Matt Nahigian Schooled Me

Matt Responds

Matt Nahigian called me Wednesday afternoon. He’s the program director at 97.5 The Fanatic.

In case you missed it, I wrote Screw Our Listeners on Tuesday and took several shots at Matt for his station’s programming over the Fourth of July weekend – an assortment of ill-fitting ESPN feeds. I wanted to get the answers to two questions:

Who was responsible for making the decision?
And why?

• Full disclosure – Matt Nahigian and I have never met and had never spoken prior to today.

• Back Story – I sent an email to Matt on Monday expressing my displeasure with The Fanatic’s programming over the holiday weekend. He responded quickly via email and took responsibility for the decision, but our lines of communication broke down from there and I never learned why he made the decision.

So, like I said, Matt called today and answered the second question. In the process, I learned a few things.

First off, he was neither offensive nor defensive in his approach. Nor was he acrimonious because I’d taken some shots at both him and his radio station. Instead, he came across as down-to-earth as he spelled out the “why’s” of his decision. In other words, he struck me as a helluva nice guy.

As it works out, I made judgments based on my listening habits – figuring that I was the norm. You see, I listen to sports radio for several hours per day, seven days a week, week days and weekends. So I assumed – there’s that nasty ass-out-of-you-and-me word – so I assumed that most listeners followed similar patterns.

But Matt told me that wasn’t the case. He said radio listener-ship went down drastically on weekends and even more so on holidays. With that in mind and a holiday weekend coming up, he dared to take a chance by giving all of his employees some well-earned time off for the holiday – and he sounded like he meant it. Like he cared about his empolyees.

That made Matt Nahigian come across as quite human – and I told him so.

That said, I still believe there had to be several people at the Fanatic with on-air aspirations – guys like Devon Givens – who woulda jumped at the opportunity to log some air-time over the holidays. I’d much prefer that local programming over the generic ESPN diet of shows.

Thanks for the call, Matt, and the info. I gained some insight into the radio business and understand why you made the decision.

Barry Bowe is the author of: