Stephen A. Smith is overthinking political talk

Stephen A. Smith has conquered the sports world. When it comes to sports talking heads, no one has wider name recognition.

He’s the subject of New York Times profiles and Saturday Night Live parodies. Your mom may not know exactly who he is or what he does, but she’s definitely heard the name Stephen A. Smith.

For most in this business, that would be more than enough to satisfy their ambition. Smith has never been shy about what he wants, though. He doesn’t plan on giving up his place in sports fans’ minds and on their screens, but he also wants to occupy a similar perch in cable news.

Last week, Smith spoke at the Barrett Audio Summit in New York, and he echoed something he has said over and over again: that he believes he could be successful in primetime on cable news. He even has an idea for the show he wants to do.

“When I think about doing a news show, I fantasize about having a platform where I have folks from both sides of the aisle, and we’re just talking,” he told Jason Barrett, who moderated the discussion. 

I’ve always been skeptical of Smith as a politics and news talker. Don’t get me wrong, he has the ability, but I often wonder if he realizes that. Smith made a name for himself by being brash and unambiguous when talking about the NFL and the NBA. That’s not what you get when you turn on his Sirius/XM show or his podcast, though.

Those shows feature a version of Smith routinely playing the middle, trying to be everything to everyone. You never see him play it safe on First Take. He’s the star. It’s his world. Whether he’s dressing down a player or standing up to the President of the United States, First Take’s Stephen A. Smith is supremely confident. 

Political talk show host Stephen A. Smith doesn’t seem to believe in anything because he wants you to think he believes in everything. He still shouts and projects confidence, but that isn’t the same as standing on principles. 

Does Smith think he’s not allowed to be the same guy in the political world that he is in the sports world? 

Who wants a bipartisan talk show? This is cable news we’re talking about. The partisanship is what people show up for. 

Look at the current ratings. Fox News is in front. Why? Because Roger Ailes gave that network an identity when he walked through the door in 1996, and the network has never wavered from it. 

The disgraced former CEO identified two things. First, conservatives felt disenfranchised by the news media landscape of the day. Second, the American public doesn’t think about news broadcasts much differently from the rest of television. People will always choose the most entertaining product.

From the day he took over Fox News until his death, Ailes had Fox laser-focused on entertaining conservatives. The hosts all have the same basic look. They all say the same basic things. Put it on a loop for 24 hours and watch the money roll in. It’s a formula that still works.

MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) is comfortably in second place. It follows the same basic formula as Fox, but targets a liberal audience. We can get into all of the reasons the ceiling is lower on this strategy another time, but MS NOW has been able to create a lane and find a path forward this way.

Way back in third place is CNN. The legacy of that network does not matter. The programming is all over the place. Hosts like Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett play it down the middle, while Abby Phillip’s show entertains the extremes at both ends for shouting matches that produce social media clips but not ratings or revenue.

Even further back, you will find NewsNation, a network that has built its model on not taking a side on anything. I have never found any evidence that that network has an audience, yet it’s the one that Smith will most regularly make time for.

I agree with Smith 99 times out of a hundred when I read his thoughts on the media. He’s a smart guy who gets what works in the broadcasting business. So why does he get this so wrong? 

Playing both sides doesn’t build an audience. Cable news is built to be a political bubble. Those networks have trained their audiences to see any person or opinion from the outside trying to penetrate it as a threat. 

That media environment has eroded the value of neutrality. A bipartisan talk show doesn’t sound like a way for Smith to build a big tent. It sounds like he’s going to have an empty one.

If Smith really wants to be as valuable to cable news as he is to ESPN, the first thing he needs to do is accept that talking about politics is no different than talking about sports. In fact, I would argue it’s much easier for a guy like Sean Hannity to entertain his Fox News audience than for Smith to entertain his on ESPN. 

Political TV follows the lead of sports television, not the other way around. What are CNN NewsNight and The Five on Fox News if not First Take with people less interesting than Smith substituting Supreme Court decisions for trade proposals? 

Smith’s podcast gets more attention for the host’s knowledge of Pixar’s Cars cinematic universe than for any political opinion. His SiriusXM talk show is largely inconsequential. If he wants to be a force in political talk, the answer is simple. Cut out the fat. People respond to First Take. Take First Take to a political platform, period, end of discussion.

It’s exactly what Clay Travis did. Whether you think he’s good or not doesn’t matter. He takes culture-war nonsense and wraps it in the same packaging he used for SEC quarterback rankings, and his audience eats it up.

Travis, though, realized he couldn’t do the same thing in two places at once. He had to make a choice, and it’s easy to give up the morning show on Fox Sports Radio when you’re being offered Rush Limbaugh’s old audience. Maybe that’s what Smith is wrestling with. 

I think Stephen A. Smith is a really smart guy who has become a victim of his own ambition. He’s reached heights in the sports media world that Travis could only dream of. That comes with a level of scrutiny that Travis would never have faced for doing the exact same show in two different places and trying to pass it off as a sign of his versatility. It also means Smith would have to give up something that Travis never had if he wants to give himself the best chance to succeed and dominate the political talk world.