WCBS 880 news anchor Mack Rosenberg got his name from his parents’ interest in two people. First, a baseball player. A backup catcher with the Mets by the name of Mackey Sasser.
“My parents liked him, even though he had a case of the yips,” Rosenberg said. “He couldn’t throw the ball back to the pitcher.”
The other person was someone his mother liked. An actor on the 80s show Knott’s Landing. “It was one of my mom’s favorite shows,” Rosenberg said. “The actor’s name was M. Mack Patrick MacKenzie.”
It’s unknown whether MacKenzie could throw the ball back to the pitcher.
Rosenberg studied at Fordham University, majoring in communications and media studies with a concentration in television and radio. He served as a sports manager, broadcaster, host, and beat reporter at WFUV and is now a news anchor, reporter, producer, and writer at WCBS 880 in New York.
He refers to himself as the Swiss Army Knife of WCBS. His ability to do a lot of things at the station makes him more valuable.
He’s the son of music-loving parents. Rosenberg is the singer in a rock cover band aptly named Drive Time. A self-described old soul, Rosenberg said music from the Doobie Brothers, The Who, Steely Dan, and his favorite band, The Eagles, tell stories and provide melodies he lives for.
“I was introduced to 70s music early,” he said. “My dad was at the original Woodstock in ‘69. I’m not sure how much of Woodstock he remembers,” he joked.
Rosenberg said he wishes he was born in the 50s to have experienced that genre of music first-hand.
“Steely Dan is a band that arguably is one of the most diverse and original of them all,” Rosenberg said. “I don’t know how good a source I am, but my band members and I have a great appreciation for Steely Dan. They’re right up there with the other bands I mentioned.”
He recognized he could sing when he was seven years old.
“I recorded myself singing along with Motown’s greatest hits. Those tapes still exist. I may be the only one who enjoys them,” he joked. “I’m frequently singing in the car and the shower.”
If you’re going to emulate a singer, Steve Perry of Journey isn’t the worst choice. Rosenberg also said Freddy Mercury of Queen is one of the greatest singers of all time.
Rosenberg recently experimented with a band that plays a lot of 90s music like Nirvana and Alice in Chains, but those songs didn’t give him the same feeling as the ones he does with Drive Time.
“They didn’t resonate with me,” he said. “At the same time, a good song is different for everybody.” Rosenberg tried playing piano in kindergarten, but that didn’t gain traction.
His mother was a teacher for 30 years, a speech pathologist mainly for the New York City board of education. His father works in logistics for a plastic company. At 74, a man of structure and routine, he has no plans to retire anytime soon. That sense of structure and routine was passed down to Mack.
Rosenberg was a sports junkie from his early days. “I’m still a diehard listener of WFAN and listened to WCBS-FM as well. It was my place for oldies.”
He spent a lot of time immersed in baseball video games and called them as a radio broadcaster as he played. “I got pissed off when I started to lose, and my game calling suffered a bit,” Rosenberg joked.
As a kid, Rosenberg was judged one of the top announcers in 2002 for a New York Mets broadcaster contest. He sent in a tape of him announcing to a video game.
“The winner of the contest got to call an inning of an actual Mets game.”
His dream throughout college at Fordham was to work in sports.
“I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” Rosenberg said. “I broadcast a ton of Fordham sports. I knew what they were all about. I did this for four years and soaked everything in.”
As a college student, he worked at NPR affiliate WFUV and received media credentials from the station. He covered the Mets, Yankees, Giants, and Jets, among others. Pretty much all of the New York Metro area sports teams. Rosenberg also hosted a weekly Fordham sports show on FUV.
“The first thing they tell you at Fordham, on day one, is WFUV is not a college radio station. It’s a real station,” he explained. “That’s why journalism people go to Fordham. For someone interested in news or sports, it’s the biggest candy store in the world.”
Rosenberg covered the New York Giants training camp in 2011. It was a thrill as he was working around beat reporters he grew up with. That experience was a bit intimidating, even surreal.
“I was dealing with professional players and coaches as a college student. It was daunting to be reporting next to journalism professionals, writers I knew as a kid.”
He was worried he’d make a mistake in front of them.
A particular memory was when Rosenberg was covering the Giants and head coach Tom Coughlin was holding court with the media.
“I wanted to ask him a question about an offensive lineman Will Beatty who was working his way back from a pectoral injury. I asked Coughlin how Beatty was progressing. Coughlin looked at me with a slightly irritated look and asked, ‘Is this your first day here? We’ve been talking about Beatty for awhile.’”
Shortly afterward, an experienced journalist walked up to the young Rosenberg and urged him not to take Coughlin’s comment too seriously.
Between a career in sports and news, Rosenberg faced the equivalent of the old game show Let’s Make a Deal. Sports or news? Would it be door number one or door number two?
“Nobody’s journalism career path is the same,” Rosenberg said. “If you’re not planning on becoming a lawyer or doctor, there’s no single approach to a career.”
In college, it was all about sports. As he walked out of college, he’d just covered the biggest teams in sports and thought that it would be possible to work in sports.
Rosenberg said he wishes there was somebody at Fordham who could have told him just because he covered New York sports didn’t mean he was just going to walk into a sports job. The odds were he’d have to swim as a small fish in a big pond like everybody else.
“It made me see there could be a career in news for me. I imagine I might have been described as patiently impatient.”
His first full-time job was as an assignment editor at Verizon FiOS 1 News, the now defunct local TV news station serving the tri-state area.
“I learned the foundation of what local news is,” Rosenberg explained. “While at WFUV, the news department would report about a pothole in the street, and in the sports department, we would laugh at that. I later realized that could be real news.”
Still, he was sending out tapes for a sports job.
“I had a hard time understanding why I didn’t get picked up for a sports job.”
He did some fill-in work in news at WFUV, mostly early mornings. It started to snowball from there.
“My first full-time job in news was overnights, six days a week at WTIC, the Hartford CBS radio affiliate,” Rosenberg said.
“I grew up in Westchester County, north of New York City. I would drive two hours each day to (the station). I’d pull up to the station at 10:15 at night and roll the car seat back in hopes of catching a couple minutes of sleep.
“When I dedicated myself to a career in news, it felt good,” Rosenberg explained. “There was a sense of relief.”
He began to mold himself into a news person. Rosenberg had to determine what made a good story. What elements were necessary. Which reporter would be good for a particular assignment.
“I had to be 100 percent confident I could tell a good story. Since taking the job at WCBS in 2018, my on-air presence has improved,” Rosenberg explained. “I’ve had the chance to develop my personality and become a credible source for New York.”
Rosenberg grew up listening to a lot of the people he started to work with.
“At first, it was odd to be in the same room as them,” Rosenberg explained. “But I got to learn about who they are beyond the air. You get to know them as a person. You find out what makes them tick, the things you have in common. They might ask me when the next gig is for my band.”
Morning anchor Wayne Cabot was one of those legends for Rosenberg. Someone he describes as brilliant.
“We share a love of music both on and off the air.”
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.
