Getting into this industry of ours is a lot of hard work. It’s tireless brainstorming and mounting hours logged on our brains, voices, cars and lives. A lot of us have known that it’s something we wanted to do from a very young age. That’s the case with the author of our guest column today, Clay Ables.
Clay is just 25 years old, but his resume is filling up quicker than a Shohei Ohtani stat sheet. He’s worked hard to get where he is which is working with the ACC Network as a play-by-play broadcaster at Louisville and SEC Network Plus at Kentucky.
He has shifted in his career some to focus on production for the SEC Network at Kentucky, ACC Network at Louisville and at Bellarmine for their ESPN Productions. Ables writes that despite his passion that is still strong for play-by-play, it wasn’t as easy as hard work and networking. So he went back to the basics and he became a bigger asset.
What was the journey like? Ables offers his insight on when he refocused his “laser” and became a better broadcaster because of it.
From the age of eleven I knew I wanted to be in broadcasting.
I always envisioned myself early on as a sports talk show host, or a play by play announcer for ESPN. Many kids have that dream.
The difference between myself and those other kids was as Tim Dench calls it “laser focus”. I was very fortunate to jump into Floyd Central High School in 2011 at the age of 14, with a teacher in Tim Dench & program that was second to none. The school has their own cable channel, an FCC licensed radio station and a brand new $1.2 million dollar studio.
I was in heaven. I still say today as great of a professional career as I’ve had, I would trade it all back for those three years Mr. Dench was my instructor at Floyd Central. The experiences from producing the Paul Hornung Awards to broadcasting games, and most importantly learning from someone who taught me everything I could ask for about radio, tv, business, and life’s important lessons.
The program Mr. Dench ran was so advanced that I was able to start working professionally on air in high school for multiple radio stations, broadcasting play-by-play across Kentuckiana. That also led to an opportunity to sit in on The Terry Meiners Show, one of the largest talk shows in the country and learn from another great.
At age 19, I broadcast my first game for ESPN 3 with Cards TV. Soon after that I was doing play-by-play for Kentucky on SEC Network Plus. I thought I was on the fast track to national ESPN broadcasting. I had a goal in my notes to make it to a national level broadcasting by the age of 21.
This type of drive helped make my career, but also can create delusion if you don’t see the full picture from 30,000 feet.
Today, I’m 25 years old, and from on-air standpoint I’m pretty much in the same place. If you would have told 21 year-old me that, I would have been extremely disappointed. If you told 23 year old me that, I would have been extremely disappointed.
If you’re a thirty-year vet in the business, or are just looking to start your career to become an on-air talent, one thing is common at both ends of the spectrum. The unknown path to reach success.
I’ve spent literally eight years networking with anyone I could find in radio and television. Everyone from on-air talent, to directors, executives, agents, utilities, grips, from the most successful to the least, I’ve talked to as many people as I could. No two people have the same path to success.
This isn’t accounting where you go to school for four years, get an internship and you have a job. For people that like structure and control, like myself, this is the direct opposite of what you want.
To steal a line from the great Bill Parcells from his Football Life documentary, “this is not a game for the most well-adjusted people”.
How networks, coordinating producers, program directors, and others pick talent is completely different from each situation.
For me reality hit my senior year of college at the age of 22. I was about to graduate college with a nice portfolio of freelance on-air work, but I was calling only thirty games a year as a freelancer. That’s not enough to pay the bills.
I had to do what I thought I would never do, work behind the scenes. It was never beneath me, I always had the upmost respect for anyone on a crew or working a board at a radio station. I just never thought it was me. I had laser focus on being on-air, no plan B.
Also in my short experience behind the scenes, I sucked. As a camera operator for one game in high school, Mr. Dench pulled me of camera after one quarter. Still to this day saying proudly “I was the worst camera operator he’d ever seen.” That’s saying a lot considering he’s been in television production for over 45 years & has worked on over 10,000 productions.
I strive for the extreme.
But I had to make a shift. I knew that if I wanted to have the success I wanted in the business short and long term, I would have to learn to work behind the scenes.
It started with going back to the basics. My senior year of college, Mr. Dench who is now the teacher at the WJHI, hired me to be his assistant teacher, mainly to teach sports broadcasting to his students.
But I went back to the school of Dench and actually listened to when he taught his lectures on production, camera work, graphics, etc. I understood the reason for my lack of success behind the scenes. It was because I didn’t care at the time when I was a high school student.
My laser focus was about being on-air. Now the focus was on production.
Doors then started to open. I kept my play by play work at Louisville with ACC Network Extra, but moved into camera operation. Churchill Downs Racing and Kent Harbsemier showed me how to do replay on a Dreamcatcher. Bellarmine started a TV department under the great Craig Miller, who taught me graphics. Then came Kentucky and Brandon Wickey, allowing me to jump in as a producer.
This all happened in the span of about two years. Currently I’m now working on becoming a director, a role I never would’ve even dreamed of before my refocusing.
I followed in the path of the unknown. This route was one I couldn’t have imagined and to be honest if offered at 18, I wouldn’t have wanted.
It’s been one of the best things that has ever happened to me not only for my career in TV, but also for my future on-air.
How this paradigm shift happened is due to a few reasons. One is my support system. My parents, my family, and people in the business backed me 100% of the way, even when I didn’t know what I was doing. The other reasons for this successful shift, came down to two things. Networking and listening.
If there’s any three gifts I could bestow upon anyone in any field, it would be a strong, committed work ethic, the ability to network, and the willingness to listen.
I’ve seen far too many times the unwillingness to learn new skills from a person due to a lack of humility or effort. Adapt or Die. It’s that simple. You have to be constantly working and learning, or you will be on the outside looking in.
This business does reward one thing consistently: Hard work. If you show up on time, work hard, and are willing to learn, you will succeed.
No one knows it all. I still have a ton to learn. This is an ever-changing business. Between technology, equipment, and people, you’ll never be finished.
I’m incredibly fortunate that Barrett Sports Media allowed me to write this article. I hope that anyone that is in the business or is entering it can find it to be a useful resource that benefits your career.
There’s so many people to thank for allowing me to be in this incredible career. As I said at the start, the main reason for my success is the people around me. Surround yourself with a great core and great things will happen.
