The Josh Innes Show - "Small Market" NBA Finals Talk

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Don't worry, I'm not breaking down the NBA Finals. I am so annoyed that market sizes and ratings talk have become such a huge part of the sports media landscape. It seems the last 20+ years have seen a rise in media people focusing on this topic. Most people don't even understand it. I never watched sports thinking "Oh boy, I wonder what this matchup will do for the ratings!". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So the NBA Finals will start tomorrow and it should be a really good series actually We should see two teams that like to get up and down the floor. You've got a team like the Oklahoma City Thunder who can play defense. They can also score a shit ton I mean look the over-under for tomorrow's game one is 231 so there should be a fun game an up-tempo game, a game that's worth watching and I'm all for it. I'm down. I'm ready to watch. I enjoy it. Now, if I'm being honest, for the most

part, I just watch sporting events based on if I've been on them and if it's the last couple of minutes of the game. Like, I'm just not someone that's going to dedicate a ton of time to watching a full sporting event if I don't have some sort of monetary or team rooting interest in it. It's just not something I do. It's not something I'm interested in. Sue me. Now, I can sit around and watch a college football game all night, but an NBA basketball game, a college basketball game, a hockey game, a baseball game, I'm just not programmed that way anymore. As we've discussed on the pod before, I used to be that way. I think a lot of us were that way as kids. I think that's how we consume sports when

we had fewer options. Like I told you, I lived in Montana as a kid. We would get Utah Jazz games on TV and if you had 35, 40 channels, whatever you had, one of those had one sporting event and that sporting event was the Utah Jazz against the Denver Nuggets. Then we're watching the Utah Jazz and the Denver Nuggets. At least I recall having Utah Jazz games. We may have had the Utah Jazz and the Denver Nuggets. I don't remember but I know I used to watch a lot of Utah Jazz games with Hot Rod Hunley Stockton to the Mailman. Like I watched a shitload of those. But why do I bring this up? I bring this up not to discuss the NBA or break down the NBA Finals because really it's just not something I'm into. If I were doing radio

in Oklahoma City or in Indianapolis perhaps I would break down the NBA Finals but I love this idea that the world is discussing how small the two towns are that are in the NBA Finals. Let's get into that here after these commercials. The NBA Finals are finally here and after spending the playoffs all over the Pick Six app from Draft Kings. Well, we're ready for the championship round and this is your last shot to win some real cash before the season ends. The simplest way to get in on the action is downloading the Pick 6 app from DraftKings and it's super simple. Just pick more or less on the stats for two or more

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Terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos. I don't know when it started, but I think I know when conversations about television ratings as they related to sports really began and I know who I feel I can really credit for bringing ratings and that kind of analysis into the lexicon. I think part of it is you've just had more access to things now, you know in the last 25 years you can access anything you can go online and access ratings. You can access thousands of radio shows, TV

shows, all that. So it's not like you're just listening to one radio show or two radio shows. You can get information from a bunch of places. But the person who I point to and say this person is the main reason why ratings are such a big discussion and who's watching what and almost like a meta breakdown of sports and I give that credit to Colin Cowherd who at one time I thought was like the most brilliant talk show host ever when I was a board op in Baton Rouge. I would have to run the Cowherd

show sometimes on 1210 on the score 1210 AM and the score 1210.com right and that's where like I did that I would also have to run the Sean Hannity show on News Radio 1150 WJBO. So I'd have to sit there and fire off the commercials and pot down the feed and all that shit. So I would listen to a lot of Colin cow herd and when cow herd replaced Tony Kornheiser, I truly believe that Colin Cowherd was the best radio host I'd ever heard and people of my age.

You can hear his influence at almost every single person who does sports radio. That's 35 4045. Everybody's doing the same kind of things. People are making the analogies. People are talking about ratings. People are kind of looking at things like Meta people aren't looking at things as fans anymore, and the person who you can credit for that turn in the way sports media handles things and the way the

radio host handle things is Colin Cowherd. Just like Jim Rhoam inspired a whole era of people and the clones and the audio and the laughing and having fun, Colin Cowherd inspired a new era of people to sit there and basically tell you that it's dopey to be an actual fan of sports and to be a fan of teams and that wrestling fans are booger eaters and that blah blah blah blah blah. Okay but one of his big things is always talking about ratings and television. Now the average human that watches sports does not watch sports and give a shit about the market size of the two of them, right? Like it's almost like bringing on needless worry, right?

