Before Jorge Sedano graduated from Florida International University in 1999, he earned an internship with SportsLine USA. The company partnered with Sports Fan to create the Sports Fan Radio Network, which featured programming syndicated to local radio stations around the country. The broadcast outlet was home to future stars including Craig Carton and Brandon Tierney.
Sedano interned with the afternoon show, The Drive, co-hosted by Sid Rosenberg and Scott Kaplan. Today, Kaplan is a co-host of the afternoon drive program on ESPN LA 710, and he happens to be behind the microphone alongside his former intern.
“It’s a very, very small business, but that internship really got me kind of headed in the right direction from a sports radio perspective,” Sedano said. “I started to kind of take opportunities that came about in sports radio locally in South Florida, and just kind of built the career from there.”
Sedano’s first program director, Manny Munoz, afforded him clarity when he made the jump to WAFN and took the air. At the time, the station was heard at 1700 AM, which was considered part of the experimental end of the dial. The call letters of the station align with those of WFAN, the station that pioneered the sports talk format, in New York City. This was hardly a coincidence though since WAFN syndicated the hit morning drive show, Imus in the Morning, along with select WFAN programming.
The station folded in 2001, as did the Sports Fan Radio Network. Everything Sedano had diligently worked to attain was adroitly snatched away, but he still needed to make a living. No one would hire Sedano in radio, but his friend brought him on as a courier. While he was grateful to be employed, he felt considerably afflicted by the previous succession of events and impugned his external perception.
“I was in the car all day,” Sedano said. “I was listening to sports talk radio and only thinking to myself, ‘I’m better than that guy that’s on the air right now,’ and that’s the type of stuff that would swirl in my head. While it was obviously helpful to have a job to pay bills, it was also torturous because I would listen to people that I felt like I was definitely better than in a lot of cases.”
Nine months later, Sedano made it back to the radio studios with Clear Channel on WINZ-AM where he demonstrated his talent and quickly earned the afternoon drive hosting slot. Upon his return, Sedano immersed himself in the local teams as a beat reporter for the outlet. All of that work got him on the radar of FOX Sports Radio Network.
WIOD-AM, a news station, happened to have the live game broadcast radio rights for the Miami Heat. Sedano auditioned for the team’s studio hosting job, which would make him responsible for anchoring the pregame and postgame shows. Ultimately, he ended up landing the coveted position – and to his advantage, it nearly aligned with the team trading for Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal. The entire ordeal changed the trajectory of his career, leading to subsequent opportunities and a renewed sense of poise and determination.
“All that heartache and all that stuff I dealt with when I didn’t have a job and then climbing back up as someone who was like, ‘Hey, whatever job you offer me, I’m going to crush; I’m going to kill it; I’m going to do the best job I could possibly do,’ got me those next opportunities, including being a talk show host again and being involved with the NBA,” Sedano said. “After that, I’ve kind of never looked back.”
During that same year, Jon “Stugotz” Weiner was critical in starting 790 The Ticket, a radio station that connected with younger listeners and rivaled 560 WQAM. Dan Le Batard hosted a program that rapidly gained cache and national attention from the onset, and Sedano arrived three years into his tenure. Le Batard served as inspiration for Sedano as he fostered a distinctive, sonic identity and widespread consonance. Unfortunately for South Florida sports fans, 790 The Ticket shuttered its doors last year, but it left behind an indelible legacy.
“We had kind of what I would call the same sensibilities across the board on the station,” Sedano said of Le Batard. “When I was there, I was doing mornings and he was doing afternoons. I think the biggest compliment I got when I worked there was that it felt like it was just one show all day as opposed to different shows.”
The competition at WQAM was not particularly amenable towards the type of sports radio 790 The Ticket had proffered. Sedano remembers that the outlet used to call his station “sissy boy radio” since it deviated from discussion solely about sports. In reality, the generational change was disquieting for those in traditional outlets, ascertaining it to be threatening to the stability of the medium.
“I learned that you need to have a lot of layers when you’re doing talk radio because you’re on the air for three or four hours a day,” Sedano said. “There has to be a connection with the audience. The sports stuff will do that some of the time, but it’s the personal stuff. It’s the funny stuff that people will take with them and will remember forever.”
