The man has been at WDBO Orlando for 33 years. Not dog years, human years. That’s longer than most marriages, nearly two cicada cycles and the lunar moon cycle. On the radio, it’s probably more uncommon than those events. So how did he do it? Partly because he’s a good guy.
“I’ve been in the same building for 33 years,” Scott Anez said. “That just doesn’t happen. I attribute that to being decent at what I do. I’ve always done my job.”
Anez has stayed under the radar; he refuses to create waves.
“In this business, many people have large egos, but I never wanted to be that person,” Anez said. “I would hope if you asked my coworkers if that’s the way I was, they’d say yes.”
Anez has worked in the same building off North John Young Parkway since 1989. He interned at Channel 9, the local ABC-TV affiliate while attending the University of Central Florida. Today he is at the helm of Orlando’s Morning News, 5-9.
“When I first moved to Orlando, it was still a small southern town. This was in the early 80s, and the NBA Magic did a lot to change the area. We finally had a big-time sports franchise. From that time on, Orlando transitioned to become a major metropolis. When I moved here, they were still calling me a Yankee in school.”
Unfortunately for Anez, not a ball-playing Yankee.
Born in Rhode Island, Anez and his family moved to Orlando when he was 14 years old. At Lake Brantley High School in Altamonte Springs, he was a varsity starter in basketball and baseball.
His father owned the Pawtucket Red Sox, the Triple-A minor league team of the Boston Red Sox, from 1975-1976.
“It wasn’t a money-maker,” Anez explained.
In those days, few minor league franchises made a profit.
“Dad lost his shirt. But as a sports-crazed kid each summer, I was living a fantasy. I was a bat boy for my heroes. This was shortly after the Jim Rice and Fred Lynn era. I did spend some time with Bo Diaz. He was the first Venezuelan to play catcher regularly in the Major Leagues.”
His focus switched from being in the games he loved to covering them.
“I took my first accounting class in college at the University of Central Florida, and knew it wasn’t for me,” Anez said. “My father told me to do something I loved and could feed a family.”
Anez took his father’s advice and strolled across campus to the radio station, WUCF, and decided to pursue the play-by-play dream. Then, as now, those jobs aren’t easy to come by.
“I’ve had the opportunity to do some with the Orlando Magic. Those jobs on a full-time basis were and still are very few and far between.”
After graduation, he decided to stay in Orlando and wore a bunch of different hats at the beginning of his career..
“Because of my love of sports, I think I’ve always seen the work environment as a team environment,” he said. “A team atmosphere. Sports teaches you a lot about teamwork, and I applied a lot of that thinking in the work I did.
Anez said he had had a unique opportunity early to travel with the NBA’s Orlando Magic basketball club. On the road, he’d have to broadcast from local stations, and it’s there he noticed a distinct difference from home.
“Sometimes, just walking in the door of the station, I could feel a different vibe,” Anez said. “That’s something just wasn’t right, like a ‘Debbie Downer’ ambiance. Then I came home to Orlando and felt entirely the opposite. I liken this building to that shining city on a hill. In this business, if you find something good, you stick with it.”
He loves Central Florida and knows what an anomaly he is in terms of longevity at a station. “Even though Orlando has changed greatly over the years, my roots are here. In this business, that’s difficult to find. I’ve done so many things here, and versatility is the spice of life.”
He’s been referred to (by WDBO’s website) as opinionated, fair-minded, and entertaining.
If you’re one of those folks who like to flap your gums and sputter your opinions, Anez said his show has got just the thing. He said with the contentious nature of the country right now; he’s come to realize how salty people have become in their opinions.
“We run an open-mic segment where people can record their thoughts or, in some cases, rant,” Anez explained.
“We immediately get their comments on tape. Sure, we have to bleep something out now and again. But they’re done on the fly, and make germane content fodder for the show. Sometimes a comment can carry us through an entire segment and beyond. A comment may cause you to see an angle you’d never thought about before. It’s also exciting because you can’t control what they say. You can choose not to air it, but it’s raw content. I think doing something like this is vital to staying connected with the community. I tend to use the bites as liberally as possible.”