Like don't borrow worry, right? My grandma used to say that, son, don't borrow worry, you know? And it's like you're a fan of basketball and now you want basketball to be successful and you hate hearing that basketball ratings stink because guys like Clay Travis and others have really driven home that the NBA ratings stink and it's because of woke shit and that's everywhere. Trump and everybody talk about woke shit has killed the NBA and the ratings suck here and

the ratings suck here. People are addicted to talking about ratings now and I think part of it is because they choose to borrow worry because they love basketball and if they think the ratings stink then it's almost like they think that their league is like you know in peril or something. Maybe that's it. I don't know. But as a kid I never remember sitting there or even as a young adult I never never remember sitting there going. Yeah, you know, I mean the Bulls are in the finals and that's great, but the league has to hate that the Utah Jazz or the Seattle Super Sonics are in. They would much rather it be LA in there. I don't remember saying anything like that. I never remember going when I was a kid thinking boy, the Bulls championship was great, but was against Portland and I mean that's

lowly Portland and Portland's a small market and blah blah blah like I never watched sports that way. I never thought of sports. I never cared about the matchups in the finals of the World Series. Like when you'd watch the World Series did you really give a shit that the Cleveland Indians in a smaller market were in the World Series in what 1995 or whatever year that was? No, no one gave a shit. No one talked about it. We just watched sports. We enjoyed sports. We talked about sports. Then somewhere in this new era of this media world, it was decided by media people that the

discussion of the ratings and market size mattered. Now a bunch of people who don't have really any fucking concept of what market size means or what size TV markets are, radio markets are. Now those people get online and they bitch and they like they go into a finals like this, which if you're looking for a fun matchup, if your argument is basketball is boring, this series will not be a boring series. Now Game One could end up being a blowout by Oklahoma City.

They're really fucking good, but this should be an up-tempo, fun, high-scoring, but also a big defensive moment series because you got guys like Lou Dort who can D up on the perimeter. You got dudes like it's fun. This is a fun fucking series. Yet all people are talking about is, oh, there's just two small towns, who cares? And like, what's funny about this is it's people in like fucking New Orleans or people in fucking Memphis and shit like, boy, we

got two small fucking cities. Fuck you. Most people in this country live in these small cities. Most people across the country are living in Indianapolis type towns and Oklahoma City type towns and much smaller towns than that. Yet we're sitting here talking about how small and how terrible Indianapolis is and how terrible Oklahoma City is. Who gives a fuck? Watch things because you enjoy them. Watch the like, oh, I'm like, that's one of my main things I yell about all the time when

people talk about this is, you know, the league is so much better when the Knicks are good. The fuck it is. I've watched basketball since I was a kid. You know how often the Knicks have been good? Like three or four times ever. I'm 38, almost 39 years old. You know how many times the Knicks have been good at fucking basketball in my existence? For about a handful of years, they've been good. You know how many championships they've won in my existence? Zero. But you know how much I used to watch basketball? A shit ton. None of it has anything to do with whether or not the New York Knicks are good or not. But that's the kind of bullshit narratives you get from people and

idiot fans like Echo, these idiot hosts who only look at things via like the ratings world that they live in. So it's like, well, you know, this is bad for the NBA because you got two small market teams. How about this? If you fucking like basketball, then watch fucking basketball. Like, sure, New York versus LA would be a super attractive, large market finals. That's not going to make people in Indiana, Oklahoma City and everybody else watch it more. It just means that you've got bigger, a bigger pond to draw fish from in those two large markets that are interested in those two teams. But that's it. So of course that makes sense but if

you legitimately like a sport and dig a sport who gives a shit what market these teams are in? When Michael Jordan was beating the Utah Jazz you guys want to know what market you let's see what just see out of curiosity, US TV market by size. Let's see how big Salt Lake City is in terms of market. Now, for example, New York is number one, LA two, Chicago three, Dallas four, Philadelphia five, Houston six. That is TV markets. Where is Salt Lake City? Salt Lake City is number 28. So Salt Lake City, the Jazz, who were in the NBA

finals two years in a row against the Bulls. When you were watching Michael Jordan and the Bulls, did anybody go, yeah, this is really great, but imagine if he was taking on the Lakers in the finals or Dallas in the finals because that's a bigger city. No one thought that way because nobody gives a shit and this only comes up in sports like basketball and baseball or hockey, right? The Kansas City Chiefs are in market, television market 30. They're the biggest television property

in all of the NFL television market 30 and trust me Kansas City feels smaller than that. The biggest college football brands across the country come from smaller markets like Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Austin, Texas and Columbus, Ohio. So you can sit there and go on your radio shows and talk about ratings and as if any real person gives a shit. If you like basketball, you'll watch Indianapolis versus Oklahoma City. If you don't like the NBA, you won't fucking watch.

