The 151st running of The Kentucky Derby will take place on Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville. 840 WHAS has featured comprehensive coverage in the lead-up to the Run for the Roses.
As one might expect, when an event is happening for the 151st time, it is a big deal in a community. The iHeartMedia Louisville news/talk station dedicates dozens of hours of coverage to the build-up of the event before culminating in the “Fastest Two Minutes in Sports” on Saturday evening.
Barrett Media sat down with 840 WHAS Program Director Gus Allen — who also serves as the Director of Spoken Word Programming for the company in the state — to talk about how the station takes coverage of a sporting event and turns it into content that the traditional news/talk radio listener cares about.
Garrett Searight: Lots of people would view an event like The Kentucky Derby as a sports story. What’s your philosophy on turning it into a news/talk story and content?
Gus Allen: In Kentucky — Louisville in particular — the Derby is a lifestyle event. There is a whole festival surrounding the event – the Kentucky Derby Festival. The wisecrack among many is we have a two-week celebration for a two-minute horse race. It begins with Thunder Over Louisville, two weeks prior to the Derby, with an air show and one of the largest fireworks shows in North America. We broadcast that event as well. Unfortunately, that event was cancelled for only the second time this year due to flooding along the river.
The Derby is more than just a two-minute horse race. There are parades for the city, steamboat races, marathons, balloon races, and more. People around the city and state have Derby parties, and the event spans all ages and demographics. The Kentucky Derby is the longest-running continuous sporting event in the country, and it’s a symbol that identifies Louisville on the map. It’s the identifying factor that everyone seems to know about our area, whether you are from here or not, so everyone has an interest in it, even if they know nothing about horse racing. They will make sure they pick a horse for the Derby.
Additionally, the Derby is more than a sporting event. It’s one of the only sporting events people dress to the nines to attend. The outfits themselves are a topic for viewing and discussion. There are people in the infield having such a good time that they don’t even realize there is a horse race going on. So, the event writes a story each year from the 150,000 in attendance. And for WHAS and our team, we try to tell each aspect of that story throughout the day from every angle we can.
GS: What goes into your coverage plans?
GA: We start the week off by broadcasting live from the backside media center Monday through Friday of Derby week. WHAS was the first station to begin doing this many years ago, and now all local — and some national — media come backside. Being here allows us to get interviews with politicians, celebrities, trainers, jockeys, and other people connected to the race in some way or another. We will choose the standout interviews to reuse on Derby Day when we have extended time between races.
Paul Miles in our news department and Jody Demling come out to the track nearly every day before and during Derby week to gather interviews and sound from trainers and jockeys. That sound allows Jody to create 2-3 minute horse profiles on all 20 Kentucky Derby horses for playback during our regular Derby week and Derby Day programs. Paul’s sound allows for feature stories during our newscasts during the week leading up to the race. The overall sound gathering also allows us to create and tell the myriad of stories of people behind the horses and of course, the horses themselves.
Our overall plan stays about the same each year with a few tweaks here and there. We cover the Kentucky Oaks on Friday afternoon with our afternoon host Terry Meiners, who stays back at the studio while Jody Demling is at the track with any breaking news (a horse scratches/drops out, weather, etc) and we run the afternoon races, including the Kentucky Oaks late in the afternoon.
For Derby Day, we start at 6 AM with Kentuckiana’s Saturday Morning News, focusing all our resources on the event. That includes news giving details on how to get into the track, the current odds and changes to the field, any big developments around the race, what you can and can’t take to the track, weather, and traffic.
This is one of the few big sporting events that people can simply walk up to and attend without a ticket by going to the infield. It’s a large event in a largely residential area, so providing the information is imperative, whether you are going to the event or not. We begin our full-on coverage at 10 AM each morning, and that involves our morning host, Tony Cruise (who is retiring this year) anchoring coverage for the first 2-3 hours.
