In order to craft a career in a field as competitive and desirable as sports media, it takes a willingness to learn, talent, networking and surrounding oneself with the right people and having an appropriate level of self-confidence. Much like the slim chance a baseball player makes it to the major leagues, let alone exactly according to their plan, the odds everything goes unabated and as outlined are minuscule. The road to the show for Alex Faust has been atypical, but through persistence and determination, he has forged a portfolio spanning local and national broadcasts with a world of possibility lying ahead.
Faust will begin the next phase of his broadcast career this Friday at 7:00 PM ET as the San Diego Padres face the Atlanta Braves to kick off the second season of Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+. Prior to the start of the 2022 season, Major League Baseball and its national media rights holders – The Walt Disney Company (ESPN); FOX Sports; and Turner Sports (TBS) – had negotiated new agreements through 2028 worth a reported $12.24 billion.
Additionally, the league agreed to streaming deals with Peacock for MLB Sunday Leadoff and Apple TV+ for Friday Night Baseball, reportedly worth a combined $115 million annually. Namely, Major League Baseball receives a sum of about $1.8 billion in annual revenue from national media deals, along with more postseason games due to the addition of two wild card teams and a restructured playoff format.
Baseball was the first professional sport Faust ever called and a game he was enthralled to consume early in his youth. Although he has previously called national baseball games for FOX Sports and NESN on a fill-in basis, it was never on a regular schedule nor with a fixed color commentator.
In fact, Faust has not regularly worked in baseball since his time working as a radio play-by-play announcer for the Staten Island Yankees, a defunct minor league team and former affiliate of the New York Yankees.
“The opportunity to get back into baseball was just one that I couldn’t pass up,” Faust said. “….I really admire what Apple is trying to do with a new product. It’s hard with the transition from traditional cable to go into streaming, but especially after meeting with some folks there [over] the last couple of weeks, they view it as an opportunity to try different things while at the same time being traditional in the way we go about our business.”
Apple TV+ is subscription-based, requiring users to pay $6.99 a month to access the library of movies, television shows, and live programming. While its broadcasts of Major League Baseball games were free last season, users will have to subscribe in order to watch Friday night matchups, which are produced by MLB Network and feature top-tier cameras and spatial audio in 5.1 surround sound. The OTT streaming platform aims to give fans an immersive experience by using the other sectors of its business to effectuate the aggregate output – in a way, horizontal integration.
Fans can receive the latest information about their favorite teams and players with Apple News; listen to team walk-up songs and other curated playlists on Apple Music; and watch additional MLB content, including the nightly MLB Big Inning whip-around show, on Apple TV+.
“This is a dynamic, new property that I know a lot of resources are being poured into,” Faust said. “[I saw] all the chatter about the picture quality and the graphics and the way the game was directed and all the different tools they have with the super slow-mos and these high-resolution cameras. The broadcast itself might be the cleanest looking in all of sports; it might be the sharpest picture in all of sports, and that’s not by mistake.”
Aside from watching baseball games and listening to commentators call the action, Faust played baseball, along with tennis, when he was younger. He quickly recognized that sports media was the path he wanted to take; however, he knew the likelihood of striking out was more likely than hitting a walk-off home run.
As a result, he majored in economics and political science as an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, balancing his studies with his participation at WRBB 104.9 FM broadcasting games, operating radio consoles, and hosting studio programming. In addition to his own work, Faust was a keen observer of announcers from afar and picked up on their various proclivities to apply in forming his own, distinctive broadcast style. Having the ability to hypothesize, experiment, fail and try again is a privilege not always afforded to those in the professional world, rendering college and other pre-professional ventures ideal for industry neophytes.
“I don’t think you have to have a degree in broadcasting to be on-air,” Faust opined. “You have to be a good public speaker [and] you have to be confident in your ability to present an idea or a story, but that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to exclusively being a student of broadcasting.”
Broadcasting was a side gig for Faust during his first three years of college, but that sentiment changed when he realized the proximity of his graduation. Because of this, he made a concentrated effort to find ways to gain more repetitions so he could continue to have a voice in the profession.
On a whim, Faust submitted his demo reel to the Staten Island Yankees for their open radio play-by-play announcer job while continuing to look for other chances to remain involved in sports media. After all, he had received a prestigious national honor when he was named the 2011 recipient of the Jim Nantz Award from the National Sports Media Association as the country’s top college sportscaster.
In the span of 48 hours, Faust received a job offer from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a well-regarded accounting firm, along with the chance to broadcast home games at night and on weekends for the Staten Island Yankees. This auspicious outcome afforded Faust peace of mind as he completed his degree, knowing he would have a steady job paired with the ability to announce live baseball games on the side. Little did he know his hobby would eventually become his full-time gig.
