It’s been quite the year for Rich Eisen and his long-established radio show, The Rich Eisen Show. Launched in 2014 on Audience Network and later expanded to Fox Sports Radio, that show wrapped up on Audience in February (thanks to the shift of that channel to an HBO Max preview) and on Fox Sports Radio in April. Eisen signed a deal to take his show to NBCSN in April, though, and while that deal was initially just through early June, August saw a new deal where Eisen’s show would return to NBCSN and also stream on new NBC streaming service Peacock when that service launched in October. And now Eisen has landed a further distribution partnership with Westwood One, which will include a highlights podcast and a new Just Getting Started podcast. Here’s more on that from a Westwood One release:
Cumulus Media’s Westwood One today announced a partnership with Emmy-nominated broadcaster Rich Eisen to bring The Rich Eisen Show and future projects to the Westwood One Podcast Network. In the new partnership, Westwood One will monetize, market, and distribute all existing and forthcoming podcasts. In addition, Westwood One will assist in the distribution of the Rich Eisen radio show.
Westwood One will work directly with Eisen to format show highlights and interviews into The Rich Eisen Show podcast that will be available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Pandora, among other platforms.
…A new podcast, Just Getting Started, is scheduled to debut in February 2021. Just Getting Started will be Eisen’s first step into the world of personal fulfillment podcasting. Eisen will interview the biggest names from news, entertainment, sports, and pop culture, discussing their career origins and mining their stories on how they got started, in a format where audiences can be inspired by their endeavors.
And here are some quotes from that release:
“In relaunching my podcast and terrestrial radio businesses, I couldn’t find a better partner to bring my content to more hearts, minds and ears than Westwood One,” said Eisen, president and CEO of Rich Eisen Productions, which owns The Rich Eisen Show. “I also could not be more excited to launch a new podcast and podcast shingle with my new partners. The fact that they’re also the radio home to the National Football League makes this even more of a wonderful fit.”
“Rich is a legendary sports broadcaster, widely known for his sharp insights and colorful NFL commentary. It is exciting to welcome him and The Rich Eisen Show to the Westwood One Podcast Network and to work on new projects together,” said Suzanne Grimes, EVP Marketing, Cumulus Media, and President, Westwood One. “Rich has met some of the most interesting, successful, and colorful characters around – and not just in football. It will be a lot of fun to hear Rich talk with titans of sports, business, and entertainment about their paths to success in Just Getting Started.”
Eisen’s show has often featured some great interviews with a wide range of people, from Bob Costas to Brett Favre (an interview so good Colin Cowherd took it without attribution) to Craig Kilborn (featuring a martini toast to ESPN) to Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell. And the show’s network issues earlier this year weren’t about it, but rather about AT&T repurposing Audience to promote HBO Max (something that’s very much an entire corporate focus at this point, and one that’s now creating controversy around what it means for their movie studios).
It’s good to see that Eisen’s been able to find a home with NBCSN and Peacock, and this new Westwood One deal should help reestablish his show on the radio side. It should also offer some new ways for him to engage fans, from the highlights podcast to the new Just Getting Started. We’ll see how this ends up, but it’s certainly notable that Eisen’s show is in a much better place now than it was around the Audience shutdown earlier this year.
