Some sad news to share on the sports media front: Boston NPR station WBUR today announced it would discontinue the national program Only a Game as part of cost-cutting measures that will also see over 10 percent of its workforce lose their jobs.
Only a Game wasn’t only a sports radio show; it was a sports radio show on NPR, which right there suggests that it had to be truly different from other content across the landscape. It didn’t rely on the traditional high-energy formula of endless debate on trivial matters between personalities more interested in being popular than informative. What Only a Game offered instead was discussion rooted in NPR’s greatest strength: good old-fashioned journalism.
If you check the show’s website, you’ll find they’ve given much of their time lately to the issue of racial injustice and how sports fit in. An entire program was once spent on amateur athletes in the big-money NCAA. Then there are the long-form stories from an Antarctic expedition to a Russian community with architecture paying tribute to the game of chess. You have to ask yourself: is that gonna be on SportsCenter?
It is, I suppose, a sign of the times. There’s more money to be made off those in-your-face shows on basic cable than a public radio program appealing to the mind. And yet, it’s unfortunate because there are so few sports shows out there that appeal to the mind in the classic NPR style as Only a Game does. This is a true loss for the curious sports fan.