The New Jersey Broadcasters Association is losing its longtime leader. All Access reports Paul Rotella has stepped down.
“Since 2008, I have been privileged to serve the broadcast industry by helping the NJBA meet fiscal and industry-wide challenges,” Rotella said. “My lobbying efforts on behalf of the industry, and the production of our informative and exciting annual conferences, have been particularly gratifying aspects of my work on behalf of our nationally acclaimed Association. I am especially grateful for the wonderful friendships that this experience has provided me and for the superb colleagues I have been fortunate enough to call friends. Most of all, I am blessed with the best family anyone could ask for, and I am particularly grateful for their unselfish contributions to my success, and to the success of the NJBA.”
WFAN afternoon co-host Craig Carton was beaten to a story by Andrew Marchand of The New York Post about the New York Yankees moving their Friday broadcast — originally scheduled for Amazon Prime Video — to YES Network as Aaron Judge continues to chase the American League single season home run record. Carton then said Marchand probably got the notice from YES Network announcer Michael Kay, who Carton sarcastically called Marchand’s “best friend”.
“That’s why there’s always articles about Michael in the paper, because he and Marchand got together to try to unseat us as number one. It’s not gonna happen, but that’s what they’re in cahoots on.”
Carton then pointed out YES Network had tweeted about the high ratings for recent Yankee broadcasts, including Tuesday’s game being the highest-watched game since Derek Jeter’s final game. He then sarcastically noted discussing ratings is something he’d never do.
“Bragging about ratings is so beneath us. Every day for the last year and a half, we’ve been number one,” Carton jokingly said before bragging about the show’s top spot in the ratings. “It’s not our style to brag. We all do a good job, we all work really hard, we’re just happy to come to work, tripling you,” Carton said. “I’m just kidding! We’re just having fun! Can’t we all just get along and not be so sensitive and insecure?
“We’re having a good time — we’re number one — I just don’t understand why people can’t — we’re number one — enjoy our thing while they do their thing — we’re number one — and listen chips fall where they fall, no one is getting fired — we’re not ’cause we’re number one — and reality is that this is supposed to be fun — we’re number one — and I don’t understand why this isn’t fun for everybody. We’re number one. Let’s all put our cards on the table — we’re number one and you’re not — and just let it all go! That’s all!”
In the spring ratings period, Carton & Roberts topped The Michael Kay Show by a 6.3 to 3.2 margin. During the winter ratings period, Carton & Roberts were a 5.7 rating with The Michael Kay Show garnering a 4.5 rating. Kay called Carton “very nasty and rude” saying it “doesn’t sit well” with the ESPN New York host earlier this summer in a story with NJ.com.
Earlier this week, the NFL announced changes to the the Pro Bowl, moving away from a traditional game and into a skills competition and flag football game. The league and ESPN will work in conjunction with Peyton Manning-owned Omaha Productions on new content. During an appearance on Afternoon Drive on 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland, Monday Morning Quarterback’s Albert Breer said the NFL will probably see a hit in ratings for the marquee event.
“The truth is, if you put an actual game on TV, it’ll do better. I would argue that the promotion and the timeslot, the Pro Bowl has always had more favorable conditions when it comes to that stuff,” said Breer. “I don’t know. I remember watching the Quarterback Challenge as a kid and I thought that was awesome. There were certain things that maybe the casual fan didn’t watch but for the more avid fan are really great, cool things to see. And there’s more things they can do, creatively, to get people to watch. I don’t know that the numbers will be quite the same.”
Breer also pointed out that the NFL was more concerned with the quality of the event and the television product than the revenue and profitability of the event.
“For once, I think the NFL tried to look at this from a prestige standpoint instead of a revenue standpoint. I think they were a little embarrassed with the product,” Breer continued. “And I think they felt like this product shouldn’t be associated with what NFL football is. I think it’s sort of the same train of thought they had with preseason games. People expect a certain level of excellence of the product that we’re putting out and we’re not giving it to them on TV here, and if you take the premise of it being a game out of it and make it just a fun event, you don’t have to worry about that at all.”
The 2023 Pro Bowl Games is currently scheduled for the week beginning Monday, January 30th in Las Vegas.
Hurricane Ian made landfall on the southwest coast of Florida Wednesday, but didn’t directly hit the Tampa Bay, where the Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs are scheduled to play on Sunday Night Football this weekend. ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio, a Football Night in America contributor for NBC, said the network’s ability to get their equipment to an alternate location as well as Tampa factors into the decision on whether the game will be moved.
“All the NBC equipment needs to get to the place where the game is going to be played and televised on Sunday Night Football,” Florio said to The PM Team on 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh. “They think they can wait as long as Friday, and I assume that NBC can get the trucks up and everything in place and ready to televise the game Sunday night. They will wait as long as they have to see if we play the game in Tampa. I suspect the Buccaneers don’t want to pull the plug on playing in Tampa until the last possible minute.”
The NFL has said if the game cannot be played in Tampa, it will be moved to U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, after also considering the Superdome in New Orleans as a potential location.
