From the time he was young, Mark Willard of 95.7 The Game associated sports with magic – encapsulated and astonished by the environment and game action. As an avid fan of the San Francisco Giants, he would watch the contests with a tape recorder in hand, polishing his play-by-play skills through calling the games.
Like many other residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, he attended live baseball games at Candlestick Park, but he did not take a tape recorder there. Instead, he announced the starting lineups along with the stadium’s public address announcer and then cheered for the Giants among thousands of other fans in the crowd.
Nonetheless, being the play-by-play announcer for the Giants, or any professional team for that matter, was never cemented in his initial plans – solely because the only thing he focused on was working hard enough to achieve success.
In what aspect of sports media that success would manifest itself was a mystery to him – a primary reason why he prioritized versatility and sustained development. In short, he just knew his future had to involve some form of communication to the masses.
“I’ve always loved to communicate,” Willard said. “That ability to confidently look someone else in the eye and speak and share things and what not has always just felt natural to me.”
As a student at San Mateo High School, Willard was a member of both the basketball and baseball teams, playing on the former for all four years he matriculated. At the same time, he worked his way up to become the sports editor of the award-winning school newspaper The San Mateo Hi, and sought to build his journalism skills as a student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Unlike some of his other friends who attended schools with track records of success in communications and established paths into the industry, Willard had to make things happen for himself. By his sophomore year, he felt he was falling behind his competition, causing him to intensify his efforts by making a call to the university athletics department with hopes of finding a way to become involved at sporting events.
The athletics department encouraged Willard to try out for its public address announcing job. Yet after following what he felt was a good audition, he was told that they did not want to hire a student; therefore, he was offered the backup role. Frustrated, he told a friend of his, who was also a former basketball player, about what had happened. That connection ultimately helped him land the public address announcer role at nearby Cuesta College for Cougars basketball games.
Through meeting people as a public address announcer, he was invited to call part of a Cougars baseball game on the radio. After the primary play-by-play announcer fell ill and had to leave the ballpark, Willard ended up finishing the game alone with inadequate preparation and knowledge of the teams. It was an unexpected opportunity for him to get significant air time and demonstrate his ability to adapt in the moment.
“He just left me on the air to call play-by-play by myself,” Willard recalled. “I was outside; it was raining; I had no notes; I had no background on the teams that I was calling at all. I just tried to wing it and did the best that I could. Little did I know he went and called his boss and said, ‘Listen to this student I just put on the air,’ and they called me the next day and offered me a job doing high school football play-by-play just up the road from school.”
After his graduation, Willard spent the next year as a play-by-play announcer for basketball, baseball and football games at his alma mater. In the late 1990s, he joined the Single-A Boise Hawks, then-affiliate of the Anaheim Angels, in the same role, relocating to Boise, Idaho and learning about Minor League Baseball.
A short time later, he moved to San Diego, Calif. to work as an anchor at XTRA 690 where he continued to hone his craft and develop his on-air sound.
Willard then took a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway and began working in the second-largest media market in the United States at 1540 The Ticket in Los Angeles, Calif., a station run by Rose City Radio Corporation, a national network.
Before becoming part of The Roger Lodge Ticket Morning Show, he continued delivering sports updates and reporting at the station. As a member of a media outlet with a lower cume rating, there was a reduced amount of direct pressure on him to immediately perform at a high level, giving him a chance to develop in a major market.
“I got to learn the lay of the land about covering big market teams, and I got to do it at a place where I could really make some mistakes and not have it blow up in my face,” Willard said. “That’s what was great about that because I can remember doing a lot of work there that, today, I probably wouldn’t really be proud of at all, and it didn’t really cost me anything.”
During his time at the station, Willard had the chance to host alongside Tony Bruno on The Tony Bruno Show beginning in 2005. One year later, the program became nationally-syndicated and moved to Sporting News Radio, giving it the ability to reach a broader audience and more people within its target demographics.
Following a three-year stint with the program, Willard made the move to ESPN Los Angeles 710 hosting morning drive with Mychal Thompson. Having been in the marketplace for several years before moving to a media outlet with more reach, Willard had an understanding of how to attract listeners to sports radio, a difficult task because of the geography and lifestyle in the area
The Los Angeles Lakers, according to Willard, are the locale’s most popular team, along with the Los Angeles Dodgers; in fact, both teams won world championships in 2020. University of Southern California Trojans athletics also enthralls sports fans, even more so than some of the other professional teams. As a result, it was essential to discuss topics listeners had interest in – even if it resulted in some repetition.
“I learned how to take different angles on the same subject because you couldn’t really take off and go talk about the NFL; there was no team,” Willard said. “You couldn’t go off and go talk about hockey even when [the Kings] were good because there just isn’t enough interest; you’ll lose in the ratings. That was when I kind of learned how to do a better job of drafting entry points into conversations and what not because you had to keep the same teams, in some cases, relevant for an entire year.”