“I had a great experience at PwC, and I’d be remiss without thanking my bosses there for allowing me to pursue not only that gig, but others that popped up once I started getting a little bit of television work,” Faust said. “They were flexible in letting me have my day job [and] do that. I think from their standpoint, it was the belief that ‘If you’re working on this passion project, you’re going to be a better employee.’”
Throughout his early years in the industry, Faust looked to several accomplished play-by-play announcers for inspiration and advice, including Dave O’Brien, Sean McDonough, and Ian Eagle. In conversing with these and other broadcast professionals, Faust became inspired to continue to make sense of the business and earn chances to augment his versatility and knowledge of sports and media as a whole. In juggling multiple tasks as a management consultant at PwC, he was unfazed by the prospect of regularly calling different sports to become more fixated in the industry.
“It’s no different than going back to working at PwC,” he said. “To advance in a highly competitive industry like that, you have to have a diverse skill set; you have to show continuous improvement; and you have to have an aptitude for what you’re doing and build good relationships. It’s no different in broadcasting…. I have to put on a good show every day to show that I’m still up to this.”
Following his first year broadcasting games for the Staten Island Yankees, Faust added radio play-by-play announcing for the Utica Comets, the former American Hockey League affiliate of the Vancouver Canucks. It was his first foray calling hockey since his time in Northeastern University, a sport predicated on speed, skill, and a flair for the dramatic, and he was doing it for a franchise in its inaugural season.
As Faust’s profile grew, he received more opportunities to provide the soundtrack to signature sporting events. His decision to remain in Boston after graduating from Northeastern University was for the purpose of landing television jobs, one of which came with the regional sports network NESN on broadcasts of college basketball and Hockey East games. Some of his memorable moments with NESN include calling his alma mater’s win of the Hockey East championship and calling three consecutive college basketball games on the same day at TD Garden.
Through it all, he was establishing pivotal relationships and fostering a greater sense of professionalism in collaborating with colleagues, especially those tasked with consummating a flawless television broadcast.
“Treat your production crew with the utmost respect because they are there to make you look good,” Faust said. “There’s no reason to have any sort of bad rapport when, at the end of the day, they’re there for you…. I don’t want to say that from the standpoint of having an inflated ego, but it’s the reality.”
College sports were a fundamental part of Faust’s early years in the industry, freelancing to call both college basketball and college football for select matchups on ESPN and FOX Sports with the hopes of eventually landing a full-time broadcasting job.
Moreover, he called the NCAA Men’s Frozen Four on Westwood One, but never saw himself making it to the National Hockey League, let alone before the age of 30. In fact, Faust had previously declined a chance to work an NHL game with NBC Sports, an entity he had called college hockey for in the past because he was calling games for the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) on ESPN.
Luckily for Faust, NBC Sports gave him another chance to call an NHL game – a matchup between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Tampa Bay Lightning – which happened to coincide with his hunt for a full-time role. Faust had a background in tennis and was auditioning with the Tennis Channel and had also applied to become the new television voice of the Los Angeles Kings on Bally Sports West. Bob Miller, a legendary play-by-play announcer who has a statue outside of Crypto.com Arena, retired from the job following the 2017 season after 44 years, as he had been hospitalized earlier in the season after feeling discomfort following quadruple bypass surgery.
“I just wanted a job interview; that was my goal,” Faust said of the Los Angeles Kings broadcasting job. “I just wanted to be considered for the role; I never thought I’d be a finalist or even land it.”
That matchup between the Blackhawks and the Lightning turned out to be one of, if not the most important assignment of Faust’s broadcasting career to date. After an eventful first two periods containing eight total goals, the game remained scoreless through the end of regulation resulting in overtime. Just over four minutes into the extra period, Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman stole the puck from then-Blackhawks forward Artemi Panarin, dishing it to his teammate Yanni Gourde dashing on a breakaway. In front of a sold-out Amalie Arena, Gourde snapped a wrist shot from the high slot past goaltender Scott Darling to win the game 5-4.
“I knew then and there as I’m calling the game, ‘Oh boy, this is my audition here for the Kings,’” Faust remembered. “It was a dramatic finish. I knew right at that moment, ‘Okay, this is my tape; this is my reel. I’m going to send this in.’”
Faust ascertains that the organization was looking for a younger broadcaster to take the reins from Miller and grow with the organization, and he was invited in to call a mock broadcast with longtime analyst and former Kings winger Jim Fox. It was evident during the audition that Faust and Fox were able to instantly cultivate natural synergy, effectively closing the deal. Faust had made it to the NHL at the age of 28, making him the youngest play-by-play announcer in the sport. As everything transpired, Faust was cognizant about trying to differentiate himself from Miller while maintaining the high standard he had set and received myriad support from older counterparts around the league.
“I always felt like the pressure I put on my own shoulders was that I just wanted to live up to expectation [and] not let anyone down,” Faust said. “….I carried my own style coming into the job, and that’s something that the Kings actually encouraged me [to do] from the very beginning.”
