday. Obviously, because we're taping us on Friday. We don't know what the NBA finals will be. We know it's the Knicks. We just don't know if it's Knicks Thunder or Nix Spurr. I believe it will be Nick's Thunder, but I would certainly be overjoyed if it's Nix Spurs because I think that would be a fascinating series as well. So John Lewis, let me start with you. The NBA has had some very, very good |
| 1:12.8 | numbers, like relatively over the last week. I think a big reason for that. I imagine you will |
| 1:19.0 | agree with me as well as it. It's been on the network, right? You get NBC, so your reach is going to be |
| 1:24.0 | bigger. But the Spurs Thunder has been compelling, and we're also now |
| 1:28.0 | in a game seven. So obviously, we're going to get some numbers there. I want to ask the three |
| 1:32.6 | of you this. Like, do you think it matters between who wins, between the Thunder and Spurs |
| 1:38.8 | regarding what kind of like viewership the NBA Finals will get. Let me start with you, John. |
| 1:45.1 | Absolutely. |
| 1:46.5 | So San Antonio is the driving force behind the ratings, which is kind of amazing, right? |
| 1:53.8 | Yes. |
| 1:54.2 | You were old enough, of course, to remember the spurs were the ultimate ratings drag. |
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