In August 2016, Willard’s hosting duties moved to working middays with Rich Ohrnberger on XTRA 1360, which has since rebranded as San Diego Sports 760. Even so, Willard did not move – instead hosting the shows remotely from his home in Los Angeles, Calif. since he was also hosting national weekend coverage on Fox Sports Radio.
Co-hosting a show from afar required him to foster a strong relationship with the broadcast team and follow San Diego teams more closely than ever before. Unknowingly, it also prepared him for the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many professionals worked remotely or in a hybrid format, practices that are, to a degree, continuing today.
“Imagine doing a show on a daily basis but not really having the background of ever having been at the game the night before, or in some cases, not being able to watch the game the night before because it’s not being broadcast where I lived,” Willard said. “I had to work very hard at finding ways to sort of inject that local culture into my discussion without organically getting it.”
A few years later, Willard moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area to begin working in his dream job as a host on KNBR. His first show on the station was an emotional moment, indicative of his journey in sports media and how he ultimately achieved his goal to return home and star at the station he grew up listening to.
Thinking about making the move to host a show surrounding broadcasts of San Francisco Giants baseball with the ability to reinvent himself as a broadcaster was appealing for Willard – yet it took comprehensive and focused thinking in order to come to terms with leaving “The City of Angels.” Sage advice from an experienced sports media host influenced his decision making and allowed him to become comfortable in a market with which he was extremely familiar and passionate about.
“Colin Cowherd and I sat and talked for a little while when I was thinking about making this move and one thing he said to me really stuck out which was: ‘You’ll never be a better broadcaster than when you’re broadcasting about the teams you care about,’” Willard remembered. “That may not have been the case when I was young because I think I would have let the fandom kind of be a little bit too much, but he was right. Immediately upon return – within weeks – I felt like I hit a stride that I had never hit before in my career.”
When Willard sought a move into a midday time slot, he quickly realized that it would not be possible at KNBR. Throughout his professional career, Willard kept in touch with Matt Nahigan, one of his former bosses while at The Tony Bruno Show.
It turned out Nahigan was the program director for 95.7 The Game. After Nahigan had previously expressed interest in working with Willard, they formed a partnership and created Willard and Dibs featuring Willard and co-host Dan Dibley. The show launched last October and has had success in the ratings, informing and entertaining sports fans in the Bay Area.
“I think Matt and I come from a similar place in terms of how we approach a daily radio show,” Willard said. “He’s not a micromanager, but is a full-effort, very focused, ‘Don’t take any segments off’-type of person – and I am too so that’s been a great blend.”
Although it is not the case in all markets, fans in the Bay Area consume more sports content when the teams are stable and winning. Additionally, they will show up during tough times when teams are not making playoff runs and are perhaps unstable; it is when teams are average that the interest ostensibly wanes. Aside from the teams though, individual personalities also attract listeners – such as San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and aforementioned Warriors forward Green.
“I think the Bay Area cares about the people who are playing in addition to the standings,” Willard said. “When you can get something where individual people are interesting, that’s where it really thrives.”
Both Willard and Dibley are familiar with the teams in the area and knew each other for an extended period of time before launching their new midday program. Over the years, they had always looked to work together and have fostered a professional relationship that comes across to listeners each show.
Broadcasting on 95.7 The Game as opposed to its competitor KNBR – a station where both co-hosts formerly worked – presents stark differences in terms of the innate characteristics of the brand.
“KNBR is a station that, through the years, is just kind of always there; they’re a legacy station,” Willard described. “The Game has had to take a different tone and be a little bit more aggressive with its approach. What we sort of provide is what I think is the middle ground, which is where I think a lot of success can lie…. The Game is having probably its best run of ratings success head-to-head over a period of time. There’s definitely a battle.”
As a trusted voice in the market, he tries to differentiate himself and his program by sharing his opinions and making them memorable, compelling listeners to continue coming back for more sports talk.
“I think great sports radio comes when you hear a personality speak and then you can head on to your day and remember what they said,” Willard explained. “That makes it shareable; that makes it opinionated; it makes it something that brings out a reaction in you.”
In addition to his role on the radio, Willard is a television host on the Pac-12 Network and Fox Sports, a communication medium that divulges different parts of his personality. Working simultaneously in two mediums oftentimes requires on-air talent to adopt some divergence in their approach; however, the end goal is ultimately to be a source of information and entertainment for consumers in the convergence of the media landscape.
“It got described to me one time as: ‘Radio people can do TV as long as they don’t freak out when the red light comes on, but TV people can have a hard time in radio because you’ll do your two minutes and look up and it’s like, ‘Oh, you got 14 more minutes,’’” Willard said. “….I do get a little bit more sort of, I guess, creative satisfaction from the radio but the adrenaline side of TV is unmatched.”
Through his nascent passion for sports and communication, he now works in his home market and looks to inspire future professionals in the industry. It is why he has served as a college professor at both his alma mater and at the Academy of Art University, and has also held broadcasting workshops for young students.
“I think it’s important for everyone to look around at what your competition is doing; look at yourself as a business, and consider all the other people trying to get into the business as your competitive businesses,” Willard advised. “Look at what they’re doing and then do more.”