ESPN Radio’s morning show has found its groove according to host Jay Williams. He told Jason Barrett that Keyshawn, JWill and Max took some time to gel, but now feels like it is something listeners want to hear each day.
Williams is the guest on the new episode of The Jason Barrett Podcastthis week. Barrett asked him when the show got to the point that the three hosts felt like they had taken a step forward. He pointed to the comfort that he now has with Keyshawn Johnson and Max Kellerman.
“First off, it comes with time, right? Time spent working together,” Williams said. “Understanding cadences, themes, and narratives we can drive.”
The two-time national player of the year for college basketball pointed to a familiar environment as a model for what he wants to achieve. Jay Williams said that his goal is to give listeners the chance to eavesdrop on the kind of conversations that happen inside of a locker room. That means learning what sets each member of the KJM cast off.
The Chargers’ starting quarterback has become a favorite target of Williams’s because he knows how Max Kellerman feels about him.
“Max hears Justin Herbert, he’s going on a soliloquy. He’s on a diatribe and I’m like ‘oh, got him!’.”
Jay Williams said that everyone on the show had to learn that it is okay to be the butt of a joke and had to be comfortable with not being the star of every segment. They do not approach the show as a monolith. That means everyone will get a chance to shine throughout the morning.
“It’s gonna be a series of ebbs and flows, right? We have four hour shows that we produce,” he said. “It’s not like you’re on TV for four hours. No, from 6 to 7 is a show. From 7 to 8 is a completely different show with a completely different audience. Same with 8 to 9. Now all of the sudden, we’re focused on New York City and things that happen in the city. From 9 to 10, it changes demographically, so you get a chance to repeat some of the same topics, but the way we go about it changes each time.”
Talk radio host Howie Carr blasted several media outlets for using Hurricane Ian as an opportunity to advance their political narratives against Gov. Ron DeSantis.
During his show Wednesday, Carr stated that the media tried to “test out their routine” on DeSantis during a nightly news conference.
“This reporter was probably from one of the busted newspapers there,” said Carr. “They have all these newspapers there that used to be pretty decent.”
According to Townhall, a Politico reporter misrepresented a statement made by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell about the state’s readiness.
“Woah, woah, woah. Give me a break! That is nonsense. Stop politicizing it,” said DeSantis. “You’re trying to attack me, I get. But like, you’re attacking these other people who have worked very hard. So that’s totally false.”
“The media hates DeSantis,” said Carr. “That’s their pathway to return to profitability and respectability. It’s a losing game.”
In a press conference at the White House Tuesday, Criswell said she was concerned that the Gulf region of Florida had not experienced a direct hit by an intense hurricane in a long time.
Florida native and syndicated radio host Joe Pags discussed Tuesday his days as a news reporter covering severe storms in South Florida.
Pags was raised in Lake Worth, Florida and attended Santaluces Community High School in Lantana. He began his radio career in Palm Beach.
He was reacting to the news of Hurricane Ian which reportedly made landfall Wednesday afternoon near Cayo Costa State Park just north of Sanibel and Captiva Islands.
“As you know I grew up in Florida, we faced hurricanes all the time, and I covered hurricanes on television and radio,” Pags said.
In 2004, Pags covered Hurricane Charley which made landfall at 150 mph. According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm cost the State of Florida an estimated $13.5 billion in damage.
“I know a lot about hurricanes and lived through them with my family and lived through them in my adult life covering them for the news,” he said.
Pags said social media adds another dynamic to hurricane coverage. He said he’s seen many posts where people are calling Hurricane Ian karma for Florida Ron DeSantis sending illegal migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
“It’s not a couple of people, it’s a lot of people,” said Pags. What bothers me is that they just don’t have any humanity or they’re not smart enough to know that that is completely inappropriate. I want everybody in Florida left, right, or middle to be fine.”
“If we can’t be more human about this, who are we?” This is what social media has done to us,” he added.
How did WWE make Renee Paquette a better interviewer? What was her goal for her career and how close was she to working with Colin Cowherd nearly a decade sooner than she actually did?
He’s one of the more versatile play-by-play announcers around. Sean McDonough has been working professionally since 1982. He was the play-by-play announcer for the Syracuse Chiefs of the International League and hasn’t stopped since. McDonough has seemingly called every sport imaginable. Last year he went back to an NHL booth, being named the lead broadcaster for ESPN’s coverage of hockey. He’s getting ready for year two.
A native of Boston, McDonough graduated cum laude from Syracuse University in 1984 with a degree in broadcast journalism. In May 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Southern Vermont College in recognition of his career, community service and personal achievements. He was also the Commencement Speaker at the graduation ceremony.
McDonough was named to the Hall of Fame for WAER in 2014, Syracuse University’s noncommercial radio station where he began his sports broadcasting career as a student. The Sports Media Center at Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications also honored McDonough with the Marty Glickman Award in 2016. He received the highest alumni honor given out by Syracuse, ‘The George Arents Award’, the highest alumni honor bestowed by Syracuse University in 2019. McDonough was selected for induction into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
Quite a resume.
