77 WABC morning host Sid Rosenberg appeared on Fox News Tonight with Brian Kilmeade Wednesday and took listeners behind the scenes Friday morning.
Kilmeade made an appearance on Sid and Friends in the Morning before his own show began on the New York news/talk station, and discussed the interview with Rosenberg.
“You promised me last week. ‘Hey, listen, I’m doing the 8:00 PM show next week and we got to get you on’. And you’re a man of your word. You really are and you put me on this week. It was Wednesday night. And it turns out that because I moved back to Queens, so you guys send this van which has a studio inside the van. And it was great,” Rosenberg revealed.
“It pulls up right in front of my house. I walked outside, sat in a chair, and had the New York skyline behind me. And the next thing you know, I’m on with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News.”
Rosenberg then joked that not everything was as successful as the setup.
“They didn’t tell me there are two screens,” said Rosenberg. “And I’m looking at the screen where I’m on looking at myself and I got a text from Dr. Marc Siegel. He goes ‘Is there something wrong with your eyes?’ I go ‘What are you talking about? I’m on the air. What are you talking about?’ I was looking at the wrong screen! So for about the first 30 seconds, my eyes were closed. But it was a great segment with you.”
Sid Rosenberg on Daniel Penny's indictment… "They tell you in NYC don't help your fellow New Yorkers. That's the saddest part of this story." pic.twitter.com/ZPLGHRwY9Y
Kilmeade welcomed Rosenberg to Fox News Tonight to discuss the recent indictment of Daniel Penny in the New York subway death of Jordan Neely earlier this year.
Layoffs and job cuts at ESPN and across the Walt Disney Company are far from over. According to Dan Le Batard though, there are two employees of the network that should consider themselves safe.
Michael Wilbon was a guest this week on Le Batard’s South Beach Sessionspodcast. In the course of praising the kindness and mentorship he received from Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, Le Batard put their place in the ESPN pantheon in perspective.
“You had a seminal program that somehow still exists, okay?” he said in reference to the duo’s show, Pardon the Interruption. “That has made its way through the labyrinth of all ESPN things, isn’t subject to cuts, because you guys are now above cuts, like you’ve got seniority.”
Whether or not that is true, Wilbon was certainly happy to hear that said out loud.
“I’ve got a kid in high school. I need to be above cuts.”
PTI debuted in October of 2001. It quickly became a model for studio programming at ESPN. It also led to more opportunities for Wilbon, including a regular role on NBA Countdown, and Kornheiser, including a brief stint in the Monday Night Football booth.
The show also led to a deeper relationship between ESPN and producer Erik Rydholm. He would go on to develop Around the Horn, Highly Questionable and the television simulcast of ESPN Radio’s The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz for the network.
The latter two starred Le Batard. He gave Wilbon and Kornheiser credit for preparing him for those opportunities by giving him a platform on PTI very early in the show’s tenure.
“You are tenured at what it is that you do and from the very beginning, you shared that with me, and you didn’t have to.”
Le Batard has been doling out praise to several former ESPN colleagues lately. In recent weeks, he gushed over Mike Breen and Mina Kimes on recent episodes of South Beach Sessions. Earlier this week, he told Scott Van Pelt that the SportsCenter anchor always puts a smile on Le Batard’s face when he is on television.
Earlier this week, Fox News displayed a graphic at the end of Fox News Tonight that called President Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator”. Former network host Tucker Carlson has lambasted the network for its walk-back of the opinion.
After the arrest and arraignment of Donald Trump Tuesday, the former president was about to begin a speech to supporters. Simultaneously, Joe Biden was scheduled to speak. The network showed both figures, before a Fox News Alert that read “Wannabe Dictator Speaks at the White House After Having His Political Rival Arrested”. It was quickly taken down before Hannity began.
“Those words were up for less than 30 seconds, but the effect was immediate. Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked,” said Carlson. “First, they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen. Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He’d been at Fox for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately.
“Then the company issued a public apology for the 27-second long ‘wannabe dictator’ line. ‘The chyron was taken down immediately,’ Fox’s PR department said and then added ominously, it was ‘addressed’. That was all true, but it was not enough to save Fox News from the ensuing scandal.”
Carlson continued by alleging a double standard in coverage of the current President.