Ironically enough, Sedano was named the new program director and afternoon drive host at 560 WQAM in 2012, ending his time with 790 The Ticket. Joining WQAM was particularly special for him because he grew up listening to the area’s original sports station. The outlet catalyzed his infatuation with sports talk radio and being granted the chance to guide its programming approach was a dream come true.
“I remember going to bed listening to WQAM late at night on my alarm clock radio when I was a child,” Sedano said. “I would listen to sports radio well into the overnight because I’d wake up in and out, and I’d listen to guys like Scott Ferrall doing national and J.T. The Brick who I got to work with later on, which is kind of crazy.”
Leading up to his latter years at 790 The Ticket and time at WQAM, Sedano began to ponder over broadening his work to television. Sports coverage was always in demand and Sedano recognized the importance of cultivating versatility. He landed a job at CBS 4 in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area. Sedano was also utilized by CBS Sports as a host for some of its programming and ultimately made the jump to FOX Sports Sun as a studio host on Miami Heat broadcasts during the 2012-13 season. Pat Riley, the longtime president of the Miami Heat, was a source of inspiration for Sedano to always pursue forward progress.
“He’s kind of like Six Degrees of Separation, so I just think he’s an incredibly interesting human being, and the more time I got to spend around him, I noticed that,” Sedano said of Riley. “He always said… something to the effect of, ‘Every 10 years, you should try something new [and] completely different than what you’re used to doing to continue to grow as a human being.’”
Sedano officially joined ESPN in 2013 as the host of Sedano & Stink, a national program on ESPN Radio. The show was syndicated to various local radio stations around the country, amplifying the platform he had and keeping him in familiar territory since Le Batard moved his show to the outlet as well. While he was hosting the program from Bristol, Sedano was frequently utilized as a fill-in host for Mike Greenberg on Mike & Mike and for Colin Cowherd on The Herd.
When Mark Schlereth left ESPN in 2015, Sedano was granted his own solo program called The Sedano Show. He eventually paired with fellow South Florida native Israel Gutierrez on Jorge & Izzy, which lasted for eight months before a programming change that moved Sedano back to local radio.
“I give less bleeps is probably the way I would describe it, whereas when I was young, I was always worried about what the local media columnist would say or if the teams would get mad,” Sedano explained. “Now I don’t care – it is what it is. I think the one thing I bring to the table is you’re always going to get genuine honesty – if you’re a team or a fan or whatever, you know you’re just going to get that, for better or worse.”
Sedano began appearing on ESPN LA 710 as one-third of Mornings with Keyshawn, Jorge and LZ, which featured former NFL star Keyshawn Johnson and writer LZ Granderson. At the same time, he was included across ESPN’s linear studio programming such as Around the Horn, NBA Today and SportsCenter while also working as a sideline reporter for the network’s NBA coverage.
“It is the worldwide leader in sports; it is the destination,” Sedano affirmed about ESPN. “Getting here felt cool, but staying here and trying to carve out a career here, I think, is also cool.”
When he was in college, Sedano would watch the same episode of SportsCenter several times to analyze the hosting styles outfits most popular hosts. Now with changes across programming because of fugacious trends and the incessant flow of content, it is incumbent on him to remain prepared to discuss topics at a moment’s notice. Fortunately for Sedano, he was not included in the round of ESPN talent layoffs that stunned sports media, and he has maintained a relatively consistent presence in the marketplace.
“While I would say consolidation has certainly hurt the business in a lot of ways – there’s no doubt about that – I think the ability to create your own thing and create your own brand is in a completely different place than it was when I was growing up,” Sedano said.
While he was at ESPN in 2014, Sedano noticed that there were moving trucks in front of LeBron James’ Miami home. He lived 10 minutes away and sometimes drove past the area. Once he noticed the trucks, he made a call to James’ representative who told him that he was transporting his cars to Ohio, something he apparently did every summer. Shrewdly enough, Sedano did not dismiss the possibility that James was departing Miami to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Although it may not have been purely incidental and disjunctive, James did indeed depart Miami and resumed his career in Cleveland.