ROAD TO ESPN/NHL
In 1988, McDonough started broadcasting Boston Red Sox games on television. He teamed there with the late Jerry Remy. McDonough stayed with the Red Sox through the 2004 season and was not brought back. He was replaced by Don Orsillo. McDonough blamed his firing on his salary and his candor regarding the team. Interestingly enough, he would return to the Red Sox in 2019, doing 30 some odd games as a part-time radio play-by-play announcer.
Concurrent to his work with the Red Sox, McDonough worked varying assignments for CBS Sports starting in 1990. At CBS, he called college basketball, working 10 NCAA Tournaments, college football, the NFL, US Open Tennis, the Winter Olympics and contributed to the Masters coverage.
In 1992, he took over as the lead voice of CBS’s Major League Baseball telecasts. He was only 30 years old and became the youngest person to call a national broadcast of the World Series. Strangely enough, that record would be broken 4-years later by Joe Buck, who would replace McDonough in the booth.
While on the baseball coverage, McDonough had several memorable calls. Perhaps the most famous was in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS between the Atlanta Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates. When Atlanta’s Francisco Cabrera came up with the game winning hit.
‘Line-drive and a base-hit! Justice has scored the tying run, Bream to the plate…and he is SAFE! Safe at the plate! The Braves go to the World Series! The unlikeliest of heroes wins the National League Championship Series for the Atlanta Braves. Francisco Cabrera, who had only ten at-bats in the major leagues during the regular season, singled through the left side, scoring Sid Bream from second base with the winning run. Bream, who’s had five knee operations in his lifetime, just beat the tag from his ex-mate Mike LaValliere and Atlanta pulls out Game 7 with three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning. This place is bedlam. There will be no second nightmare for Bobby Cox. Final score in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series: The Braves 3 and the Pirates 2.’
He also called the final play of the subsequent 1992 World Series, in which the Blue Jays became the first non-American based team to win the Major League Baseball’s world championship:
“Nixon bunts! Timlin on it! Throws to first . . . For the first time in history, the world championship banner will fly north of the border! The Toronto Blue Jays are baseball’s best in 1992!”
A year later, McDonough called Joe Carter’s dramatic 1993 World Series ending home run off Mitch Williams of the Phillies:
“Well-hit down the left-field line! Way back and GONE! Joe Carter with a three-run homer! The winners and still world champions, the Toronto Blue Jays!”
Since 2000, McDonough has worked for ESPN/ABC, working again, pretty much every sport that the network has broadcast rights to. College hoops, College football, US Open golf, British Open golf, Monday Night Football and now the NHL on ESPN/ABC. Before last year, McDonough hadn’t called an NHL game since 2004.
BACK TO THE ICE
McDonough grew up a hockey fan and relished his role as a play-by-play announcer the first time ESPN had the NHL contract. He goes way back with the sport and seemed to really miss it when not calling hockey.
“It was really the first thing I did when I got out of Syracuse University and started at NESN (New England Sports Network). My first assignment was college hockey, and I did a lot of NHL back in the day. I was hoping that we’d get it back.” he recently told The Athletic. “I’ve told this story before, but I was in the stands at the TD Garden in 2019 watching the Bruins play the Blues in Game 7. I looked over where Mike Emrick was and said to my buddies, ‘Boy, it would be great to do this someday.’ The atmosphere is just incredible.”
McDonough had to reacclimate himself to the game itself, which wasn’t the same one he covered before. “One of the things that stood out to me immediately is the game is a lot faster than it was 17 or 18 years ago, which was the last time I was doing the NHL,” McDonough told The Athletic. “You used to be able to put your head down and look for a note or if you weren’t quite sure of what number a player was, you could look down and the guy was probably still lugging the puck through the neutral zone. You don’t have time to do any of that now. If you don’t show up to the game having all the names and numbers completely memorized and you have to look down, you’re in trouble because the puck is going to go somewhere else very quickly, and it may wind up in the net while you’re looking down. I have an appreciation for how good hockey broadcasters are because it’s not easy.”
McDonough worked at it and re-watched some games to see how he could interact with Ray Ferraro more, especially when the latter was at ice level and the former at the top of the stadium. He and Ferraro developed an excellent chemistry as the season wore on and they were clicking on all cylinders in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and Final.
WHY IS HE SO GOOD?
McDonough is a big-time announcer. He has certainly carved out a niche for himself with a style that, to me, is all his own. There’s something about his cadence and delivery that makes him stand out. He has a distinctive voice that lends itself to big games. McDonough is unique, in a good way, in how he presents big moments in big games. It’s hard to put into words how he ramps up from description to excitement without missing a beat. It’s different but it works and has done so for a long time.
Versatility is a word thrown around a lot in the broadcasting industry. There are very few announcers around that have called Monday Night Football, the World Series and the Stanley Cup Final. Think about all the milestone moments he’s had the pleasure of calling. Think also about how many of those moments came in different sports and stages.
It’s a tribute to an announcer that has risen to the occasion for many a big event. McDonough doesn’t get the notoriety that perhaps he deserves. Whether or not his opinionated style has hurt him at times, there is no arguing he is among the best to ever do what he does.
