"I love my job!" says Deb Carson, national anchor for Fox Sports Radio.
"I get paid to watch and talk about sports! As a lifelong sports fan, it truly
is a dream career."
Carson got started doing color commentary for baseball games while she
was in college. From there she had a couple of internships, which she describes
as "intense, but fantastic."
"One of my internships was in the sports department of one of the local
TV affiliates. The other was in the sports information department at Baylor;
I think some schools call it the media relations department. This was the
perfect combination for me because I was able to learn how the team and the
college handled its relationship with the media and controlled the access
and information provided to them."
Carson had a look at the other side of the industry by interning at the
TV station.
"At the TV station, I was able to see how the media took that info, combined
it with interviews and footage, then converted it into the stories they would
produce and tell during their broadcast. I got to see the entire process from
the very start to finish."
Now, Carson has a great job which, as she says, she loves. She says that
women in this line of work do have to deal with some obstacles, though --
among them, the misconception that female sportscasters get into the line
of work to meet or date athletes.
"For those who may believe that's truly the motive, there are much easier
ways to reach that goal that don't require an education, years of experience,
or the sacrifice of a social life, sleep and weekends," she says with a laugh.
"I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, but most women I've met who
are in sports media are there because they are huge sports fans, love their
work, and would be putting in the time watching and listening to games, highlights,
drafts, etc., even if they weren't getting paid for it!"
Chris Burnett does play-by-play sportscasting in British Columbia. Like
all sportscasters, he has had to deal with live on-air bloopers and blunders.
He says nothing too embarrassing has happened to him (yet!), but he has had
some humorous moments on air.
"I've got big headphones on when I announce and sometimes talk a little
too loudly without knowing it," he says. "One of the players who I was talking
about in the penalty box heard his name, turned around and gave me the look
of death. I smiled, waved and continued commentating," he laughs.
Burnett's interest in sportscasting started like that of many others: as
a kid, watching the games growing up, he wanted to be one of the people doing
the announcing. His love of sportscasting started with hockey.
"For me, it's an obsession and passion that dates back to when I was a
wee lad watching the Canadiens win the cup in '93," he says.
Paul Haysom also knows about getting himself into some funny situations
while on live television. Haysom is a TV anchor and reporter. He says, with
a laugh, that there's not enough space to talk about how many times he's made
mistakes on the air. Sometimes it's been a result of the teleprompter -- a
device newscasters use for reading their scripts during live broadcasts --
breaking down, other times it's just random mishaps at the station.
"There have been times where the prompter froze, or all my highlights were
lost and I just had to talk on air about nothing for five minutes," laughs
Haysom. "My favorite was when our weatherman was doing the weather and for
some reason I thought because he was in front of a green screen, the viewers
wouldn't see me if I walked behind him. Long story short, I walked right through
his shot and had nowhere to go so just kind of stood there for 10 seconds.
I felt pretty dumb."
Haysom says he is a "total sports nut," so he's lucky: his job never feels
like work. "I get to go to games and events for free and then talk about
it on TV," he says. "There's no heavy lifting involved but I do get joy out
of a job well done. The news environment tends to be rather negative, so offering
something light such as sports is a good outlet for people. I get excited
about an interesting sports story or an angle that you don't really have to
be a sports fan to appreciate."
Haysom says that people getting involved in blogging as sports commentators
is a good thing. It's not affecting his job and he says it brings more voices
to the mix.
"Many people will argue that it's not a good thing, but at the end of the
day it allows more insight into the sports world and allows everyone to have
a voice. That being said, I don't feel threatened by it. People still want
to see a product that's well-produced and well thought out and
not everyone can offer that."
Haysom says that this is a tough industry for women to get into. Barbara
Caines agrees. Caines was the first female sportscaster to have a daily program
(she used her maiden name, Barbara Ondrusek). She now teaches broadcast journalism.
She remembers a particularly rough start to her sportscasting career.
"My first week of sportscasting, there was this story of a Canadian tennis
player who was making her way up," says Caines. "Her name was Patricia Hy,
pronounced 'hee.' I knew it was 'hee' but I pronounced it 'hi' on the air."
Caines says that during that same sportscast a male colleague of hers couldn't
say another athlete's name. But despite him tripping over that name and not
being able to say it, it was Caines' comparatively minor mess-up that everyone
was talking about.
"Mine lead the front page of the sports section," she says. "A mistake
was headline news in the Toronto Star. I'm thinking, 'What?!' And what I'm
hearing from the young women [sportscasting] today is that the battle continues
for acceptance and they're under a microscope."