Sixers

RADIO WARS: Spike Eskin Says He’s Not Doing it for the “Clicks,” but it Sounds Like Audacy Social is

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 27th, 2026 · 2:12 PM EDT

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Spike Eskin went on Twitter Saturday and did a three-minute monologue about “clicks.”

The background is that he was getting ripped for his reaction to the LeBron James signing. I guess he’s always been anti-LeBron, not totally sure because I don’t listen to “The Ricky,” but that’s the very basic gist. People were giving him shit because he was being negative after the Sixers got one of the greatest basketball players of all time on a veteran minimum contract:

Just a quick thought on "doing things for clicks" pic.twitter.com/zPWdoIEPpr

— Spike Eskin (@SpikeEskin) July 25, 2026

Partially transcribed, my emphasis in bold:

“Once every month or so I will say something on the radio, and WIP will put out a clip of it and it will make everybody mad for a day or two days or three days, which is fine, whatever. And if you don’t like I say, you being mad at it or disagreeing with me is totally fine. There’s always one criticism that drives me crazy though, it’s when it says I’m doing it for clicks. It’s clickbait and I don’t really believe this and I’m doing it for clicks. I just want to be honest with you, this is 100% true, I don’t get anything out of clicks. I get nothing. I get no extra people (??), I don’t even put them out (the clips), WIP puts them out, they have… a set of incentives, the digital people, not like financial incentives, but goals. I don’t put the clips out. I don’t get anything out of clips. I don’t make any money out of the clips. The clips don’t make the ratings go up or down. They don’t benefit me in any way. They make a bunch of people tweet at me that I should leave the city or whatever, but I am never doing anything for clicks. I don’t even know that the clips on the internet… provide any specific benefit to anyone. You don’t really make very much money, especially on Twitter. It’s almost nothing, so. That would be a question for somebody else.”

…

“The thing that’s frustrating for me, and again, the folks at WIP digital are doing their jobs, and Audacy digital are doing their jobs, but I did that job for a little while and you know what will get reaction, right? So if I talk for seven minutes at the beginning of the show and I say that I’m happy that everybody else is happy, and I think Mike Gansey and Bob Myers did a great job and those sorts of things, and I also say it’s my most depressing day as a Sixers fan, that is what they’re going to use. That’s what they use and that’s what makes everybody mad. But I just want to be clear, I don’t do anything for clicks, I do everything for the show. I love the show…”

“The only people doing things for clicks, I want to be clear, are the people talking about what I said to get likes and clicks… If you want to look at the people doing it for clicks, (it’s) the people talking about me.

Okay.

Two things here:

1) Spike is talking to us, but he’s also talking to the WIP and Audacy social media people. He obviously has a problem with their social strategy of taking the most controversial and ridiculous shit and putting it on Twitter. He’s explaining in this video that cherry picking social clips limits context and compromises the hosts.

So maybe they should all get together at 2400 Market Street and have a meeting. Maybe they should develop a new strategy that will make people not hate their guts. That would be my suggestion.

2) If Spike is being 100% honest, and not making things up, then the only logical conclusion is that he’s a moron. Because there’s no reason to be bummed about the Sixers landing one of the greatest basketball players of all time for $3.9 million a year. Zero. LeBron is not coming here to upheave the roster and hire his own coach and surround himself with Klutch clients. He’s here on the final contract of his career. The roster is already in place. The coach is already in place. He may even decide to retire after this season, and not trigger the second-year player option.

The legitimate concerns people have had in the past about “GM LeBron” aren’t valid in this particular situation. This was a 24-win Sixers team two years ago. They looked deader than dead, saddled with two old and injured players on max contracts. Now they have Jaylen Brown, LeBron James, and a totally revitalized fan base. If you have any negative feelings about that on day 1, you may be <redacted, but starts with an ‘R’ and rhymes with “guarded”>

Now, as you probably know, the word “clicks” is thrown around in a very generic fashion and oftentimes we waste time splitting hairs over what fans and readers and listeners are actually trying to say. They are not media folks and do not live in our world or use our same language.

For instance, when you post a video on social media, there’s nothing to fucking click on anyway. There is no link and it doesn’t go to another app or website, so it cannot be “clickbait.” You instead get impressions on the video itself, which count towards revenue share based on a specific set of rules. Spike is right that Twitter doesn’t pay very much anyway. We run a medium-sized account with 130,000 followers and we get 150 to 200 bucks or so every month. It’s a negligible amount of money for a large company like Audacy, but in the case of the incentives that Spike mentions, you need some sort of metric to measure the performance of the social media person(s). That’s where impressions and reposts and profile visits and all of those things come into play.

When readers and listeners say “clicks,” they’re using a catch-all term to accuse the media of using dishonest means to get the attention of people in order to direct them to a monetized platform. They’re talking about general engagement and the means to profit off that engagement.

In radio, the advertising rates are set by Nielsen meters + streaming data, so the more people that listen to your stuff, the more you can charge for it. That’s as basic of a model as one can build. So no, Spike Eskin does not and should not care about social media “clicks” because WIP primarily makes money off car dealer and Primo Hoagie ads, not Elon Musk blue checkmark revenue share.

To wit – of course we are all looking for “clicks.” We want people to read Crossing Broad, as opposed to not reading Crossing Broad. If we don’t make money then we all get laid off and we’re flipping burgers. Although, to be specific, our revenue model isn’t necessarily predicated on site traffic. We make money from the site ads in stories like this one, but our core business model is working with the sportsbooks as an affiliate and connecting readers to their product. So, for instance, if we have 10 million readers one week, with 200 sportsbook signups, then 10 thousand readers the next week, with 200 signups, you’re making the exact same money on the core model with a less-scalable increase on the programmatic side.

Anyway, Spike does this thing where he accuses other people of using his name to get clicks of their own. So he himself doesn’t care about clicks, but he says folks are getting clicks talking about what he said. But I don’t think that’s true at all; I think people are just responding to the dumb shit he says, and pointing out how dumb it is. It’s the old “why are you obsessed with me?” angle. I don’t think anybody is obsessed with Spike; I think he just says a lot of insanely stupid things and then people react and say “look how insanely stupid this is.” They aren’t necessarily looking for clicks either, they’re just using their platform to denounce what they believe to be idiocy.

editor’s note: We’re still kicking around the idea of a full WIP blacklist for the football season. Initial feedback was positive. It would probably make this Eagles campaign a lot more enjoyable.