Mushnick Blasts Sporting News Radio As “Promotional Tool”

Sporting News Radio (SNR), formerly One on One Sports Radio, "now mostly exists as a promotional tool for everything Sporting News, from the weekly magazine to its website," according to Phil Mushnick of the N.Y. POST, who wrote, "To tune to 620 [in N.Y.] to listen to sports talk is now to tune in to hear sports serve as a prop to push anything and everything that carries the Sporting News brand." SNR regularly features interviews with Sporting News reporters and columnists. Mushnick wrote, "In other words, their presence isn't necessarily predicated on their superior knowledge or their insights, but on the fact that they write for The Sporting News, meaning that they, too, serve SNR as advertising tools for The Sporting News brand. There's nothing new here, only that SNR is the latest media entity to replace content with cross-promotion. It's both rampant and shameless. It's called synergy." More Mushnick: "Synergy has become a modern corporate expression for duplicity, conflicted interests, selling out and making damned sure that one hand washes the other. And synergy has turned journalists into shills and infomercial hosts. It's all the rage. But only if America expected and demanded better from its media would it be outrageous" (N.Y. POST, 7/22).