The Josh Innes Show - Is The NFL Redzone Ruined?

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

People are pissed because the NFL Redzone Channel will have commercials for the first time ever. GASP. I know I've said it before, but I don't get the appeal of the Redzone Channel. That said, let me explain how the media business works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. So one of the things that was really pissing people off yesterday was the news that the NFL Red Zone would have commercials. And this had everybody ticked off. This was like a major talking point all over social media.

Oh, my God, the NFL and the relationship with the espion is ruined and blah, blah, blah. And I know we've talked about this before, but I don't get the red zone. It's just it's something that I've never, like I don't get the appeal of it. I like to be in control of what I'm watching. Like maybe this just sounds like I'm a douche, but I don't like to be at the mercy of someone else as it relates to what moment and what game I'm watching. I don't need Scott Hanson and the people at the NFL or NFL Network or ESPN determining what game is most important for me to see.

Not to say I don't get the concept of the channel. And I get that not everybody can buy NFL Sunday ticket because not everybody's got a wife that's so obsessed with it that she must have it. I do. Jilly loves the Sunday ticket. Plus, she wants to watch Texans games and they're out of market. Back when the Saints were even remotely decent, I wanted to watch all the Saints games. So it was cool. But I liked having the opportunity to pick and choose what I wanted to watch at that moment.

And the Red Zone didn't do that for me. But anyway, let me play a couple commercials and we'll continue. All right. week, baby, and we are ready for football with Draft King's Sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the National Football League. You know, I love my live bets, but I'll also put in some pregame spread bets over unders, anytime touchdowns, we do it all. And get this, new customers.

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boxed format will have an ad in one box in a game and another. In addition, the ads audio will be heard instead of game audio. It is the end of the world for a lot of people. I don't think people understand how important commercials are to things. The hard part, the hard part I guess they're running into here is when you've spent years not having commercials and then now you do it and it's fresh off of you making this move, this merger type of deal with ESPN, I can see where people view it and are negative about it. But get over it. Chill the fuck out. You know, look, I work on a radio station that has nine minute commercial breaks. Nine. We don't have enough listeners to warn having nine minute commercial breaks. Like,

We're trying to build something here, you know. We're trying to grow this thing. And like, I'll play, you know, Pearl Jam or some shit. We go to commercial. It will have like nine minutes of commercials. There are more commercials in the first half hour of my show by like a thousand percent than you're going to get in seven hours of game action on the NFL network or wherever you're going to watch Red Zone.

And oh, by the way, you're still seeing the fucking games while the commercial pops up. Chill the fuck out. Like, I don't think people. realize how much this shit costs, like, the rights deals for these. Like, they are lost leaders. Like, ABC, CBS, whoever has football rights will never make money on them. It is impossible. The reason you spend the money, if you're a CBS or whatever, the reason you spend money on the NFL

is not because you're going to be, you're never going to make your nut. It's like this. When the Texans came to Houston, they became a team in 2002. CBS, the company I worked for, CBS Radio would eventually work for seven years later. But when they got the deal for the Texans, they signed a 10-year deal to carry Texans games, and they paid $7 million a year to carry football games on the radio. They never made money on that. Like the radio station on its own didn't generate enough revenue to cover the $7 million just for the Texans.

So, Josh, why do you carry the Texans if you're never going to make money on it? It's called being a lost leader. And you know you're going to lose money on it, but it helps you in every other area. It helps you to say we have the Texans games. It helps your weekly programming to know that you're the home of the Texans. There are not many radio stations, if any, that have the rights fees, that pay for the rights fees for games and make money on them. That's why, and here's a little inside baseball for you, That's why, like in Houston, after that initial deal was up, that 10-year $7 million deal,

where CBS was $7 million in the whole when the year started because they were paying $7 million to the Texans. Here's the deal. And I'm sure I've explained this before, but it's kind of interesting. And some cities still do this or do this and some don't, or they do some kind of hybrid of it. But when that deal was up, the deal they worked with them was a deal where the Texans, instead of getting paid $7 million a year for the rights, the Texans would just own all of the inventory on the games, and then we're giving ancillary programming as well.

