Like so many things in today’s day and age, the idea for Spittin’ Chiclets was born from … a tweet.
Nine years ago, Ryan Whitney, then freshly retired as an NHL player, hopped on a train in New York City and tweeted @BizNasty2point0 — the Twitter account of Paul Bissonnette, the Coyotes bruiser who he’d hit it off with during a long-ago Pittsburgh Penguins camp — “I really want to start a podcast. About hockey, trending topics, life in general. Need a partner.”
Bissonnette, always the jokester, always self-deprecating, wrote back: “One day @ryanwhitney6. I still like playing. I have two goals this year. Doubled last year’s total already. It’s a Christmas miracle.”
Brian McGonagle, a.k.a. “Rear Admiral,” was doing freelance work for Barstool Sports at the time. He saw the tweets and replied. He was ready and willing to be Whitney’s partner. The two exchanged direct messages, and from there, the original Spittin’ Chiclets podcast was founded.
Not long after that, Mike Grinnell, a.k.a. “Grinnelli,” reached out via email saying he’d like to produce the podcast and make it sound better. He was just a kid working at a radio station at the time.
“R.A. ignored the email, and then two weeks later, the next podcast they did, the mixer broke,” Bissonnette says, laughing. “So he remembered the email, reached out to Grinnelli, and next thing you know, he joined on, they kept going and Barstool got ’em.”
After retiring from the NHL, Bissonnette joined the Arizona Coyotes as a broadcaster. After his first year on the job, Whitney called him again.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, we need somebody else,’ Bissonnette remembers. “‘I want to snap it around with another hockey guy, not just R.A.’”
Bissonnette again declined. He wanted to secure and solidify his job with the Coyotes. But eventually, the idea got to him. He agreed to join. And from there, the podcast took off. Guests like Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon came on, “and it just took on a mind of its own,” Bissonnette says.
These days, Spittin’ Chiclets is one of the biggest, most popular hockey pods out there. It averages more than 635,000 downloads and views per episode, has 2.9 million social media followers and over 550 million original video views.
Bissonnette, meanwhile, has become one of the faces of NHL broadcasting, moonlighting on the panel of NHL on TNT.
On Wednesday night — for one night at least, with TNT televising the Panthers-Penguins game — those worlds will collide and create a new frontier for the podcast. Bissonnette will walk off the NHL on TNT set at the network’s Atlanta headquarters, stroll over to the Inside the NBA studio next door and take part in the first-ever Spittin’ Chiclets “altcast,” with Whitney, R.A. and sports betting expert and former hockey player Matt Murley.
Spittin’ Chiclets podcasts are known for R-rated language and conversations more fitting of a stereotypical NHL locker room than a national TV broadcast. Because of the language, in particular, for the live altcast on truTV and Max, there will be a Chiclets-specific seven-second delay, just in case things go off the rails.
As the game proceeds, the hosts will offer their takes on everything happening on and off the ice during the game while welcoming special guests throughout the night.
“It’s Chiclets’ version of (ESPN’s) ManningCast, but we’re kind of in our own little lane,” Bissonnette says.
🍿 Wednesday Night 🍿
Hockey like you’ve never seen it before, when the Spittin’ Chiclets crew hosts a special altcast of Penguins-Panthers. You don’t want to miss it 👀
7:30pm ET on @truTV and @StreamOnMax pic.twitter.com/M6z4AmmYgl
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) February 13, 2024
The goal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns TNT and truTV — besides an alternative means of entertainment — is to see if it can lasso some of Spittin’ Chiclets’ cult following over to their networks.
“It’s fun. It’s silly,” Bissonnette says. “I think that certain younger generations like consuming stuff like that, as bizarre as it is, non-traditionally. And Barstool has been at the forefront of that, and it doesn’t make sense. It’s just internet people.
“I’m hoping that we can direct enough traffic there where I don’t know how many viewers they get on a weekly basis, but if they can add a couple hundred thousand of our followers, or even 50K to start, maybe that’ll be (deemed a success).”
