As New York City throws a ticker-tape parade for the New York Knicks, there is one former employee turned news anchor who is celebrating. “I’m cheering for them like hell as a former employee of the team,” Gordon Deal boasted.
“I used to be the backup public address announcer for the New York Knicks in the early 2000s, and at that time, those were some serious struggle years for the Knicks, so it’s a lot of fun to watch them now, almost an entire generation later,” the This Morning with Gordon Deal host added.
Deal’s not just celebrating the Knicks’ win, but also celebrating a huge milestone for himself.
Hall of Fame Induction
This past May, Deal officially became a member of the WRSU Hall of Fame. “Anytime your school recognizes you, it’s a real honor. So I was very flattered that the committee included me and a couple of other guys I used to work with. It was a lot of fun.”
The morning show host noted how his time at Rutgers helped get him on the right track to radio stardom. “I was kind of wandering along as an aimless freshman,” Deal recalled. “When I saw an ad that WRSU had run in The Daily Targum, the Rutgers daily newspaper, and just on a whim I thought, ‘Wow. Radio could be a way to expand my interest in sports and kind of keep it alive.'”
“I joined up and started doing play-by-play. That was really what attracted me to radio in the first place.” He later noted, “I was a soccer player my freshman year. My grades were terrible. I needed some new direction. And radio really wound up throwing me a career lifeline.”
A New Challenge
Throughout the years, Deal has had his fair share of sports and news coverage. But he and his team are conquering a new challenge — growing their share of the market pie. “We’re competing with more and more people all the time, it seems, so there’s always a real focus on, am I being as accurate as possible? Am I being as unbiased as possible? How concise is this with still conveying the most important information, and yet still allowing some measure of personality to come across?”
The latter part is obviously key because, as Deal affirmed, “We’re a personality-driven type medium, like others. Always trying to make sure credibility has been established, first and foremost.”
The sports anchor turned newsman is always pushing forward. He’s on the hunt to bring breaking news to his listeners as fast as possible. “The challenge never stops, combing the entire time we’re on the air for any sort of breaking news. Did I miss anything? Was there an angle we left out?” Deal rhetorically asked.
“The competition is so heightened, it feels like all the time, with all eyes on you every minute of the broadcast, so it’s a non-stop hunt for the most up-to-date and accurate information.” This is especially important with the events in Iran. “In a war environment, the time difference in the Middle East, to a certain extent, works to our advantage.”
When The Mic Is Off
Deal and the team are even building on their personalities when the mic is off — on social media. “When the Mic is Off, that was really the brainchild of Nicole Murray, our news anchor on the show.”
The Rutgers grad went on to note that Murray was the one pushing to expand into social media. “She was pressing to do more stuff on social media and agreed to take it on herself. I joke around that I’m too old for that now, so she drags me kicking and screaming into doing these video segments,” Deal joked before adding, “It’s just another way to interact with the listeners — she does a great job with it.”
He added, “She’s super fast with the editing skills, and we rotate it, so it’ll be her and I one week, and then Mike and I the next week, which kind of gives the listener different perspectives. Obviously, we don’t do any politics. We don’t do opinion politics on the show, so we keep stuff light.”
Deal’s audience is loving the off-mic connection. “The interaction has been fun,” Deal remarked. “The feedback is always generally good, I would say. We have a couple of trolls on occasion, but the thing about trolls is that at least they’re listening to the show or watching the video, so they may have something nasty to say, but it does mean they’re listening or watching.”
Regardless of trolls or those who might tune into a social video but not the radio dial, Deal believes expanding the audience is the sign of a healthy show. “There’s so much competition, but the competition’s healthy. It forces you to focus. It’s like being in sports. If you win all your games — you see soccer games 6-0 — you’re not learning much. There’s no real challenge, but when everybody’s coming at you and you have to be on your game every single day, it just forces you to be better.”
And the This Morning with Gordon Deal team is up to the challenge. “You can embrace it and try to tackle it, or you can go cower in the corner somewhere, which we are not doing.”
Deal attested, “I mean, listen, would I like us to steal all the available advertising dollars? You bet. But these days, there’s a lot of competition out there that wants a piece of that pie.” But he also believes this competition is good because “I’d like to think that with all that competition, the product from all of us who are in the industry is just that much better.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