Podcasts have opened up an entire new avenue for Anez. When his podcast Anez Sez originated, he went into it kicking and screaming.
“My morning show is information-based more than anything,” he explained. “I didn’t really want to be known as an opinion guy. The more I got into it; I realized I had carte blanche to convey a lot of my thoughts, whereas I couldn’t do that as much on the morning show. We’ve done about 275 episodes so far, and It has been cathartic. Rarely do you get to espouse your opinion and get paid for it.”
With his podcast, he said he could figuratively let his hair down, and it feels great.
While covering sports, Anez said he got to know some of the members of the Magic.
“I knew Shaquille O’Neal from day one, right after he signed his first deal,” Anez said. “As O’Neal walked in, he hit his head on one of the speakers. He was just about 22 years old, a great kid.”
He said Shaq always wanted to be ‘the man” on the team. This was a recurring theme with Penny Hardaway, Dwayne Wade, Kobe Bryant. He always wanted Kobe to be the Robin to his Batman.
“On one of our shows with Shaq, we must have done an hour. He got his first endorsement for a company that made desks. This happened right in front of us, and now he’s America’s pitchman.
Since that tiny deal with a desk company in Orlando, O’Neal has worked out endorsement deals with companies such as IcyHot, Buick, The General, Macy’s, Zales, Arizona Beverage Co, Papa John’s, Epson Printers, and Carnival Cruises.
What about the sparks between O’Neal and Charles Barkley on Inside the NBA?
“I think it’s real,” Anez said. “I think Barkley knows how to get under Shaq’s skin. It’s marvelous. I like Barkley. I don’t agree with everything he says. But whenever I see Barkley on the air, I have to stop whatever I’m doing and watch. He’s very genuine.
“It’s always challenging to get to bed at a decent time,” Anez said. “My wife is working, and dinner is almost always at 8:00 pm. I always wanted to make my schedule doable for my wife. So she has some kind of home life. I know this business has destroyed a few marriages.
His daughter has left the house, and Anez has pondered whether his nearly constant schedule has affected her development.
“I ask her a lot,” he said. “She said it hadn’t affected her negatively.” He’s grateful for that. “For me, it’s God, then family, then work.”
The man doesn’t have a lot of time to relax or for recreation. But he loves a game called pickleball. At 56, he had to give up playing competitive basketball, so why not pickleball? It’s a combination of tennis and racquetball on a smaller court.
“I love to compete. Five or six years ago, I had knee surgery, and I had to find something else.”
After playing pickleball for a year and a half, he and his racquetball-playing partner went to Michigan for a tournament.
“My playing partner Bryan Lafferman and I have a good time together,” Anez explained. “We played a couple of tournaments closer to home.”
Just last week, he said a friend invited them to stay in his home for a tournament in Michigan.
“We figured we’d see how we’d do, even though we had to step up a weight class.
Collapsing more than the 1969 Cubs, a newspaper headline following the tournament would have read: ‘CHOKED.’ That’s putting it as succinctly as possible.
“There were three sets in the first match,” Anez said. “We lost the first, won the second set. We were up 8-3 in the final set and got beat 11-9. We should have beaten them. My buddy and I pored over each point, asking, how could that have happened? The team that beat us went on to win the whole thing.”
But that’s not the end of the pummeling.
“It gets better. We moved on to the consolation round, and some severe weather was coming in, and we knew we had better get a move on,” Anez said. “You can only win if you’re on serve. We needed just one point to win, leading 14-9. We lost 17-15. Bryan had a clear overhead shot. The ball nicks the net and goes sideways out of bounds. Again with the headline: ‘CHOKED.’
Somewhere, Leo Durocher must be having a good laugh.
Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at jimcryns3_zhd@indeedemail.com.