“If some cable news producer had called Joe Biden a genius or accused him of being secretly Sudanese, would anyone be yelling about it? Would Fox News have apologized for it? Probably not. But calling Joe Biden a wannabe dictator, that stung,” concluded Carlson.
The anger from Carlson towards his former network comes after he was reportedly given a cease and desist letter from Fox News in an attempt to end his Tucker on Twitter series. Fox News contends it holds the rights to Carlson’s video projects, while he alleges his social media activities are protected under the First Amendment.
TSN 1260 did not get a proper send-off, so the CFL is stepping in to give Edmonton sports fans proper closure.
On Thursday, the Edmonton Elks announced a proper send-off for their local sports station. The team will host a “Thanks 1260” event. The team has reserved a section of Commonwealth Stadium for the celebration on June 25 when the team hosts the Toronto Argonauts.
“How do we say thank you for 2+ decades of sports talk radio on AM 1260? Like this,” Elks team president Victor Cui tweeted.
Fans will pay $12.60 to get into the game. The Elks are encouraging everyone seated in the section to share stories and memories about TSN 1260. Multiple hosts from the station will be on hand and seated in the section to interact with fans as well.
Bell Media abruptly ceased operations at six stations across Canada on Wednesday. As a result, TSN 1260 came to an end without warning.
Fox News is reportedly nearing a settlement with former producer Abby Grossberg after she claimed she was subjected to a toxic culture in a lawsuit earlier this year.
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy claimed the network was “on the verge” of a settlement with Grossberg in his Reliable Sources newsletter. He did note that “last-minute hiccups are always possible”.
Grossberg worked as a producer for Maria Bartiromo before moving to Tucker Carlson Tonight. During her time working for the primetime program, she alleges she was subjected to sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic remarks from colleagues.
She also claims she and Bartiromo were being positioned to take blame for repeated false claims aired by Fox News that were uncovered during the Dominion Voting Systems scandal.
The former Fox News producer has previously stated in interviews that the workplace culture at the network ultimately led her to consider suicide.
“I reached a breaking point where the harassment was so bad that I called a crisis line,” Grossberg said in a March interview with NBC News. “I thought I could just walk in front of a car and I wouldn’t have to go to work tomorrow.”
Darcy did not disclose what a potential settlement figure would be, but did add that the number is likely to eventually become public due to New York state laws that hinder companies’ abilities to keep sexual harassment settlement figures undisclosed.
The Fox News producer who utilized a graphic calling President Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator” has exited the cable network.
A report from The Daily Beast claims that Alexander McCaskill has departed after a long tenure. He was previously the managing editor of Tucker Carlson Tonight before the host’s high-profile April exit from the network.
Carlson addressed McCaskill’s departure during the latest installment of his Tucker on Twitter series.
“First they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen,” alleged Carlson. “Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He had been at Fox for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most capable people in the building. He offered to stay for the customary two weeks, but Fox told him to clear out his desk and leave immediately.”
Fox News addressed the situation earlier this week, stating “The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed”.
Vic Lombardi stands by his introduction of Michael Malone at the Denver Nuggets’ championship celebration. The Altitude Sports Radio morning man went viral for how he brought the head coach to the podium to address the crowd.
“He came into this world as the son of a coach, but in these playoffs, he became the Lakers’ daddy,” Lombardi said to roaring cheers from the crowd.
Denver’s path to its first NBA title went through Los Angeles. The Nuggets easily dispatched the Lakers by sweeping the Western Conference Finals.
Lombardi, who had been making content out of the national media’s perceived disrespect of the eventual champions for the entire postseason, finally got the chance to look at his Twitter account after a day of celebrating. He saw a number of Laker fans in his mentions. Their comments ranged from profanity to insisting that they do not care about this year’s NBA Finals.
Vic Lombardi got in the last word. As a Denver native and part of the Nuggets’ television crew, he is making no apologies.
I just arrived at my twitter feed today and I can’t tell you how proud this Denver kid is to see the the Lakers fans all up in their feels.
Consider it a compliment.
The Lakers have served as a Nuggets dead end for years.
Prior to the 2023 NBA Playoffs, the Lakers had been responsible for the Nuggets’ elimination every time they met in the postseason. Most recently, it was the Lakers taking down the Nuggets on route to their last championship in 2020.
Denver was ready to party on Thursday. The mayor estimates that between 700,000 and 1 million people came out to watch the parade and championship celebration.
