Nick Kostos on the puzzle of solo radio and why he never wants to master it

Nick Kostos has identified the biggest challenge of solo radio, and it’s not filling three hours on his own.

Nearly a month into hosting You Better You Bet solo on Westwood One Sports in the 9 a.m. to noon ET slot, Kostos isn’t worried about his content. He’s confident in that. He’s not worried about leading a show for 15 hours a week. He’s been doing that for years. The challenge is figuring out when to break up the show so it doesn’t become three straight hours of one voice, no matter how good that voice might be.

“Every show that you host, whether you’re doing television, whether you’re doing radio with a co-host, whether you’re doing solo radio, it’s all like its own individual puzzle piece that’s got to be figured out,” Nick Kostos told Awful Announcing. “And this is a particularly unique one because by and large, it’s just you for wide swaths of time.”

Television shows have commercial breaks, teasers, graphics, and video packages that naturally break up content. Co-hosted radio shows have built-in rhythm from the back-and-forth between hosts. Solo radio has none of those natural breakpoints unless you deliberately create them.

The “something different” can take multiple forms. Sometimes it’s bringing on a guest for 15 minutes to discuss a specific topic or breaking news. Sometimes it’s playing four or five audio clips from the previous night’s games and reacting to each one. Sometimes it’s banter with the crew — the producers, the technical director, the engineer — bringing them on mic to create a moment of spontaneous interaction that feels different from the prepared segments.

The goal is to give the audience different textures and rhythms throughout the three hours. Long solo segments work better when they’re bookended by guest interviews or sound montages. Deep analysis plays better when it’s followed by something lighter or more conversational. The betting content needs to be distributed throughout the show rather than concentrated in one block, otherwise you risk losing the non-betting audience for 30 minutes straight.

“I think that has been the biggest challenge and the biggest piece of the puzzle that I think we are figuring out,” Kostos said. “And I think we have a good grasp on it. But that’s been the thing that I think has been the most striking for me in doing this different form of radio.”

What makes this particularly tricky is that You Better You Bet has to work across multiple platforms simultaneously. The show airs on traditional radio through Westwood One’s network of affiliates. It streams on YouTube with video. It broadcasts on Twitch, where the audience expects a different kind of engagement and interaction. It airs on NESN, the New England Sports Network, which means television viewers are watching it in addition to radio listeners.

Each platform has different expectations and consumption patterns. Radio listeners might be driving to work, half-listening while dealing with traffic. YouTube viewers are probably at their desk, able to watch video but also likely to click away if the content drags. Twitch audiences expect more interaction and visual elements. NESN viewers are watching it as a television show, which means the pacing and energy level need to feel appropriate for TV.

Balancing all those competing demands while also making sure the core content works for traditional radio — still the primary distribution method — requires constant recalibration. Too much reliance on visual elements alienates radio listeners. Too much pure audio leaves the video audiences with nothing interesting to watch. Too much Twitch-style interaction makes it feel gimmicky to everyone else.

“We understand that solo radio can be a bear,” Kostos said. “And you have to approach it a certain way where we have to have sound integrated into the show, where we’re playing a bunch of sound bites and reacting to sound bites because we are on YouTube and we are on Twitch, we’re on NESN, so we are on TV. But this is largely an audio medium, and being able to break it up a little bit while still giving me an opportunity as the solo host of the show to be able to give my strong takes and what I hope to be unique takes on subjects, I think that’s kind of the secret sauce.”

Kostos credits his crew with helping navigate these challenges. Executive producer Bill Zimmerman has known Kostos for over 20 years. They worked together at Sirius XM. Before that, Zimmerman was Chris “Mad Dog” Russo‘s executive producer for years, which means he understands how to produce long-form solo radio at the highest level. Russo’s show on SiriusXM is essentially four hours of one guy talking, and Zimmerman made that work for years.

That same philosophy extends to how Nick Kostos approaches the show’s betting focus.

“I’m trying to do a show that appeals to the widest range of people possible,” Kostos said. “Do I want to have sports bettors be interested in my show and put on a show that they are interested in? Absolutely, but I also want to cast a wider net than that. I need to be able to do a show where a sports bettor finds value in it and wants to listen to the show for information and entertainment, and someone who has never placed a bet in his or her life also finds value in the show.”

The landscape has shifted dramatically since You Better You Bet launched in 2019. Six years later, most major sports broadcasts now incorporate betting content as a standard feature. Point spreads and over/unders appear on screen during pregame shows. Analysts discuss how a line has moved throughout the week. Even the NFL, which spent decades keeping gambling at arm’s length, now has partnerships with multiple sportsbooks and hosts games in Las Vegas.

“Look we’re in a new year now, and I would say that not every show but I think a lot of sports shows whether they’re on television or radio at the very least even if they don’t want to talk about the point spread and they don’t have to no one’s under any obligation to do that, but at the very least it’s mentioned,” Kostos said. “I think the audience and people sports fans in general — trained is a strong word and I don’t mean it in that way — but kind of come to expect it now, where yeah, like hey, here’s the side and total for the game even if we’re not gonna talk about it.”

That expectation creates both opportunity and risk. The opportunity is that Kostos can incorporate betting content without apologizing for it or treating it as somehow less legitimate than traditional analysis. The risk is that the saturation point has already arrived. Audiences might be getting fatigued by betting content, especially when it’s done poorly or repetitively.

Kostos believes he’s navigated that tension successfully by never making betting the central focus. It’s a tool in the toolbox, not the only tool. Some days it makes sense to lean into it. On other days, it’s barely mentioned. The key is reading the room and understanding what the story actually is.

Nearly a month into the experiment, Kostos isn’t declaring victory. He’s evaluating it with brutal honesty, fully aware that the moment he thinks he’s mastered solo radio is probably the moment the show starts slipping.

“My hope would be if I’m doing this 20 years from now that I would say like we still haven’t mastered it,” Kostos said. “We’re still gonna be learning every day, like we’re never gonna get it perfect, to get everything right. But do I feel good about the direction of where we’re at? I do, and I am a very, very, very tough grader. But I do feel good about where we’re at and where we’re headed moving forward.”

That mindset — never comfortable, always refining — separates good radio hosts from great ones. Plenty reach a level of competence and settle there. They lock into a formula that works well enough, repeat it daily with minimal variation, and let familiarity do the rest. The audience adjusts. The ratings hold. The urgency to push further disappears.

Kostos isn’t wired that way. He’s hyperaware of when segments drag, when the energy dips, when he’s repeating himself, or falling into predictable patterns. That self-awareness can be paralyzing for some hosts, leading to overthinking and second-guessing every decision. For Kostos, it’s a tool for constant improvement. Each show provides data points about what worked and what didn’t. The goal is to learn from them without getting paralyzed by perfectionism.

In solo radio, where there’s nowhere to hide, that edge matters. And it may be the difference between simply filling time and actually earning it.