By now, you’ve likely read many tributes to legendary broadcaster Vin Scully, who passed away earlier this week at 94 years old.
When you’re the voice of one of Major League Baseball’s most famous franchises (Dodgers) in the two biggest media markets in the country (New York and Los Angeles) for multiple generations (1950-2016), there are so many different angles and stories to tell. What he meant to baseball, to Los Angeles, and to broadcasting, in general, have all been covered incredibly well.
But what can talk hosts of any format learn from Vin Scully? Plenty.
The beauty of YouTube is being able to type in the “Vin Scully broadcast” and get everything from the 1957 Dodgers vs. Giants game to the 1977 All-Star game to his final sign-off in 2016.
I spent time this week listening to some of these games and realized there was plenty that broadcasters, not just those who call baseball games but talk show hosts as well, could learn from Scully.
First off, Vin Scully was not afraid of silence. There were times when he would let the sounds of the stadium tell the story for him on the radio. TV broadcasters are used to this, but in radio, there’s typically less silence, understandably so.
However, the power of silence works, regardless of the format. While talk shows don’t have that background noise of a stadium that can become part of the “show,” the carefully placed and wisely chosen moments of silence can tell a story. The best broadcasters know how to use that extra pause for added emphasis and let a story breathe for a moment.
Let the audience digest what was just said. It can be overdone, but it can be incredibly effectively used. And in an era of overdone, overhyped, hot takes, this broadcasting quality seems to continue to fall by the wayside.
Vin Scully’s breadth of knowledge exceeded baseball. Sure, Scully was a baseball nut; it’s what he did for a living. But his ability to weave history, pop culture, and everything in between into his broadcast was a reminder that being well-rounded as a broadcaster on air makes you a real person.
For news talk hosts, in particular, being the person hosting four hours in a row on nothing but Washington D.C. politics gets repetitive, boring, and eventually, all starts to sound the same. Similarly, I think about Rush Limbaugh when he talked about technology, his iPhone iOS update, and sports. This all takes us, the listener, under the hood into a broadcaster’s interests and builds an even stronger connection with an audience.
Then, there was pure joy. Imagine going to the same job every day for 66 years and maintaining the same enthusiasm for nearly 10,000 games. I’m sure Scully had his bad days like the rest of us, but to keep that kind of enthusiasm, passion, and joy for that length of time is unmatched.
That remains arguably the most important reminder to all of us who are fortunate enough to do what we do for a living. We got into this because we love it. We love communicating. We love story-telling. We love creating content.
And whether your content is a baseball broadcast, football broadcast, news talk show, sports talk show, or all-news format, we can all learn plenty from listening to a Vin Scully broadcast.
Now go check out YouTube and thank me later. You won’t regret it.
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