We broadcast every race from the track announcer, and we mix in news, traffic, and weather. We always say it’s sunny and 75 on Derby Day, but the reality is we can get the four seasons all in one afternoon. We will run each race card (which is providing the horse names, jockeys, and trainers of each race) and provide who we think are the best bets on those races.
In addition to having a primary host anchor the coverage, we will have a co-host from the station join in for a round robin discussion and we have several roving reporters out amongst the patrons at the track doing interviews. We will get interviews from celebrities showing up on the red carpet, college students having the time of their lives in the infield, people practicing capitalism on the street selling cheap flip flops for $20, and the people dressed up in the stands. We sprinkle those in throughout the day, along with the recorded material and jockey comments after each race leading up to the Derby.
And we try and tell the full story of the day and paint the picture of what is going on. The goal is to show the fun and magnificence of the event. People come here to have fun. People listen to the event to be entertained and enjoy the distraction from regular life. We like to bring that to them.
We carry the audio portion of the NBC television broadcast starting at 5 PM through the end of the race. After everything is complete, we wrap it up by taking portions of the post-race press conference along with traffic to get out of the track and stories surrounding the winning jockey, trainer, and owner. It’s a long day, but it’s a fun and rewarding day once we pull it off. This is the 100th year WHAS has broadcast the Kentucky Derby. We like to try and improve it each year.
GS: How far in advance do you begin working on what you’re going to do at the Kentucky Derby and in the run-up to the event?
GA: Never far enough! Each year, I say I’m going to start earlier to get it all done. We start about a month and a half out with some planning items that we need to address. And we work on little things in the weeks leading up. Two weeks out is when we really start going all in to make sure we have everything in place.
As with any big event, we’re working it right up to the day before, resolving little items. Jim Fenn is our behind-the-scenes miracle worker. He may have the toughest job as he puts in likely 100-200 pieces of imaging. From legal IDs counting down to the event, setting up new clocks/logs for the day of the event, dropping in celebrity and sportswriter horse picks, and making sure we have every small bit of imaging for Derby Day, he has a lot on his plate.
In addition to that, he will monitor the Derby Day broadcast and take snippets of the broadcast to create a 10-12 minute montage of the event. We’ve been doing the montage for about 40 years now, and we play that when the day is complete Saturday night to recap the splendor of the race.
GS: What are the most difficult aspects of pulling off what you want to accomplish?
GA: Aside from the lack of sleep during the week, likely coordinating all of the people involved. No matter our best intentions, I will miss a bit of information to someone or a group of people. That results in a lot of phone calls/texts and questions in the first few hours of the day.
Additionally, you have to be flexible as needs can change. The weather can go bad, a horse can scratch, or audio is missing. You have to be able to get some info quickly or switch to a need at any time.
You also need to have your talent be knowledgeable about 20 horses — whether they know horse racing or not– as you can be called upon to talk about a horse at any time during the afternoon. You don’t have to be an expert on something but you do want to have the basic info to be able to converse on a topic.
GS: If you were to give advice to other news/talk programmers who are in a similar situation — with large events that might not be viewed as traditional content for the news/talk genre or audience — what would you tell them?
GA: You really have to tell spectacular stories and enjoy doing the event. I know very few people who come to the Derby who don’t have fun — and they are excited to tell you that story. Some people are so excited to tell you where they got their stylish hat. Others want to explain how they just won $700 on a trifecta ticket in the last race. Some are proud of the creative way they sneaked their alcohol into the infield. The horse trainers and jockeys always provide good storylines. Listeners want to hear these items.
The excitement rubs off on our hosts and reporters telling these stories. It’s a tough broadcast to pull off, but our people enjoy it and it shows. That helps elevate WHAS overall and keep momentum maintained.
Great stories never go out of style, and people love to hear them. The Kentucky Derby offers that ability both with the present and also past winners. At the same time the local county fair or other large sporting event offers that same opportunity. If you make it interesting and entertaining, people will soak it in.
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