In Bissonnette’s eyes, they’re doing a pilot to see if it works. This is an opportunity to take two very unique and different brands and bring them together to potentially create something new for hockey fans.
If it works, it could become a regular thing on truTV.
If not, at least Bissonnette has Spittin’ Chiclets and the NHL on TNT to fall back on.
This is not the first time Warner Bros. Discovery has done an altcast.
During the 2023 MLB playoffs, Peloteros aired on truTV and Max during each live game of the NLCS, alongside the game telecasts on TBS and Max. The altcast focused on the experiences of leading Latinos in the big leagues including Pedro Martínez and Albert Pujols.
During NBA All-Star weekend this Saturday, Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum will be among the analysts for an altcast of the three-point contest on truTV and Max. For the game on Sunday night, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green and Inside the NBA host Charles Barkley will be featured, with Jamal Crawford as a roving reporter, on an altcast, again on truTV and Max.
When TNT landed the NHL, the network started to think, “What do the fans want? Where are the fans?”
“And we came across the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast, and one of our primary tenets in the way that we philosophically approach what we do, is we love that intersection of sports and culture,” says Craig Barry, TNT Sports executive vice president and chief content officer. “These guys represented the culture, the most relevant culture of hockey. And ultimately, that’s how we chose Biz to be on the show and participate.
“So when we were thinking about an altcast for hockey, it was a relatively easy connection for us to go back to where we started and say, ‘What would the fans really love that we could kind of event-ize a game?’
“Of course, translation is a little bit different for television. Instead of just talking about the most current and topical subjects, they’re going to let the fans in to watch a game, so they’re going to be focusing on something with the fans, simultaneously. And I’m sure that there’ll be an emotional connection with the fans because everybody will be reacting at the same time to what they’re watching. So we’re really excited and we think it’s going to be really unique, specifically for the sport of hockey.”
Spittin’ Chiclets actually may have been ahead of its time with these alt-casts. Years ago, the hosts would hold live watches called “Electric Chair” and allow fans to sync their TVs between the telecast and a stream of a Chiclets chat.
“We were telling people, ‘Alright, everybody pause your TV now, and link it up at this time,’” Bissonnette says. “Then we come to find out just a couple weeks ago that Whit used to lie. He always used to be five seconds ahead so he knew what was going to happen, that asshole.
“But we would all just hop on. We would have special guests come on. The fans could come watch and they would just see us. And the fun part about when we were doing them during COVID is we would get all these surprise guests and we wouldn’t know who was coming, like SmartLess (with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett). So anytime we would hit these little lulls, you would get a boost by having a fun guest.”
Wednesday night, the plan is similarly to surprise the audience on truTV with guests, either popping in via Zoom or from the next-door studio where NHL on TNT talents Liam McHugh, Anson Carter, Henrik Lundqvist and Colby Armstrong will be broadcasting.
There will also be the normal Chiclets bits, like making fun of R.A.’s toe cheese or seeing if he can drain a basket for a certain amount of Whitney’s money.
It’s also Valentine’s Day, so it wouldn’t be shocking if we see the guys in tuxes or at a minimum if they dig deep into that theme and try to persuade their normal podcast listeners to invite their significant others to join them for a romantic evening …. watching the Chiclets altcast.
“The good news is I would imagine that most of our listeners are probably single or not the best of boyfriends,” Bissonnette jokes.
Bissonnette never could have envisioned that he’d become a multi-media star and pop-culture icon when he was a minor-league grinder just trying to make it, then stick in the NHL. And he certainly never could have envisioned that Whitney’s little podcast idea would be a major reason for that rise to stardom.
When they met in Pittsburgh, Bissonnette considered Whitney, the former No. 5 NHL draft pick, a “Masshole,” which he says he means with the utmost esteem and intends as a compliment.
“He’s a funny bastard,” Bissonnette says. “I don’t shut up, and then he doesn’t shut up, so it was perfect chemistry.”
