A day after the announcement that Dan Patrick teamed with longtime broadcasting industry entrepreneur Jimmy de Castro's "The Content Factory" (7/13/07 RBR #136),de Castro gave RBR an idea of where he's taking Patrick's content and what might be in store for the future as far as talent and offerings.
Said Jimmy: "We're excited about Mr. Patrick. He's one of the unusually smart ones. To do a three or four hour radio show, you've got to have some smarts. And he happens to have that ability. So we're excited about it and we think radio is only going to be a part of it."
What's the plan on clearing Patrick-are you getting existing affiliates?
"Yes, we will offer it to affiliates that are out there now. That being said, there are a lot of other stations that we want to offer it to as well. WFAN has never had anything like that and I've had lots of conversations with Mark Chernoff. I'm going to see him again and they're thinking of moving their lineup around. We cleared San Diego [Friday]; it looks like we're going to clear LA; highly likely we're going to clear San Francisco as well. I was just there the last three days and he's not on in those markets. So we're going to add a lot of other markets, there's no question about it.
Now the question there is also what other things can we do with him? Radio is only one element of this. We have digital scenarios and the play on The Content Factory is we're going to have a mobile club; we're going to do fantasy football; we're going to do television; all kinds of events; a totally interactive online presence where people self-publish to.
You know what Sillerman has done with brands-with Elvis and Ali-take a brand and magnify it-that's the plan here. We want to take a half dozen brands. The next guy we're working on to yank out is Hannity. We'd like to yank him out of the ABC deal now that Farid has bought it-in a year. We've met with him and we're meeting with his agent. We want to get half a dozen really unique talents that do different things. Then we want to own all matter of media. We want to take their brand and allow their audience and use them in every fashion that they can-global, online, television. Then take the brand to marketers and sell it. It's cool-we're not owning just the signal, we're owning the brand."
Will the radio show be the same length?
"Not sure. Maybe four hours instead of three. It may live in terrestrial and in satellite. It may live in local and in national-there may be a syndicated portion, there may be a local portion. We're going to have a series of characters that are part of the show-Reggie Miller, Rick Riley. We're not sure of the Olbermann piece yet. And with the political foray of what's planned in the next two years, having Olbermann be the political analyst on the Patrick show could be pretty fun. So we're cooking that up. It will be very different from ESPN's show, that's for sure. It's still going to be sports, but it's not going to be sports that are X's and O's."
Who have you tapped to do ad sales?
"You will know [this] week. We've seen all of the people in the business."
