John Goforth did not arrive at the top of Hubbard’s podcast business because somebody decided podcasts needed a digital guy who had never smelled burnt coffee in a radio sales office. Hubbard has promoted Goforth to President of Gamut Podcast Network after a career that began selling actual radio in St. Louis, moved through some of Chicago’s most recognizable sports and music brands, crossed into the first serious generation of podcast advertising and measurement, and eventually brought him back inside a traditional broadcasting company to build something that increasingly looks less like a radio side project and more like a business of its own. That journey may be the most interesting part of the promotion because Goforth’s career connects two worlds the audio industry still occasionally insists on treating like separate planets.
They are not separate.
They are audio.
And Goforth has spent most of his career learning how to sell the relationship between a voice, an audience and an advertiser.
This Started In St Louis
Before podcast downloads.
Before dynamic ad insertion.
Before YouTube became one of the most important podcast discovery engines on the planet.
Before anybody sat in a conference room saying:
WE NEED A PODCAST STRATEGY
😂
Goforth was selling radio.
And he was doing it in St. Louis.
His early career included account executive positions connected to KMOX, KFNS and WXOS.
That is a hell of an education.
Because St. Louis is not a passive radio market.
KMOX alone carries one of the deepest local broadcasting legacies in America. The station signed on in 1925 and spent generations establishing itself as The Voice of St. Louis, built around news, conversation, sports and community connection.
Working around a brand like that teaches you something no podcast dashboard can.
THE AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP IS THE PRODUCT.
Then Add Sports Radio
KFNS.
WXOS.
Different brands.
Different generations of St. Louis sports conversation.
But the same basic lesson.
Sports listeners do not simply consume content.
They participate in it.
They argue.
They call.
They remember.
They carry grudges against general managers for trades made fifteen years ago.
😂
They build relationships with hosts.
And advertisers want access to that relationship.
Goforth learned the economics of that long before podcasting became fashionable.
Then Chicago Raised The Degree Of Difficulty
Eventually the career moved north.
WMVP.
Then sales leadership associated with WSCR and WXRT.
Now we are talking about Chicago.
One of the great radio cities.
One of the great sports-talk cities.
And one of the most unforgiving advertising markets in the business.
The Score is not merely a station with sports programming.
It is part of the culture around Bears Mondays, Cubs summers, Bulls arguments, White Sox suffering and the eternal Chicago civic tradition of explaining why the coach should have been fired yesterday.
😂
Selling inside that environment requires understanding passion.
That matters tremendously today.
Because Gamut is now trying to monetize essentially the same thing without requiring an AM or FM frequency.
Which Makes 312 Sports Almost Perfectly Full Circle
Look at what Gamut has built in Chicago.
312 Sports launched in August 2025 as a Chicago-focused sports podcast network.
Not generic national sports.
Not a feed assembled somewhere else and branded Chicago.
CHICAGO SPORTS.
Dan Bernstein.
Matt Abbatacola.
Bears.
Bulls.
Cubs.
Local personalities.
Local arguments.
Local attitude.
Hubbard Chicago describes the network as an intentionally Chicago-rooted product designed to compete nationally while retaining its local identity.
That is exactly where Goforth’s past meets his present.
The guy who once sold Chicago sports radio now oversees a business trying to build the next version of Chicago sports audio.
That is a hell of a career loop.
And 312 Sports Is Growing
This is not theoretical anymore.
The network recently celebrated its first anniversary and added Jason Goff, one of the most recognizable Chicago sports voices of the last two decades.
That move reunited Goff with Dan Bernstein, whose professional relationship stretches back to The Score when Goff produced Boers and Bernstein before eventually becoming Bernstein’s on-air partner.
Think about the symbolism.
Traditional Chicago sports radio created those relationships.
Podcasting is now giving them another home.
That is not podcasting replacing radio.
That is radio talent becoming platform-independent.
Huge difference.
And That Is The Bet Hubbard Is Making
Gamut formally launched in March 2025 as a dedicated podcast operation inside Hubbard.
The company positioned it alongside terrestrial radio and 2060 Digital rather than treating podcasting as an attachment buried somewhere inside digital operations. Hubbard said at launch that Goforth had already been assembling the infrastructure, staff and strategy required to turn separate podcast initiatives into a coordinated business.
That structure matters.
Because too many broadcasters spent the first decade of podcasting doing this:
HERE IS YESTERDAYS MORNING SHOW AUDIO
CONGRATULATIONS WE HAVE A PODCAST
😂
That is not a podcast strategy.
That is an archive.
Gamut Is Trying To Build A Business
Today Hubbard describes Gamut as a portfolio of more than 250 national and local shows spanning sports, news, entertainment and true crime.
