Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Richard Deitsch talks Kevin Harlan, potential Paramount-Warner Bros. merger

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Marshall Harris and Mark Grote were joined by Richard Deitsch of the Sports Business Journal to discuss a variety of sports media storylines.

Rahimi Harrison Grody, Midday's Tindal 2 on Chicago Sports Radio 1043, the score. Wouldn't have a lot of time. Now Bill Self and his staff making sure they know, no fouls. This is going to be Darling. He's got to go. Darling puts it up. Our guy, the voice of Kevin Harlan,

calling St. John's last second win over Kentucky, 67, 65. as seen on CBS. Dylan Darling, with that last second layup, Petino against Self, and the man narrating it, Kevin Harlan doesn't get any better than that. As a matter of fact, Kevin will be one of the topics of our next discussion,

which we are happy to report is with, here on Rahimi Harrison Grody, with the one and only Richard Deich, host of the Odyssey podcast Sports Media with Richard Deich, also sports business journal contributor. He is on Zoom right now. You could follow him on X at Richard Deich as we welcome onto the Rahimi Harris and Grody Show on the score.

What's going on, Richard? How are you? Fellas, as always great to be here. You know, whenever I'm on your station, and I love Chicago because it is very, very similar to my city, Toronto. I always like to, you know, see I punk it up, where you say something like, you know, where else would you rather be on a Monday afternoon

than in the great city? of Chicago, Illinois. I love the cell, Richard. That has got me excited, and it's my show. We appreciate you stopping by. This Kevin Harlan's story was so interesting to me because people don't understand how much this man has to travel. I think the travel piece of this is the most iconic of the things he's doing.

Obviously, he's a great broadcaster. We have him on the station all the time. Can you walk me through and maybe the people out there just how difficult it is to from one place to another on any given assignment because he's got different bosses and different priorities, but he still is able to not miss work. And we all miss work because of flight cancellations and everything else. Yeah, especially now. So it was great to profile Kevin Harlan, which I did for Sports Business Journal. It gave me a lot of time. So I was able to, I feel like got to get a sense of his life. So Harlan is very old school. And he doesn't have an assistant. He doesn't have like a travel

advisor. So what he does on any given week is he will figure out the best route for him depending on his employer. So right now he's working for CBS for the NFL and obviously March Madness a little bit. Works for Prime Video when it comes to the NBA and then works for Westwood One. So during the football season, you know, he's always in two different markets on a Sunday and a Monday. And what he'll do very early in his week is he'll price out all the different flights. that can take him from A to B. He prices out the backups, and sometimes the backups to the backups. So he always has a plan in the event that, like,

there's some kind of travel issues or flights delayed or something like that. And he keeps all of this on these handwritten calendar journals. It is not a phone guy or anything like that. He really literally does it old school. You know, in handwritten lettering on these calendars. the journals that he's kept for 30, 40 years at this point. He travels more than 150,000 miles a year. He does everything, like you said, separately. So what CBS wants is not necessarily what Prime Video wants, and he has to try to keep that very, very separate. And the interesting

thing, this is a trick, and obviously your listeners can use this as well. You know, he's based in Kansas. And one of the things he always will use is he uses Midwestern airports like Chicago. as a hub where in the event it gets a little tricky with travel. He always believes that he can get to where he needs to get to if he's in a Chicago or Detroit, as opposed to a smaller airport somewhere where there may be, let's say, you know, like one flight a day. So that's one of the tricks that he uses is that he's willing to,

he'll sleep overnight in a Chicago, and then like at 6 a.m. or 5 a.m., he figures that if he's getting into a little bit of dicey travel trouble, he'll be able to get the flight to where he needs to make it. And then lastly, sometimes things just happen, and the guy has to rent a car, like a couple of months ago, rented a car from, he had to be in Ann Arbor. And I believe he rented a car from Green Bay

and drove seven and a half hours from Green Bay to Ann Arbor so he could make a noon tip off in Ann Arbor. Hey, there is security in that, man. No funny stuff usually when you're driving as opposed to the airlines. and as we said coming in, it is tough out here right now. We could talk about Kevin Harland for an hour probably. It's one of our favorite guests, but we have finite amount of time with you, Richard.

So I want to get into the college basketball, the tournament coverage so far, and I'm tempted to just ask you the general question of what do you like and what you don't like. And you could take that and run with it too, but I do want to ask one specific question, a what did you think moment of the game, the first round game where you had, Brian Anderson, who had no voice. He had laryngitis for the game, but you had Charles Barkley and Dick Vital doing a sports talk radio show is the way it felt. What did you think of that game? And if you'd like to take it in different directions too on things that you liked and didn't like so far about the NCAA tournament and the coverage on the many networks. Yeah, so listen, I'm happy for both Barkley and Vital. They've wanted to work together for a long time. And in television, prior to like, let's say the last five, years or so, less three years or so.

