ESPN Radio and local sports-talk radio

Perhaps you've seen ESPN Radio's new TV campaign, in which the Worldwide Leader differentiates itself from other, likely smaller, less national sports-talk radio outlets.

The spots portray non-ESPN personalities as as near-caricatures whose reliance on gimmicks like sound effects and catch phrases makes them more annoying than entertaining. They're good spots and get the point across.

They're also spot-on in that ESPN Radio, at the national level, is, in my opinion, the best game in town. (So to speak.)

But the spots stumble in one important respect: Most ESPN Radio affiliates don't carry network programming 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Those affiliates run local programs too.

Which is when they can become just like the caricatures in the TV commercials.

That's not to say all local sports-talk programs are cliched. All around the country, there are outstanding hosts, reporters and personalities that do solid, respectable, award-winning work.

But for every local program that excels, there are several others that become precisely what the Worldwide Leader tells us to avoid.

It's no great revelation to say that most local sports-talk programs are personality-driven. It's also no great revelation that, in radio, "personality" can be just another word for "ego."

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. As someone who's been in sportscasting for years I know that it requires a little bit of an ego to turn on a microphone and presume that anyone will be interested in what you have to say.

But there can be a fine line between "a little bit" and "excessive." In sports talk radio, it's a line that often gets not blurred, but erased.

Which explains why many local sports radio hosts are yellers, screamers and grand standers. Or confrontational. Or come off like they're always right -- about everything. Or convinced that their opinions on any topic, or the tiniest details of their personal lives, are even remotely interesting to their listeners. The show is about them, for better or worse.

I've hosted talk shows. It was always my goal to get the facts right, be informative and entertaining ... and steer the focus of the show away from me and on to the news of the day and the show's guests. To put it another way, if I worked in a maternity ward I would know that the family wants to see the baby, not the obstetrician.

But in local sports radio, my outlook isn't universally shared.

So, when you see the TV commercials for ESPN Radio, have a chuckle and appreciate them for what they're saying.

And what they're not.