Los Angeles is the second-largest media market in the United States, and the home of legendary sportscasters over the years – including Chick Hearn, Vin Scully, Bob Miller, and Ralph Lawler. The marketplace of late has shifted to younger talent over the last decade, welcoming in new voices such as Joe Davis, Noah Eagle, and Stephen Nelson, along with Faust.
He affirms that rooting interests in the locale are “fragmented” wherefore the litany of activities and excursions available to residents due to the abundance of sunshine and clear skies. There was an adjustment period when Faust, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., made the move to Los Angeles, but he was able to quickly assimilate and become part of the soundtrack of sports.
“There’s a hustle in this market that you have to be able to understand,” Faust said. “It’s very different from an East Coast market like New York,” Faust said. “In a lot of ways, LA has opened itself up to younger broadcasters and [is] trying to keep the broadcast as current as possible…. I think teams are looking for a broadcast that connects with a younger audience, especially with the evolution away from traditional viewing models and having folks that can connect and relate.”
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Since its television debut in 1964, it can be argued that Jeopardy has been America’s most popular quiz show, welcoming erudite contestants to put questions to answers for a chance to win a lucrative cash prize. Alex Trebek was the show’s host from 1984 until his passing in 2020, bringing an unmistakable style and presence to the stage while informing and entertaining viewers.
The show is filmed at Sony Pictures Studios’ Stage 10 in Culver City, Calif. just outside of Los Angeles, and he lived in the area as well. When asked in 2018 who should succeed him as the next host of the show in an interview with TMZ, Trebek gave two possibilities – CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates and Faust himself, with Trebek stating that he had spoken to show producers about him.
Faust had never conversed with Trebek at the time and regrets not having the chance to do so before he passed away. He also never received a phone call from Sony Pictures about auditioning for the show, nor did he actively try to land the job. After all, he was content in his role and had never thought about hosting a game show before that point. Even so, people who had not heard of Faust suddenly began to take interest in what he did, and he maintains a philosophy to never close doors because of the spontaneity with which new roles can sometimes present themselves.
“I think [I was] flattered just [by] somebody who looks at our show and says, ‘Okay, you do a good enough job with an on-air presence that you could handle this role,’” Faust said. “I think that’s a tremendous compliment, and I took it as such.”
Perhaps part of the allure that led Trebek, an avid hockey fan, to name Faust as a potential successor was being acquainted with his objective announcing style. As a play-by-play announcer, Faust has tried to imbue his personality into every broadcast, many of which have recurring viewers, but always making sure he is giving a complete picture of the matchup rather than calling it from just one perspective.
Moreover, he has utilized his background in data analytics to implement advanced stats into broadcasts, something Apple TV+ has made available to its consumers across its baseball coverage. He gives credit to his analyst, Fox, for being adaptable and using his wherewithal and intellect to decipher the labyrinth of data, blending the metrics and his own thoughts on the game in order to propound cohesive and logical points.
“I think you still have to take a step back and realize not everyone who’s watching your broadcast is a fan of the team, [and] not everyone wants to hear a homer,” Faust said. “They actually want to hear about the game and learn about both teams. There’s a respect to be given to the opponent and to the game in calling it fairly a lot of ways.”
The differences that exist between preparing for a hockey game and a baseball game are massive, especially in the contrasting pace of play and parlances of the sports. He calls hockey and baseball locally and nationally – the former with Bally Sports West and Turner Sports; the latter on Apple TV+ and FOX Sports.
Within the fabric of working on national games is upholding meticulous objectivity and providing relevant insights into both teams. The challenge comes in appealing to local audiences, which are largely accustomed to the sound of their broadcasts and the team itself wherefore commentators stay up to date with news, transactions, and other league information.
“Know what you need to know, but also be aware of what you don’t know and try not to reach for something you don’t know,” Faust said. “That’s kind of my guiding principle going into this season because I haven’t done a full season of baseball ever at the major league level.”
From calling a game from The Palestra in Philadelphia, Penn. to an outdoor game at the Air Force Academy; packed arenas to caliginous remote broadcast studios; North America to Australia and everywhere in-between, Faust’s broadcast career has, in a way, been of tergiversation in terms of adapting to fluid and precarious circumstances.
As other aspiring professionals begin their journeys in the industry with the hope of landing a full-time job, Faust urges them to ensure they are flexible to safeguard from missing out on chances to go on the air and hone their crafts. Effectively doing so comes by trying new things, staying ready, actively working to build relationships, and always looking to improve and expand one’s abilities.
Just what can come of putting in the effort is perhaps the great unknown knows. Sometimes, all roads lead home akin to what has happened for Alex Faust. He is eager to hear the home plate umpire shout, “Play ball!” and to engender a deeper understanding of the game based on asking questions and arriving at their answers.
