Maybe some viewers have given up on local sportscasts but the people who are anchoring certainly haven’t and if you ask them, the naysayers are missing the boat….Depending on your market size, local sports can be the most important game in town or perhaps the story you won’t see anywhere else…But be clear, it’s not going away any time soon…<\/p>\n
The traditional path for on air sportscasters starts in Midland, Texas, Minot, North Dakota or Sioux City, Iowa..TVJobs.com<\/a>….Stay a year or two and move on…Management knows it, the viewers know it, YOU know it…But what you do with it can all too easily determine how long you stay…and what kind of stories you’re doing…”It depends where you’re at(market)”, said Larry Ridley<\/a> of WHDH-TV at a recent Boston University sports journalism seminar…”The bigger market you get into, the more the sports is considered newsworthy and part of the community…Sometimes they(management) don”t care about the highlights so you have to be able to tell a stories(features).”<\/p>\n In the larger markets too many anchors spend too much time on the Pros…Highlights viewers have already seen, soundbites they’ve already heard….They break at least two of the cardinal rules of journalism before even hitting the air….If your show is from yesterday, your viewers will be history…Repeat after me, “advance the story” and say it with me now, \u00a0‘tell em something they don’t already know”….<\/p>\n Mike Lynch<\/a> of WCVB-TV never had to do the small market route, making the leap from Boston radio to part time at CH5 and learned from the sports team that different was good….Features like Outdoors with Bill O’Connell and Five on Sports with Don Gillis were staples at WCVB when Lynch started…in 1985 Lynch began fronting High Five<\/a> and it’s still going strong, so strong, in fact, that Ridley stated “it’s the reason we don’t do high school sports on CH7″…The lesson is simple: it’s easy to advance a story no one has seen before…<\/p>\n But more than stacking a show, more than plays of the week, viewers will take to the enthusiasm and the passion \u00a0of the anchor…Lynch has been doing this for close to three decades now but you’d never know it from his presentation…”It’s fun, I wouldn’t change a thing, stated Lynch, what else would I rather be doing?…Not once have I pulled into the parking lot at CH5 and gone ‘I’m going to work, I can’t believe I have to do this today.’…I go with as much energy as I did for day number one…I couldn’t wait to get to work today”<\/p>\n So, no matter what market you are serving, do it with a spirit, do it with a flair…they’re out there watching…give em reason to say, “Hey, did you see that new sports guy\/gal in town?…That next step up the ladder will come faster than you think…<\/p>\n Next week, Athletes as Journalists with Jermaine Wiggins and Dana Barros….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maybe some viewers have given up on local sportscasts but the people who are anchoring certainly haven’t and if you ask them, the naysayers are missing the boat….Depending on your market size, local sports can be the most important game in town or perhaps the story you won’t see anywhere else…But be clear, it’s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}