OutKick founder Clay Travis criticized the subscription model at The Washington Post during an appearance on Fox News Wednesday. Travis noted that the paper has engaged in biased coverage of former President Donald while misleading its readers with numerous falsities.
“The subscription business demands that they satisfy the farthest and most left-wing of their subscribers,” said Travis. “That’s why they’re not covering Joe Biden and the Biden crime family; that’s why they’re not covering the fact that they had the Hunter Biden laptop since December of 2019.”
On Tuesday, Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to federal accusations of unlawfully possessing and concealing classified documents within his residence in Florida.
“The Washington Post is an embarrassment; they haven’t returned any of their Russia Collusion Pulitzers, have they? It’s just a joke. It’s as if these stories, when they don’t fit the preconceived narrative, cease to exist, which is one of the big problems with our media now.”
Travis asserted that journalism is inundated with people who would instead enforce narratives than report facts.
Travis added that the debacle at the White House involving transgender people flashing their breasts at President Joe Biden was not covered by the mainstream media. He said that the White House rebuked the actions of the individuals, but the condemnation comes as children are exposed to inappropriate things in public schools.
Fathers and sons have all kinds of relationships. Some become best friends as the kid grows into adulthood. Others don’t talk at all. Some keep a respectable distance – still in touch but not part of each other’s every day lives. Others are linked in ways beyond just familial ties.
Barrett Sports Media is putting a focus on that last group in celebration of Father’s Day. Many sons follow their dads into the family business. It is a unique and special path when that business is broadcasting.
Plenty of the voices you know are the progeny of the voices your parents know. We asked five of them about the influence their father’s work and the environments they were exposed to as kids had on their career.
“We had divorce in our family, and the way that I kept up with them was by watching them on television coming home from high school in St. Louis. I’d see Harry on WGN in the daytime and my dad on the TBS games when the Braves were playing on the west coast back when they were on the National League West. I figured, ‘If I can’t play baseball, this is kind of a cool way to stay involved in the game.’ Luckily for me, when I’d have my summer visitations, I’d get to go to the ballpark and sit behind my dad in the radio and TV booth and watch what he did.”
“Like the old cliche goes, the bug really bit me. The moment that I knew for sure; I was in high school doing one of those sort of weekend internships when I’d be in Atlanta with my dad. He had a game-winning home run call on the radio and we drove home that night after that game against the Dodgers, and they played the home run call of my father at midnight, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I said to my dad, ‘I’d really like to do that someday.’ He didn’t say a word; we drove home in silence; we sat down at his house at 1:00 in the morning. He poured himself a cocktail; I had a bite to eat; and he said, ‘Were you serious what you said in the car?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Okay, we start tomorrow.’”
“I just wanted to be my dad. It’s not like I grew up going, ‘Hey, I really want to be the guy who calls the Super Bowl’ or ‘I really want to be the guy who calls the World Series.’ I guess that was somewhere out there in my mind, but I just wanted to be my dad. I think when you’re a kid and you’re close with, hopefully both parents, but one parent — and I was, by the way; I’m so close to my mom. When you see that parent go to work every day and you see how happy work makes them — no matter what they do — if they’re a lawyer; a plumber; a police officer; an astronaut; or a broadcaster — and you see that, I think it’s only natural that you want to kind of follow in those footsteps. It was a great, fun life. Thankfully, I came along at a time when my dad was ready to kind of take a kid with him to work, and so I was on Cardinals road trips when I was a little kid flying on team charters and being around a broadcast and everything else that is involved with that. It lit a fire in me that really eliminated any other possibility of me doing anything else. This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“Growing up around it seeing my dad every day — when you have a close relationship with a parent, I think it’s just easy to want to emulate and to want to be like that parent. Eventually that’s what happened for me. It wasn’t automatic; I didn’t just immediately say, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’ but I think right around 13 years old was when I made the conscious effort — and not even effort but decision to keep in the back of my head, ‘One day that’s what I’m going to do. One day, I think, that’s exciting to me,’ because I saw him every morning wake up and be excited to go to work; to be excited to do the prep; to be excited to interact with the people. That’s what drew me to it.”
“Gotta be honest, growing up as Billy Packer’s son had its benefits. Granted there were some added pressures and inconveniences, but the good certainly outweighed the bad.