So what do I mean by that? What I mean is instead of the CBS radio people going out trying to sell the Texans games on the radio to try to make back as much of that $7 million as possible, now the CBS people don't have any opportunity to sell in-game. advertising because it's all owned by the Texans. But the benefit is, you're not paying $7 million. So while you're not making money on the broadcast, the fact that it is on your station and keeps you as the voice of the Texans or the home of the Texans, you are not having to pay $7 million. You still get the Texans games, and it helps you, in theory, the rest of the week.

So when you hear Texans radio and Mark Vandermere is on the air, that two hours is not owned by CBS, or in this case now it's Odyssey. It's not owned by Odyssey, that is owned by the Texans. So when you listen on a Monday morning, when the morning show from 610 is only on from 6 to 8, that is owned by the radio station. Every ad that runs during that is sold by the radio station. From 8 to 10 or whatever it is that Mark is in there with John Harris, they own 8 to 10. So I don't know if they've worked a deal where the station gets any inventory in that,

where they can sell their own spots, probably not. that two hours is then owned by the Texans. So that's why they take the two dudes from 610 off, and that is why it becomes Mark Vandermere and whoever he has in there with him. That's why back when I used to interview Gary Kubiak, that's the way the setup was. We kind of picked who interviewed Gary Kubiak. Once it changed, and they owned the Gary Kubiak show at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on Mondays,

Josh Ennis is out, and it becomes Rich Lord and Mark Vandermere interview. Gary Kubiag. You see what I'm saying? It's just, it's the way of the world. A lot of cities are doing that. I think Dallas is like that. I don't believe CB or I keep saying CBS. I don't think Odyssey pays rights fees for Cowboys games. But Jerry owns that interview section. The team owns different coaches shows and other shit. There's maybe slightly different than the Houston one, but I think they're similar. And that's happening in other cities as well. But in some cities where the sports matter more, you're still like here in Detroit, I'm fairly certain that Odyssey is paying rights fees for Lions games and Tigers games. They're paying for those. I would imagine in Chicago, like the Bears are probably still a rights fee thing. In Boston, there's still rights fees. The Cardinals, I know for a fact, the Cardinals, KMOX still pays a rights fee to carry the Cardinals. It is not a trade type of thing. Houston is not unique in that way, but there's still a lot of places that are paying for rights fees.

And it also depends on how important the team is, right? Like, if it's a throwaway team, they'll pay, there's some that pay to be on the air. Texas A&M paid six figures to have their games on the radio on 97-5 in Houston. But the catch was you also had to carry their shitty basketball games. That's why sometimes you'd be in there and you'd be listening to Fred and A.J., and they'd be like, yeah, sorry, the A&M Aggies are playing in Honolulu today for the Maui tip-off or whatever. And sorry, we have to go now, and you'll be listening to the Aggies take on Kent State. You know, some shit like that.

Why do I bring this up and what does it have to do with the Red Zone? these people have to find ways they know they're not going to make money on this but they have to find ways to mitigate their losses it's pretty fucking cool and this is going to make me sound like i'm some corporate shilled dickhead here but it's pretty fucking cool that in this era you have a channel like red zone that will show you every key moment of every game because 20 years ago 25 years ago 30 years ago that wasn't an option so if the sacrifices is that you have to watch a 15 second spot while in a double box with another game. So you're watching the game and you're seeing a 15 second spot. If that's all you have to do there, shut the fuck up. And I get that like you've had something one way forever. So now that it's not, it feels like, oh, this is corporate America bullshit. I hate to break it to you.