Funny enough, Bissonnette doesn’t think Whitney loved him at first in Pittsburgh.
Bissonnette chirped Whitney to Brooks Orpik, saying, “Whitney wasn’t focusing on the calves again this summer” — because he’s got the smallest calves, Bissonnette says. Orpik stirred the pot and told Whitney and, “I think that he was actually pissed,” Bissonnette says.
“He called me an OHL goon because we’re just all these OHL goon kids from Ontario, and he’s right,” Bissonnette says. “We always kind of s— on each other, but we always enjoyed hanging around each other and could each take the piss and have a laugh about it.”
That’s why Whitney wanted Bissonnette to join the pod, and the rest is history. Now they land the sport’s biggest guests and get dirt and gossip on all sorts of stories from around hockey. Every once in a while, they even break monster news, like late last summer when they revealed that Columbus Blue Jackets coach Mike Babcock was putting his players on the spot, asking for their phones and going through their pictures.
That quickly triggered an NHL-NHLPA investigation, which led to Babcock’s removal before he even coached a game.
“All that Babcock stuff, breaking news, that’s not really our lane,” Bissonnette says. “That was just something that was put on my desk, and I’m like, I never knew about this. This is crazy that this is happening. This is silly if it’s being allowed. And then I started off on the podcast about it, but no lie, I would’ve forgot to mention it if Whit didn’t tee me up because I told him on the phone call about it.
“After that, talk about taking a mind of its own, because the clip they cut out — I don’t cut the clips; the guys that work for us do — that clip had 7 ½ million views on Twitter. I was like, ‘Oh God, we’re in one here.’
So, yeah, it’s been a whirlwind. We can’t really make sense of it all, and the fact that now we’re ending up on a major network, it’s banana lands. We’re very grateful to be in the situation we’re in. I think we’re still trying to absorb it all and understand it all and trying to not let anyone down. We view that as a pretty big responsibility. It’s unfathomable how much Chiclets has blown up. It’s definitely been a wild ride.”
Barry says time will tell how much and if the Chiclets altcast will move the needle. Warner Bros. Discovery, he says, understands the obligation it has to the hardcore fan but also understands the equal obligation to the casual fan.
🚨 NEXT WEDNESDAY 🚨
Catch the Penguins-Panthers on TNT, and a special “Chiclets Cast” airing live on @truTV and @StreamOnMax 🍿 pic.twitter.com/eGe7iNoLdx
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) February 8, 2024
“If we can swing that door open for a casual fan and make it a little bit more entertaining, more provocative, more unpredictable, then we feel like that might be interesting for people to tune in,” Barry says. “Five of my favorite words are, ‘It’s never been done before.’ And whenever you have an opportunity to do something for the first time, that’s always pretty exciting. And especially when you know that you’re dealing with a sport that has really passionate fans, and then a cast of characters in this case that have really passionate fans, and you’re creating an intersection for everybody to come and meet in the middle and see what ultimately comes of that.
“We’re in the business of moments, and we’re not talking about manufacturing. We’re talking about being ready. Being ready to embrace them and amplifying them.”
Bissonnette is confident the truTV experience Wednesday night will work and could be the start of something big.
“Maybe if it is something that is successful and where they see growth, it’s maybe something that they can monetize without having to spend a lot on production,” he says. “You don’t have to send these trucks out and all these people and the handhelds, and it’s a f—ing operation to set up a production for a game.
“Well, if we’re just sitting on the couch, and they could see everything, and we’re just talking over it, maybe this is something that they decide to eventually use other games with. Who knows?
“Obviously you want people to enjoy what you do. I think everybody wants success, and that’s what we’re hoping for. But I’ve also landed on my face before, and if it doesn’t pop, and it’s not something anybody wants moving forward, hey, we worry about the next thing. We’re not going to dwell on it.”
(Top photos: Ben Jackson / NHLI via Getty Images and courtesy of Mike Grinnell)