I loved tagging along on road trips whether it be an ACC game, or a national broadcast. Being able to meet players, coaches and other broadcasters was a joy. It helped to establish contacts that I would later implement as a media host.
Watching Billy prepare for games was the biggest benefit to my career. He loved the research and prep work. It is the single, most important trait that I have incorporated with my career. You gotta do the work. When I listen or watch a game or show, it’s obvious to me which announcers have done the work, and which ones are BS-artists.
This will be my first Father’s Day without Billy. He passed away in January….I miss him dearly.
Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads!”
Dads that aren’t in the broadcasting field can steer their kids in that direction by having similar access. That is another path that has been followed in this industry. It would only be right to acknowledge those relationships too.
“When I would watch games, my dad and I would always talk about the announcers and different things they’d say or do that resonated with us. It just made me want to do it. Even from a really young age — if you look at my fifth grade yearbook for career goals — it will say, ‘To play and announce for the Yankees.’ Obviously the playing part didn’t work out but the announcing part has. I just always felt like I knew I’d want to be close to the energy of the game and I thought if I wasn’t going to be able to play or coach, then play-by-play would be the thing that’d be next closest to the energy of the game.”
It’s a day that means all kinds of things to all kinds of people and it is a day worth celebrating, particularly for those of us in sports media, who probably got our love of football, baseball, basketball, or whatever passed down to us. So, do a little bit better for the dads and dad-like figures in your life this year. They don’t need another tie.
When Heidi Watney was selected as the reporter for Boston Red Sox baseball on the NESN, it marked the culmination of a long and arduous process to make it to the big leagues. Reflecting back on the fortuitous break, Watney believes she was unqualified for the role, but she quickly proved the network made the right choice. As soon as she was hired, Watney was assigned a stack of books about the history of the team to study – and she had just five days to do it leading up to her first road trip.
For Watney, a Fresno native, her new job necessitated she move to the East Coast for the first time in her professional career. She was learning the role on the fly since she had never been a genuine sideline reporter, and displayed a dedication to the craft from the very beginning.
“You become a part of the family and you know everything about them,” Watney said. “It was such a wonderful experience. I got to travel on charter flights and stay in these amazing hotels. [As] someone who was born and raised in California my entire life before taking the job at NESN, the whole country was just eye-opening to me and just so much fun and so fascinating.”
From a young age, Watney gravitated to professional sports, often partaking in athletics as a student. Her father, Mike, was the golf coach at Fresno State, and she often attended tournaments and other school events. The football games in particular were invigorating and heightened Watney’s expectations of how college football matchups at the University of San Diego would feel. Unfortunately, she noticed a more apathetic and less engaged crowd, starkly contrasting with her nascent zeal towards competition.
The observation served as an impetus of discovering the extent of her enamorment with sports. Various friends and acquaintances suggested Watney pursue a career in sports media, leading her to consider the best path to penetrate in the industry.
During her formative years in the industry as an intern and professional, Watney learned how to brush off circumstances rather than taking everything personally, and also faced misogyny. Reflecting back on those occurrences, she recognizes the insecurities and internal discomfort that likely caused people to act out, and is glad to see the normalization of women in sports media.
“You learn how to handle and adapt, and I think that’s sage advice for life – adapt and survive – and just learn how to kind of handle things,” Watney said.
When it came time to collect her undergraduate diploma in communication studies, Watney was in the process of searching for her first television job. As is common practice, she had compiled demo reels of her reporting work and sent them to stations around the United States. She was willing to relocate to realize the best opportunity for her to maximize her potential and make inroads in the trade, inexorable in finding a way to succeed.
The competitive industry and fluctuating job market rendered the job search difficult, and it ultimately presented Watney with two choices. She could either move to Amarillo, Texas and work as a weekend sports anchor with a starting annual salary of $17,500; or return to her home in Fresno and aim to find a means of employment at one of the networks. Watney had met with various executives in Fresno, all of whom told her she lacked the necessary experience to work in the market. In the end, and with no guarantee of finding employment, she opted to remain in California, and her persistence and malleability expeditiously paid dividends.
“One of the news directors called me back about a month later and said, ‘Hey, I know you want sports, but we’re starting a morning show,’” Watney recollected. “‘If you’ll do traffic and occasionally weather… then we’ll hire you to do our show.’ The pay was slightly better – not much – but it was my hometown so I could live with my parents as I was making peanuts and starting out in this business.”