That includes national properties.
But it also includes deliberately local brands such as SKOR North in Minneapolis and 312 Sports in Chicago.
That combination may be the most important thing about Gamut.
National scale.
Local intimacy.
Those concepts do not have to fight each other.
And Goforth Learned That In Radio
This is where broadcasters should pay attention.
Podcasting occasionally talks about local media as if somebody discovered geography in 2018.
Radio has been monetizing local audience relationships for a century.
The mechanic is familiar.
Find an audience.
Build trust.
Create habit.
Understand what matters to them.
Then connect businesses to that audience without destroying the relationship that made the audience valuable in the first place.
Different platform.
Same fundamental business.
The Technology Changed
Absolutely.
Measurement changed.
Distribution changed.
Insertion changed.
Audience discovery changed.
Video changed everything again.
But the basic transaction?
A creator builds trust.
An advertiser wants access.
Somebody has to make those two things work together.
Goforth has spent his career on that side of the equation.
Which Is Why Magellan AI Was Such An Important Stop
Before joining Hubbard, Goforth spent years as Chief Revenue Officer at Magellan AI.
That put him inside the measurement and intelligence side of podcast advertising.
Magellan now works across podcast, streaming, broadcast and video measurement, offering tools around attribution, ad verification, media planning and competitive intelligence.
That is a completely different education from selling spots.
But pair the two?
Now you have something interesting.
He Knows The Street And The Spreadsheet
That combination is rare.
There are brilliant radio sellers who understand relationships but struggle with modern attribution.
There are brilliant digital people who can explain every metric and could not sell a local car dealer if their life depended on it.
😂
You need both.
The human part.
And the measurable part.
Goforth has worked in both worlds.
His Podcast Career Predates Hubbard By Years
After traditional radio sales, Goforth moved deeper into podcasting through Midroll Media.
Then HowStuffWorks.
Then iHeartMedia’s podcast operation.
Then WaitWhat.
Then Magellan.
That sequence matters because it exposed him to nearly every side of the business:
Creators.
Publishers.
Sales.
Revenue strategy.
Audience development.
Advertising technology.
Measurement.
Business development.
By the time Hubbard hired him in 2024, he was not learning podcasting.
He was being asked to build a podcast business.
And Hubbard Gave Him Local Raw Material
This might be the company’s greatest advantage.
Talent.
Real talent.
People already producing hours of compelling audio every day.
The Rizzuto Show in St. Louis is a perfect example.
The program originates as the morning show on 105.7 The Point, but Gamut also distributes it as a daily podcast built around the same personalities, humor, sports, entertainment and St. Louis perspective.
That is not creating content from scratch.
That is recognizing content you already own.
Radio Companies Are Sitting On Content Factories
Morning shows.
Talk shows.
Sports shows.
Interviews.
Benchmarks.
Investigations.
Comedy.
Local history.
News.
You already paid people to create this stuff.
The transmitter should not be the end of its life.
That is the lesson.
And St Louis Brings Goforth Back To The Beginning Again
I love this part.
The guy who started by selling St. Louis radio now runs a network distributing one of Hubbard St. Louis’ signature morning shows well beyond the FM signal.
That is not leaving radio behind.
That is extending radio.
The Point audience can hear Rizzuto live.
Then hear the podcast.
Watch clips.
Share segments.
Discover pieces through social.
The content becomes larger than the clock.
That is where broadcasters should be headed.
Minneapolis Is Another Blueprint
Hubbard already had an important proof of concept in SKOR North.
The Minneapolis-based sports brand evolved beyond traditional radio into an on-demand sports content operation built around Minnesota teams and personalities.
Gamut now explicitly identifies SKOR North alongside 312 Sports as one of its local sports-network pillars.
Again:
Local.
Scalable.
Those words can coexist.
That Should Be The Entire Industry Conversation
Stop asking:
IS RADIO DEAD
Lord.
Please.
We have been having that argument longer than some programmers have been alive.
😂
Ask the better question:
WHAT BUSINESS ARE WE ACTUALLY IN
Are we in the tower business?
Or the audience business?
If we are in the audience business, then the transmitter is one delivery system.
A damn good one.
But one.
Goforths Career Is Basically An Answer To That Question
KMOX.
Sports radio.
Chicago.
Podcast sales.
Podcast technology.
Audience development.
Hubbard.
Gamut.
Different delivery systems.
Same core asset.
PEOPLE WHO CARE ENOUGH TO LISTEN.
And Now Hubbard Has Given Gamut A President
Titles matter when they reflect structure.
President puts Gamut into a different organizational conversation than simply:
THE PODCAST DEPARTMENT
It suggests the company increasingly views this as a standalone business capable of carrying its own strategic weight.
