While many sports entertainment shows chase viral clips and social media engagement, Nick Wright says he works for ratings, not clicks.
Wright joined Ethan Sherwood Strauss on a recent episode of the House of Strauss podcast and during the interview, the FS1 host discussed the balance of building First Things First for television, as opposed to creating a take for social media.
“I think a mistake that I know I made for a long time,” Wright began, “And I see a lot of people make is I watch and I’m like, ‘You’re not doing the show for the TV show, you are doing it for the 90 [second] clip that will crush on the internet.’ But it’s not part of an ecosystem within the show.”
“I am really happy that I am now doing a show that is for the best show,” Wright said. “And it was a failure of mine … that once upon a time … I wasn’t every day necessarily trying to do the best TV show possible. I was every day like, ‘How can I have at least one moment that will cut through?’ And that was a mistake.”
Wright pointed specifically to a period earlier in the pandemic, when shows were still working remotely, but live sports had returned. That’s when he became focused on trying to create takes that might garner attention on the internet.
“That was, I believe, flatly a mistake,” Wright told Strauss. “And I think I wasn’t doing right by everyone that works on the TV show. I became a selfish endeavor. And sometimes I see things on Twitter, or I’m watching a show, and I see things and I’m like, ‘This was done for the clip, this wasn’t done for any other purpose than this will do well on the internet.’ And I’m not saying there’s not a place for that, but I feel like that for some people has become the entirety of what they create.”
There absolutely are shows that prioritize chasing topics, arguments and hot takes that will generate interest on social media. Wright, however, has no shortage of hot takes on FS1’s First Things First, so it might seem hard to believe he’s toned it down in recent years. But there’s no doubt Wright can be outlandish enough to go viral with regularity, yet First Things First doesn’t do that at the rate of some other shows.
“The fact that I think we do worse on social than four years ago, and we do better by multiple standard deviations in actual ratings, I think means that we get it,” Wright explained. “And that, I’m very, very proud of. It took evolution.”
There are shows that boil down to the viral clips and hot takes they post on social media. While Wright certainly has the perception of being a hot take artist, there’s much more to be had if you watch a full episode of First Things First. It’s not unlike clickbait headlines. There are headlines that get you to click, but still offer more meat in the story than what was presented in the lede. But there are also headlines that you regret clicking on because there was nothing of substance beyond what was already teased. Sports TV shows can similarly fit both categories.
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