Watney was grateful to KMPH FOX 26 for allowing her to pursue sports stories while working as a morning traffic reporter, and she promptly began to make a name for herself in the market. The morning show allowed her to appear on television unscripted for 10 to 15 minutes daily, enabling her to perfect her craft through improvisation and repetition. By her third year, she was named the station’s weekend sports anchor and eventually was named a weekday sports reporter. Additionally, she hosted radio programming on 1430 ESPN Fresno.
After some time passed, the news director of the station suggested to Watney that she should pursue a career in news because of her delivery, knowledge, writing acumen and ability to read off a teleprompter. Additionally, he said she would go further working in news than in sports, but Watney knew sports was what she was most passionate about, and she was not willing to give up on her dream.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m not on TV just because I want to be on TV,’” Watney remembered explaining. “‘I love sports [and] telling sports stories. I love covering the excitement and the action of sports [and] love how sports uplifts people. News is bad – I don’t want to talk about people dying,’ so I appreciated his encouragement but I stuck with sports.”
Leaving her hometown of Fresno, Calif. to take the reporting and hosting job with NESN was a seminal moment in Watney’s career. Doing so placed her on an all-sports network for the first time. She learned about the Red Sox amid their quest to remain a perennial contender after winning two championships in a four-year span after an 86-year winless drought.
“I’m not a player on the team; I’m covering the team,” Watney said. “But I was there every single day of the [2011] season and the [three] previous seasons. I felt the crushing blow when I saw the Rays beat the Yankees and knock the Red Sox out of the postseason, basically.”
One of her most memorable moments while working for a regional sports network came in interviewing Jon Lester on the field following his no-hitter. She vividly remembers the disquiet associated with having her voice amplified in front of thousands of fans.
“I had an interview seminar one time – ‘Is this the best? The most?’ Those ‘-st’ kinds of questions are what’s going to elicit a thoughtful response,” Watney said. “Everyone watches games – I watch games – but I also really watch the broadcasters and I watch the questions they ask and I see what gets good responses.”
The survival of regional sports networks has been an ongoing topic of discussion over the last several years in the sports media business. Diamond Sports Group, owner of the Bally Sports-branded regional sports networks, recently declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Sinclair Broadcast Group executive chairman David Smith met with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and forewarned that the company would begin to selectively reject contracts if the league did not grant it the valuable direct-to-consumer rights. The rights would help enhance Bally Sports’ DTC offering, but it was a proposition the league immediately shot down, leading to a hearing in bankruptcy court.
After contentious and bitter testimony, the bankruptcy judge ruled that Diamond Sports Group must pay the full value of television rights contracts it previously brokered with teams or renounce the media rights. Moreover, the league reaffirmed how it is prepared to take over regional broadcasts for any of the teams affected, demonstrating as such when Diamond Sports Group chose not to make its right payment to the San Diego Padres. The league positioning itself to make use of the reacquired local media rights while paying afflicted franchises at least 75% of the contract value eliminates blackouts and presents queries about the future of local networks broadcasting professional sports teams altogether. After all, many executives within the industry and consumers alike believe the regional sports network model will not withstand the dynamic, modern media landscape, meaning it is incumbent on sports leagues and networks to pioneer a new age of broadcasting.
“I think that MLB can help start streaming some of the regional stuff so that fans can still have the connections to their team broadcasters, but get it all on streaming content and that’s how these networks are going to survive,” Watney said. “If you’re not getting on the streaming bandwagon, you’re going to kind of go by the wayside.”
It is precisely why Major League Baseball struck a deal with Apple in an effort to bring its product to over-the-top streaming platforms. In addition to Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+, the league agreed to allow Peacock to exclusively present Sunday morning games on MLB Sunday Leadoff. Both deals give the league a sum of nearly $1.8 billion in annual revenue, and it is supplemented by national revenue from Warner Bros. Discovery, ESPN and FOX Corporation.
Watney signed on with Apple TV+ before the launch of its weekly Friday Night Baseball doubleheader package last season as one of two sideline reporters. Yet she had been removed from working at a regional sports network for the better part of a decade, let alone serving as a regular reporter. Instead, Watney transitioned to become a studio host with MLB Network in 2013.