Akin to being observant, Sedano ensures he actively listens when conducting interviews and generates effective follow-up questions. He also frequently ends up extrapolating concealed storylines, but not all of this happens on camera. It leads Sedano to take prudence in asking subjects about sourcing, aiming for direct attribution but occasionally utilizing information on background.
“If you just listen, you’ll be able to engage and move the conversation along in a way that’s more meaningful and more interesting,” Sedano said. “I think that’s the thing that has made me good at the job on the sideline is that, and then the story stuff is also listening and chatting with people and not being afraid to just walk up to somebody and maybe you get shut down.”
Today, Sedano hosts an afternoon drive program with Scott Kaplan on ESPN LA 710, something that originated when he was approached about Kaplan joining the entity altogether. Several months after Sedano vouched for his approval, station management approached him about adding Kaplan to the show with Granderson to fill the void left when Johnson joined Jay Williams and Zubin Mehenti on their national morning show, Keyshawn, JWill and Zubin.
He did not hesitate to sign off on it, as Sedano and Kaplan had previously discussed working together. Granderson exited the station in August 2021, isolating the duo in afternoons – and the show ended up having natural chemistry with an enticing sound.
“I feel like because we had that long-standing relationship, I was able to just tell him, ‘Here’s some thoughts on how I think you should do this,’ and he’s always willing to listen,” Sedano said. “We’re able to listen to each other, and honestly we’re able to make fun of each other and laugh at each other. I think that’s what makes the show successful. There are no sacred cows – we fight like brothers; we laugh like brothers.”
Good Karma Brands acquired ESPN LA 710 in a larger, $15 million transaction with The Walt Disney Company, and Sedano considers the outlet fortunate to have the partnership. ESPN LA 710 and ESPN’s audio division at large recently endured the loss of staffers in layoffs, including Los Angeles program director Amanda Brown, leading industry insiders to question the future of the company’s involvement in the medium.
“Honestly, we couldn’t ask for a better pairing of companies to work together in the audio space with ESPN and Good Karma Brands,” Sedano said. “They both have obviously an incredible track record and just incredible people at the helm, too, working together… It’s an investment in the audio space where a lot of companies are not investing in the audio space, particularly terrestrial radio.”
Sedano does not like to solely focus on quantitative metrics such as the quarterly radio ratings to determine whether or not ESPN LA 710 makes an impression in the marketplace. Throughout his time in Los Angeles, he can see the mobilization of the audience for several station events – including a softball game and the annual Mandy Awards – and feels that since people come to support the outlet, it is adequately carrying out its purpose.
“Whenever we’ve had these events, we get easily one thousand [or] two thousand, and if we had bigger venues, I feel like the demand would be there to have several thousand at some of these events,” Sedano said. “That to me is what shows the success and the lifeblood of the station and how [it] resonates in a big way.”
Just as when he was in Miami, Sedano’s show calculatedly perambulates away from sports in other tangential discussion, including recent discourse about the open Wheel of Fortune hosting job. Although Ryan Seacrest has since been named to the role succeeding Pat Sajak, Sedano’s show producer Lindsey Fotlin noticed those in sports media advocating for his candidacy, including midday host Travis Rodgers. Even though he remains more than happy to take the role, he does not focus on the outside noise because of the demanding nature of his job and endeavor in fatherhood.
“I feel like parenting is a big part of my life right now, and I have young children – [age] 9 and 4 – [and] my wife works in news as a producer on the production side,” Sedano said. “I feel like she and I [would] have a really fun podcast together just about parenting and marriage… maybe that could be on the horizon one day, but I don’t know how soon.”
Aspiring broadcasters have a surfeit of necessary tools to begin practicing their craft and amplify their platform. Whether it is through audio or video, there are methods to create and promulgate content, allowing people to streamline the process and construct a body of work. Finding success in the industry fundamentally comes down to being informative and entertaining while being apt to face new challenges with alacrity and equanimity. Sedano continues to do just that, expanding his media presence beyond the luminosity of Southern California.
“I work in the toy department of media and journalism, which is sports, and that’s my motivation every single day,” Sedano said. “I get to do something that, growing up, if you would have told me this is what I’m going to do for a living, I would have said, ‘I would do it for free.’”
Derek Futterman is a former associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. Find him on X @derekfutterman.