Networks did not want their talent on another network. They always thought it was like a significant competitive imbalance. They wanted to keep their talent very specific to their mediums. And they've gotten better at this. I think they now realize that all publicity is good publicity. And if you allow your talent to go on another network, it's just going to end up being good publicity for you. It also helps with your own talent relations. It makes your talent happy.

So I'm glad that Vital and Barclay got to do a game together. Like honestly, would I want those guys to do a full season together? No. To be very blunt. Like at a certain point with Vital, and this was even Vital and his prime, like, it's very good for me in doses. But I wouldn't want an entire season of, you know, the sort of over-the-top histrionics and the love affair from Mike Shashefsky. Like at a certain point, you know, it's a little painful for me. I do love Berkeley, though.

I like seeing him on different outlets. so I thought that was cool. You know, in terms of the tournament itself, I think CBS and Turner now, and I wouldn't say they're on autopilot, but I really think they do a very good job on the production. Like the tournament just, like, is really, really fun to watch. They don't miss calls. It's, you know, they have a great feel of sort of when to show the crowd, when to show the game.

And also, I think they have their best group of broadcasters in terms of the teams that I've ever seen. there's really not. I mean, if you go through the first five broadcast groups or even six, like they're all good. And they could probably all do the finals if they wish. Like I think I, no offense to Jim Nath, but I and Eagles is a better basketball broadcaster than Jim. He's terrific. And that's like, that's, that's an improvement there. I think the raftery Grand Hill I and Eagle team has actually worked. I'm a big fan of Andrew Catalan and Steve Lapis. I think that's a great team. They call a really good game. So to me, like the tournament has been

well done. You're always going to have people who don't love studio talent. Like I've seen online like there's been some criticism in Nate Burleson. He doesn't really bother me that much. I get the fact that there are hardcore college basketball fans who don't want the NBA guys there and they think it sort of cheapens the sport. But you have to remember, this is ultimately in the day. This is a television show. You know, and like these guys pay a lot of money. And if you pay a lot of money, you're going to have Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley and your, you know, Turner talent. or not Turner anymore, but WBD talent on a very, very big property like that. So I think you just, you have to sort of accept that's the case.

I'm trying to, you know, like the one thing I would say, like, I actually just happen to hear the Odyssey Sports Minute. I'm not sure who did it, but I couldn't disagree more with that 40-second take there. Because to me, the tournament remains great when an underdog can make a play into the second week. Like, I get it. You don't want high point to play necessarily for the title, which I think you do want them to get to the second weekend. That, to me, is, like, what makes the sport great. So I'm hoping that the NIL era does not eliminate us from any kind of second round in Sweet 16,

where we get, like, one or two FDUs or George Mason or something like that, because I think that still gives the tournament, like, kind of its secret sauce. That's what makes it. That's to me what makes it compelling. Yeah, Richard Dichich, joining us to host of the Odyssey Podcast, Sports Media, with Richard Deich. He's also a sports business journal contributor. And I think it gives the charm that it has, Richard, overall, the idea that somebody

double-digit C can go on and do big things. Texas is not included because I don't really, I mean, I know they got an 11 next to their name, but I don't call them a double-digit seat. I'm really curious to your thoughts on this Warner Brothers cell to Paramount and what that means for us the sports consumer going forward because I don't think it's good, but also I can't do anything to stop it. Yeah, listen, man, I grew up in New York. So like, I'm a de facto not a fan of billionaires. If billionaires want something, I generally go the opposite of that as just as a, as a general life guidance rule. No, I don't think, I mean, the consolidation for, if you're a sports

fan, it's sort of TBD. The reality is like the combination of CBS's properties and Warner Brothers discovery properties would give them the second best set of sports kind of, you know, sports properties behind DSPN. But the reality is they're not going to be able to keep all of them because they have to ultimately re-up with the NFL. And, you know, Paramount, David Ellison, NFL officials, they've already sort of indicated to you that they're going to, you know, they're going to opt out early and they're going to resign and extend that contract early. So if I had to guess, I think there will be some Warner Brothers discovery properties that go to the open market. Like, you know, could that be like the French Open? Could that be the

NHL? You know, we'll end up seeing. But I don't see the combined companies retaining all of those properties. But generally speaking, from my perspective, when you see mergers and major mergers, two things happen. One, people get laid off. And I was part of a massive merger way back in the day when I first started my career, AOL and Time Warner merged. It was like essentially the worst business merger in the history of America, and a ton of people lost their jobs. So that's what will happen, generally speaking. You will see people at Warner Brothers Discovery or CBS lose jobs. We may not know they may not be front facing, so they may not be famous people per se,

but there will be people who lose jobs. And then inevitably, the consumer usually pays somehow at the end of this because the sports rights go up and they're going to pass that on to the consumer. So if you have something like Paramount Plus, I would expect the price of that, you know, two or three years from now to go up. Generally speaking, when it comes to media mergers, the consumers end up paying and people lose their jobs. That is just a history of what happens, and that's what I bet on. Richard, a couple of baseball things. First, TV, and then we got a radio question for you as well.