Like the reason why I have to stop this podcast, you know, 60 seconds in to eat. episode. It's because I need those ads to play because that's how I get paid. Otherwise, I wouldn't get paid to do this. I don't go on sell ads anymore. I used to when I was doing it initially. I sold shit myself. So I would go out and have sponsors that were local. I'm not doing that anymore. They play some ads here. I make a couple of bucks. And that helps me pay the rent great. Makes it worthwhile doing this. Cool. But like, you watch a game on TV. You want a bitch. Look at the amount of commercials you have to see and how often they come during these games.

Like, there are things to bitch about that I'm cool with. Like, dude, I love college football. I don't need a 25-minute halftime so the fucking band can play the soundtrack from fucking guys and dolls. I don't need 25 fucking minutes. And, oh, by the way, these guys are paid athletes now. Why the hell do I need to give them a 25-minute break while NFL dudes get like 10? Why do we need to do that?

Like, there are things that are fair to bitch about. I don't think it's fair to sit around and bitch that you have to see a couple of minutes of commercials over seven. fucking hours. Again, I'm on the radio. We play 10, we play like 15 to 20 minutes of commercials every hour. So, I would chill out a little bit on that. I'm not trying to be, hey, you know, count your blessings guy here. But if you love the red zone, what's changing about it? Oh, there's a, there's going to be a spot that pops up while you're, oh, here's the bills. The bills are on the verge of scoring against the Texans on this one. Let's double box it really

quick so you can hear about the you know the wanton tacos at applebees is that really something to lose your mind over and maybe it's because i work in the media industry and see the way like and those are the other things like i think some people live in a delusional world but they don't understand how things work like i was talking to a buddy of mine he's a guy that was a sports talk show host and recently left his gig and he had a contract thing and he'd been in a station for a while and I asked him, why did you leave? And he goes, well, we couldn't come to terms on money. They didn't want to pay me what I was worth.

And I'm not telling you anything I didn't tell him. I'm not going to tell you who it is. You can try to connect the dots if you'd like, but I'm not going to tell you who it is or the actual terms. But he told me what the terms were. And I told him, like, you realize when I got, like, I'll just give my Nashville job as an example, because that's like the first job I had after having that 610 job or the 790 job where I made a lot of money. I said, I was out of work for like two years. They came to me to be a disc jockey, essentially, a morning guy on a music station in Nashville,

and they paid me $60,000. But I had to say yes, because I had no other options. Now, by the time two years were up, and they were offering me a new deal, that deal was $90,000. But that was $90,000 to be a morning guy in Nashville. This guy was asking for, like, double that to be a sports guy. on a station that no one was listening to and didn't generate revenue. And I asked him, I'm like, what, like, do you understand what value is? Value isn't just like, hey, I come to work and people call and bitch.

Like, do you generate revenue? That's why I got myself in trouble in St. Louis, because I knew I wasn't generating revenue, and I knew that I wasn't worth the money they were paying me. So I knew my time was going to be short. The only value you have, especially in this industry, is what do you generate revenue-wise? Because there are people that, what was the discussion about how, oh, about Colbert and how Colbert, like, his ratings were so good. He was the top late night show. Great.

What does that mean for revenue? Ratings don't equal revenue, right? Like, the way you determine if a movie is successful is if it generates great box office numbers versus the money it costs to make and advertise and promote it. The way you determine success is not ratings in radio or TV. It's how much money you generate. That's how you determine your value. value and I was like dude I like you you're my buddy but the money you're asking for most people in major markets big cities aren't making that type of shit anymore like I don't think you have a

fair adequate scope of reality and some people don't some people just lack the ability to see reality and that's a guy that's in the industry so the fact that he didn't get it I was blown away but going back to red zone like there's a lot of people who struggle to understand that only having to see 60 seconds worth of commercials over seven hours, you can fucking deal with it because it could be worse. Watch a game on television. See how many timeouts happened in the last two minutes of a game. That's a pain in the ass.

So stop bitching over, you know, 60 seconds worth of the spots over seven hours. Deal with it.