That is important.
Because Hubbard is not a venture-backed podcast startup trying to invent media from scratch.
This is a broadcasting company whose roots go back to 1923. Hubbard itself describes Gamut as part of the next evolution of a century-old media company.
That context makes the move more significant.
A Hundred Year Old Broadcaster Is Building For What Comes After The Radio
Notice I did not say:
AFTER RADIO
Radio is not disappearing tomorrow.
This is what comes after the radio.
The physical receiver.
The idea that content belongs exclusively to one appliance.
The audience does not think that way anymore.
Neither should broadcasters.
The Car Is Changing
Phones changed.
Smart speakers changed.
YouTube changed.
Connected television changed.
Dashboard interfaces are changing.
People now consume the same personality through five different screens and speakers without caring which corporate department owns each one.
The audience does not wake up thinking:
TODAY I SHALL CONSUME SOME LINEAR TERRESTRIAL AUDIO FOLLOWED BY PLATFORM AGNOSTIC ON DEMAND MEDIA
😂
They just want the show.
That Is Why Video Matters Too
Podcasting has increasingly become visual.
YouTube matters.
Clips matter.
Short-form discovery matters.
Creators who once needed only a microphone now need to think about cameras, thumbnails, search and social distribution.
Gamut’s current strategy makes clear that it views podcasting as broader than an RSS feed. Its own properties increasingly incorporate video and multi-platform distribution rather than treating podcasting as audio locked inside one application.
That is the correct direction.
But Do Not Lose The Radio Lesson
This is the warning.
Do not become so fascinated with platforms that you forget why anybody cared about the content.
It was the personality.
The perspective.
The relationship.
The local connection.
The thing no algorithm can manufacture simply by increasing distribution.
312 Sports works if it feels like Chicago.
SKOR North works if it understands Minnesota.
Rizzuto works because it sounds like St. Louis.
Strip those identities away and you have another podcast network fighting millions of other shows for attention.
Local Is Not The Limitation
Local is the differentiator.
That is something Goforth should understand better than almost anybody.
His career started on the street.
Selling businesses on the value of specific audiences in specific cities.
That experience may end up being more valuable to Gamut than any podcast buzzword ever invented.
And Hubbard Has An Unusual Opportunity
It owns local radio brands.
It owns local talent.
It owns advertising relationships.
It has digital infrastructure.
It has a podcast network.
Those pieces can either remain separate companies on an organizational chart…
Or become one enormous audience ecosystem.
That second version is much more interesting.
Imagine The Seller Of The Future
They do not walk into the client meeting with:
HERE IS OUR FM RATE CARD
They walk in with:
Radio.
Podcast.
Streaming.
Video.
YouTube.
Social.
Events.
Search.
Digital.
Data.
Attribution.
And most importantly:
THE LOCAL PERSONALITIES YOUR CUSTOMER ALREADY KNOWS
Now we are selling something.
On The Dial Perspective
This is why I think the John Goforth promotion matters beyond John Goforth.
It represents where radio companies have to go.
Not abandoning radio.
Expanding what radio created.
We spent decades building personalities and audiences and then acted surprised when technology gave those people ways to communicate outside our transmitters.
That was never the threat.
That was the opportunity.
Goforth Learned The Business Before The Word Podcast Was On His Business Card
That gives him perspective.
He knows what a local advertiser looks like.
He knows what a sales goal feels like on the 27th of the month.
He knows Chicago sports radio.
He knows St. Louis.
He knows national podcast advertising.
He knows measurement.
And now he is responsible for bringing those lessons together inside a company with more than a century of broadcasting DNA.
That is a fascinating assignment.
The Best Part Is That The Future Looks A Lot Like The Past
A compelling person.
Talking about something people care about.
Building a relationship with an audience.
An advertiser wanting to be part of that relationship.
That is radio.
That is podcasting.
That is television.
That is YouTube.
That is media.
The technology changes.
The relationship does not.
So Congratulations John
From selling local radio in St. Louis…
To Chicago…
To the first big wave of podcast advertising…
To analytics…
To Hubbard…
To building Gamut…
And now President.
That is not leaving broadcasting.
That is following broadcasting wherever the audience went.
And if Gamut can continue proving that a St. Louis morning show, a Chicago sports voice, a Minneapolis sports brand and a national podcast can all live under the same roof without losing what made each one special?
Then Hubbard may have something much bigger than a podcast network.
It may have a blueprint.
LOCAL SOUL
NATIONAL SCALE
AND SOMEBODY WHO STARTED OUT SELLING RADIO NOW RUNNING THE WHOLE DAMN THING
That feels appropriately full circle.
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