One of Watney’s primary roles with MLB Network was working as the host of the nightly baseball highlight show, Quick Pitch, where she took viewers around the league to get caught up on the previous day’s action. The show presented a blend of information and entertainment, having hosts communicate with the audience in front of a graphic, acting in scripted routines and recurring bits.
She had always wanted the chance to cover the league at a broader level, and ensured that she would continue working regardless whether or not the Red Sox qualified for the postseason. Furthermore, it provided Watney with more chances for respite coming from a 24/7 job during the baseball season.
“I feel like MLB Network was doing games at Fenway once a week – if not every couple of weeks,” Watney said. “I loved my time at NESN, but I didn’t have a day off from the start of spring training to the end of the postseason. I used to joke that I never went on a date because I was just working all the time.”
Streaming outlets likely represent the future of sports media, and Watney is thrilled to be a hallmark on the timeline of broadcast progression. Not only is her work exclusive to the subscription-based platform, but it also encapsulates a new identity for broadcast reporters and their level of involvement in a typical broadcast.
“By being a streaming platform, Apple TV is helping MLB move into the future,” Watney said. “Some of the younger people already had Apple TV+, so it’s really not anything [new] for them. I think even for older generations that aren’t used to streaming… MLB needs to be on any and all streaming platforms if they want to reach youth – and not to mention social media channels too.”
The challenge the job has presented, specifically during the 2023 regular season, has been condensing the in-game reports and insights and effectively discovering pockets conducive for her input. Making the necessary adjustments was necessitated by rule changes instituted by the league to hasten pace of play and boost offensive output.
“At any point with the pitch clock and with the increased threat of stolen bases, there’s going to be more action in the game, so we have to be more concise with our stories,” Watney said. “We have to pick our spots where we can work something where we tell a story versus covering the action because our job is to broadcast the game. My role in that is to add some color and flavor into the game.”
Two days before the weekly broadcast, Apple TV+ holds a production meeting about the approach to take in covering the game. A researcher sends the broadcast team the necessary information, which everyone reviews and selects the most important storylines. Once they travel to the ballpark, the team meets with team managers to obtain information either on background or off the record entirely, but helpful to be aware of in guiding the specific coverage.
“We’re not necessarily just talking to the diehards,” Watney said. “We’re hoping to reach a larger audience [and] expanding the game of baseball; growing the game of baseball; moving into the streaming world [and] doing more things that people can consume on their phones.”
Apple TV+ airs its MLB Big Inning whiparound show on weeknights and produces additional forums of baseball content through daily recaps, pregame shows and a weekly compilation of standout moments. There are times during the studio programs when elongated versions of Watney’s interviews are aired, and she has been part of conversations about releasing them as standalone pieces of content within the user interface or on social media channels.
“The saddest part about my week is when they’re like, ‘You only have two minutes for your interview,’” Watney said. “I’m like, ‘Why? But I’m talking to Mike Trout; he’s way more interesting than two minutes.’”
Baseball is inherently a team sport where the accomplishments of an individual are arbitrary in the grand scheme of things. In the end, it is the collective play of a unit that determines wins and losses, and personal accolades are not often discussed unless they occur in conjunction with a win. Watney is one of two sideline reporters on Apple TV+’s regular broadcast rotation – the other being Tricia Whitaker, who also works on Bally Sports South’s regional broadcast of the Tampa Bay Rays – and it is the duo’s responsibility to supply compelling storylines on the weekly doubleheader slate and she believes celebrating individuality is what her job requires.
“One of the things that has made baseball so flat in the greater scheme of the sports world that thrives on superstars like LeBron James and Tom Brady and Tim Tebow; these big names – people rally around that,” Watney said. “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating Shohei Ohtani or Mike Trout. That doesn’t take away from his team; that actually brings more eyeballs to the Angels to see what’s going on there.”
Watney’s pursuit of a career in sports media was not entirely clear to her until she was encouraged by people she could trust. The internship she held in San Diego gave her unparalleled exposure and an outlet to discover what areas of the industry she was most interested in, and it is an experience she holds in high regard. As the industry continues to condense operations and streamline processes to cultivate an efficient modus operandi, Watney emphasized the importance of pre-professional experience and displaying an earnest avidity for the work itself.
“Sports happen when everyone’s sitting at home eating their Thanksgiving dinner,” Watney said. “Someone’s out there doing those game broadcasts, so be prepared to work, but it’s also the most rewarding career.”
