Young Sportscasters: grow yourself where you can

The path to broadcast “fame” is frequently slow and winding

This article is a cross-over piece for me.  After 30 years of teaching English, I retired and decided that writing about all things sports (my side-vocation) would be a good fit.  So far, so good.

I also decided to open up my long-lingering Sportscasting Facebook page and share thoughts about my 35-plus years in that arena.  Slower pursuit, but coming together.

So this is a crossover episode—posted under my Substack moniker of Gilman on Sports. Reminds me of when I was a little kid in the 1960s, and they had the Green Hornet and Batman TV series share episodes… but this time, minus the masks and costumes. But I digress.

This is addressed to you YOUNG SPORTSCASTERS.  The age is flexible, but you are new to the game and wanting to obtain experience.  I will attempt to keep this relatively brief—attempt is the key word.

There are several suggestions to offer—and they all revolve around the concepts of practice and improvement.  Before you declare yourself ready to announce your first Super Bowl, NBA Finals or World Series, you need to have some experience.  And much of your early work will likely be UNPAID.  Got that??  As in… no money.

Scared off yet?  If you are a teenager, finding an opportunity to broadcast is as easy as working with your athletic director to set up a table, a chair and some rudimentary equipment.  Basic things like a microphone and a recorder.  Do they still make cassette recorders anymore?  Invest in something like a digital recorder. Google “digital audio recorder” and go from there.  If you need some additional guidance, drop me a note.

I was fortunate enough (in the 1970s) to be part of a video production program at my high school, and the booster club at the school wanted a broadcast of one week’s home basketball game to watch at their monthly meeting—and they were willing to PAY for the product.  I received the princely sum of fifteen dollars a game to share a rambling, sometimes incoherent basketball broadcast at the age of 17.  But I learned and got better.

Here is the first lesson:  PREPARE prior to every broadcast.  That means have rosters of your teams.  Obtain starters.  Get correct name pronunciations.  Come to the broadcast table with some knowledge.  As you get better with your preparation, be sure to obtain scoring averages of key players, perhaps obtain the last point totals scored by players the previous game, etc.  Again, preparation for the sports does vary.  Baseball takes the most work, with football a close second.  Basketball needs less prep, but it is very fast paced in comparison to the other two.  Check online for free scorekeeping sheets for various sports to help with your preparation.  See why I said I would ATTEMPT to keep it brief???  Not always easy. 

Lesson two:  REVIEW YOUR BROADCASTS and listen critically.  How was your pacing?  Are you too slow or too fast?  Do you have the right balance of emotion in your voice… don’t sound like a soap opera actor, but don’t deliver like a monotone narrator, either.  What you sound like matters—really matters.  Adjust your delivery.  Nobody will sound exactly like their favorite sportscaster, and I hope you don’t try to imitate them.  Be the best YOU on the air.  I have been compared to one particular broadcaster, but never saw myself as sounding like him.  It was a compliment, but didn’t encourage me to pick up on the network announcer’s vocal mannerisms.  Focus on your own craft.  Are you keeping up with the action?  Is there some repeated hesitation in your delivery?  Why?  BE CRITICAL.  Oh, and if you can find a local broadcaster willing to help you with this, send them an “air check” of your work.  Not the entire broadcast, but a good 15-20 minutes should be enough.  REVIEW, CORRECT AND REVIEW AGAIN.

Lesson three:  OBTAIN YOUR OWN EQUIPMENT as you can.  I am not suggesting that budding announcers shell out thousands of bucks to have their own ESPN Radio studio at home.  Start with what makes the most sense to you.  I personally purchased my own headset, followed closely by a mixer.  With the internet everywhere these days, you can find used units for a decent price.  In the 80s, I bought a basic, one earpiece headset and had a friend with good soldering-iron skills attach the needed connectors to work with the radio station board.  Later, I purchased my own mixer that had been sitting unused at my church for several years.  That was followed by other devices like a broadcast quality cassette recorder and various cables.  It was buy as you can, and learn as you go.  Look—folks wanting to become hunters eventually have to buy their own rifle and ammo—and you will have to do the same as you look to bag your own broadcasting gig.

My buddy Mike and me—working a national basketball tournament in 1993.

Lesson four:  probe the market for potential broadcasting opportunities.  When I was first in radio, my station was a “day lighter,” which went off the air—shutdown—when it got dark.  Not the best opportunity.  Eventually, the new owner of the station applied for a 24 hour license, and hired a guy with sports broadcast experience.  I got plenty of help from my friend Mike for a good three years or so before he moved on to a larger market.  That gave me the job, which I parlayed into an opportunity to bring my football coaching dad on the air.  And we enjoyed 30 years of work together.  I still miss him.

Today’s broadcast opportunities are different than they were in the 1980s.  Some folks have established their own on-line presence with live streaming of prep or even small college games.  It isn’t an easy approach, because now advertising revenue is an issue.  Some sportscasters do work with their radio station sales departments to develop a sponsorship list, but I have been fortunate in not needed to go down that road.   However, I did work with a partner on establishing an online broadcasting company in the early 2000s.  Boy, did we learn a lot about broadcast costs, ad revenues, streaming rates, etc.  It was a great nine years we had before handing off the whole operation to a friend.  I still contribute on occasion, but have no interest in burying myself in the studio.

As you can see, the path to sportscasting “glory” is far from a straight line.  You may find yourself treading water for months or years.  Do not lose heart--but understand that it takes TIME to develop your brand.  So keep practicing, develop good preparation habits, and purchase equipment needed to be a broadcast professional.

Mark Gilman with father/analyst Jerry. Our last season together in 2017.

Let me close with a personal illustration about being ready.  In the mid 1990s, I had collected a headset, a mixer board, a crowd microphone, and various cables needed to do a good broadcast.  I had talked my dad into buying his own headset.  We had just lost a radio job because the station in question was changing formats.  So we went to another station in town to pitch adding sports to their content.  We talked about our experience, we had about 7-8 years at that point, and that our per game rate was reasonable.  The owner stopped me right there to point out that they had no broadcast equipment to use for games—which is when I announced with a flourish that we had all we needed in that department, but needed a cellular phone to get the signal back to the station.  That was it—they had a bag phone and a connector, and we were ready to work.  I work with this same station today.

Sportscasting could happen to you, too.  Just be sure you are prepared to embrace it—because it certainly isn’t for wimps.