So I think I have it straight now with baseball this year. That NBC slash Peacock will have the Sunday night game. Fox will have their Saturday games with our guy, Adam Amin. Jason Benetti on the NBC call. ESPN will have weekday games. TBS will have Tuesday games. Have they sort of this out properly? Who's the real rights holder?

And who's your favorite broadcast team out of this bunch? Yeah. The winner of all this is Rob Manfred, who just used the gift basically of the guy like throwing money into the air and like, you know, catching it because that's what MLB has always done. They don't really have a consumer-friendly national policy. You have to have multiple different outlets to watch all this stuff.

Now, away from the traditional greed of all sports organizations, I think some of the names you mentioned are great. I love Adam Amin like you guys do. I'm a big, as we say in wrestling, I'm a big Jason Benetney Mark. I think that was a great hire by NBC. You guys obviously know him in your market for his days with the White Sox. That's a great hire and that feels ready to me like a big broadcast. and I expect NBC to put on a good show for that. I'm glad to see ESPN remain in baseball

because I think it's important for the sport to have a relationship with ESPN because even though sports center is not the same as it used to be and ESPN's not the same, you still want to have them be interested in your sport because they're just too powerful an entity where you don't want to be buried. And MLB's got a really good story to tell.

So I think, you know, of all the sort of the team you mentioned, I think they'll all be fun. I guess the one thing I'll just be paying attention to, this is more of a nerdy kind of sports media thing, is Benetti's not working with a singular partner. Every one of those games, he's going to basically be working with local analysts. Okay. And it'll be interesting just to see how that sounds for the viewer,

because I know over the years writing this stuff, I can't tell you how many people are like, why can't I get my local play-by-play person, you know, right? Why can I get my local analyst? Well, this will be an experiment. well, where at least, at least in the analyst position, you'll have somebody who knows the team much more than your traditional network guys who just parachute in. So it'll be interesting to see if that sounds, but I think Benetti's just so good as a play-by-play person. I think you can honestly put them with anybody and it'd be a good broadcast.

Real quick here, with all the difficulties that have been written about and talked about here, with the RSNs being in trouble on television, Would it be fair to say that radio play-by-play is as sturdy as it's ever been or no? I think it depends on the market. You guys are in a great market that appreciates radio still, right? That appreciates history. So I think in a market like Chicago, I think you'll always be in a pretty good position, I think, when it comes to radio broadcasting. Smaller markets, the one thing I can tell you is they're spending much less money

when it comes to traveling on the road. You know, a lot of times they won't set their broadcast teams. on the road for radio. They're calling games back in whatever the whole market is, which is brutal, brutal for the broadcasters. And you've got some talented broadcasters have to call it off a monitor, which is not easy to do. So that's where like the money, I think in big markets, at least in the near term, you'll still have a pretty good presence. The New York's, the Boston's, the Chicago's, places like that. But smaller markets, man, I hate to say it, most of these places

are trying to do stuff on the cheap. And so you'll see them cutting back And one of the things they're really cutting back on is travel where they just, they won't send, they won't send people on the road anymore, which is a shame. Because I think it's not, I think it's not forward thinking. I mean, radio has a great connection with the audience. I would argue a better connection with the audience in terms of intimacy than television. And so I would want my people there on the road because I think there's value to doing that. But listen, I can barely manage myself and I'm not managing any company, so no one's listening to me.

Richard, we listen to you, man. Great stuff, as always. Thanks for coming on the score as usual, man. Thanks, Richard. I appreciate it. Thank you to the great city of Chicago. You're the best, man. I love that.

You're the best. All that stuff he gave us right there. That's so good. Richard Dight, the host, he's on our team, the host of the Odyssey podcast, Sports Media, with Richard Dight. And yes, baseball is back. Opening night is live on Netflix this Wednesday night.

Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees clash with Raphael Devers and the San Francisco Giants. MLB opening night, Yankees, Giants, live on Netflix, Wednesday at 7 p.m. Halftime is next here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie on the score.