But I don't believe there'd be people watching more. Now, there would be more New York people watching if New York were in it. But if you're just an average casual Joe Blow fan out there, that's like it's Thursday, nothing's going on, I'm going to turn on the fucking TV and watch basketball tonight, you wouldn't be more apt to watch it if it were the New York Knicks because outside of New York Newsflash, no one gives a fuck about the New York Knicks. So if you're interested in basketball, you're kind of curious, you'll flip this game on and it doesn't matter if that was LA

versus New York or if it was Indiana versus Oklahoma City. I just hate that discussion. Like I'm looking at a headline here. Why these small-market Indiana versus Oklahoma City. I just hate that discussion. Like I'm looking at a headline here. Why these small market NBA finals between Pacers and Thunders and must watch. I like like the average person doesn't know or care about what a large market is. A medium market is a small market is. They don't give a shit. The average person is not interested in that. The

only time the average person really gives a shit about, you know, what the size of a city is, is when you get kind of the us versus them and you're in that city. Like Indianapolis hates New York because Indianapolis, they're the little guy, New York's the big guy. But big picture, no one gives a shit about this kind of stuff. It's not interesting to people, they don't care. It's just done by lazy talk show hosts who listen to Colin Cowhert for 20 years and think that breaking down what this is going to mean for the NBA ratings matters. The people that scream the loudest about ratings probably don't

even know or care about them. It's just they've heard this enough and it's impacted how they feel about their game. Watch it if you want to, don't if you don't. But back in my day, the market size, and again this is a different world of course because there were fewer channels, whatever. But you could see the 1985 World Series, not a total, it's not apples to apples because 1985 is a different world, but the 1985 Major League Baseball World Series featured St. Louis and Kansas City, two which you would consider small markets. Now I'm going to fuck it. Now I'm doing what I hate, but I'm going to do this. World Series TV ratings. I hate that I'm doing this, but I'm going to do

it really quick. If you compare what they've been for years and years and years, okay? So again, just look at it this way. Here are the least viewed World Series of all time. You want to know what years they came from? 2012, 2021, 78, 80, 81, 82. By the way, that 82 World Series, which is the fourth most watched World Series ever, a seven game series, that was between Milwaukee and St. Louis. My point being in all of this is I think what was 1980, the Phillies and the, was 80 the Phillies and the Royals? My point being in all of this is the world is different. Like the ratings don't matter because

ratings are never going to be what the ratings were 40, 50 years ago. And it has nothing to do with market size or anything else. Like yes, if New York was in the finals, you'd have 20 million people to draw from in New York and the number would probably be higher. But nothing's going to be close to what it was. The highest most watched game seven of all time was the 1986 game seven after the Buckner, Boston and New York. 60 million people watched game seven on

average. Would you like to know the most viewed Game 5 of a World Series ever? I'm intrigued by this now, just to kind of show you that this is like, that none of this matters. 1982, Cardinals and Brewers, two small fucking markets, and again, there was less to watch, but also there was more interest in baseball then. Would you like to know the lowest rated ever Game 7 7 2019? 23 million people. That would have been the Astros. Point being in all of this is none of this fucking matters when people talk about ratings because ratings are never going to be what ratings once were.

In any sport, just kind of the way it goes man. 45 million people watch Game 7 of the 1985 World Series, and it probably would have been more had not been for the fact that it was a blowout. But again, none of this matters. But anytime people tell you about ratings, the rating shit is almost irrelevant now, because baseball ratings, hockey ratings, basketball ratings are a tiny, piddly little percentage of what they used to be. The only sport that's better or on par with what it used to be is the NFL. And by the way, the teams that draw on the NFL, Buffalo, New York, tiny town, Kansas City, smaller

market, Green Bay. The market size doesn't matter because football is bigger than market size. Anyway, it just annoys me when these, oh, what about the small markets? If you like it, fucking watch it. If you don't, don't. Anyway, more to come.