Kevin Harlan: ‘The days of good conversation and space in a broadcast are harder to find’

Kevin Harlan is the rare modern-day broadcaster whose radio broadcasts produce as many viral clips and noteworthy calls as his television games.

As the voice of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl for Westwood One, the energetic Harlan has a devoted following with NFL fans across the country through the audio airwaves. Harlan also calls NFL and college basketball games on CBS, as well as NBA games for Prime Video. At 66, he is one of the most experienced announcers in the business as well as one of the most thoughtful about the state of his craft.

During an appearance on The Dan Le Batard Show on Wednesday, Harlan shared his thoughts on the decline in on-air “conversation” between broadcasters of the kind that led fans to fall in love with all-time tandems such as Pat Summerall and John Madden at CBS and then Fox in the 1980s and ’90s.

“The conversations are so important, and how to manage those during a game while not losing sight of the game [is] huge, and the storytelling that’s involved,” Harlan said.

“The difference now between TV and TV 30, 40 years ago is we do have commercial breaks, we’ve got far more replays and technical, gee-whiz things that happen, that that takes a lot of that conversational stuff out of it. Because the truck has got, they’re loaded to go. Yet the thing that we remember from [Curt] Gowdy and Al DeRogatis or [John] Madden and [Pat] Summerall is that we were kind of limited, back in the day.

“So that made those spaces between plays a chance for conversation. And the technology has just been so fast and furious that now … you’ve gotta navigate the reads, the promos, the graphics, the analytics that are shown up there.”

Whereas radio largely revolves around the play-by-play voice’s descriptions of the action, Harlan said television does offer more opportunity to gab.

“That is something that on TV in particular that you need to be able to do,” he explained. “Because in one sense, it is part conversation. But the other part of it is there’s gotta be a formality and a framework for the broadcast: down and distance, tackler, who had the ball, what’s coming up, looking ahead.”

In addition to the uptick in commercials and broadcast visuals, Harlan said the evolution of the sport has also reduced down time on-air. The legendary announcer said that the pace of play in the NFL and the average fan’s level of knowledge have also forced broadcasters to share far more information, far more rapidly, each play.

“It’s not like it was,” he said. “People say, ‘I remember back in the day’ … now we’re getting the replay for one, 3-yard gain from 15 different angles. And that’s consuming what was a place for conversation.

“So navigating that is now kind of an art … and the other thing is, with fantasy players and people that know so much about their teams and are reading these things online and in their papers, listening to shows, the fan is so much more well-informed. You’ve gotta make sure that you’ve got the Xs and Os, and if there’s a change at right guard, the fans want to know it.

“[Back] in the day, there’d be changes all over the line and different sub packages coming in, and they would gloss right over it and not really talk about it. But now, because everybody is into, they know so much about their team and the analytics and follow that team, you’ve gotta be on top of that. So the days of good conversation and space in a broadcast are harder to find, because there’s so much more now that’s required in a modern play-by-play sense.”

Harlan has remained popular amid all these changes, and was complimentary toward ESPN’s Joe Buck and Amazon’s Al Michaels as having the listening ability and patience to still find pockets for conversation. Clearly, that is easier said than done.