Career In Sports Broadcasting
Joe Zone, WFSB Sports
Joe Zone, sports director at WFSB –Ch3, was introduced by Brian O’Donnell. He lives in Avon, and his two daughters graduated from Avon High School. He is still trying to break 80 with his golf game. He mostly talks to teens about sports, so he could simplify his talk for us.
He has been in sports reporting since 1973. His first interview involved reporting on a hockey game involving the Syracuse Blazers, the team that was the basis for the movie Slap Shot. In the last 50 years he has been involved in watching, attending, and reporting on sports, mostly on TV.
When Joe started reporting on TV, sports was more important than the weather. People couldn’t get sports scores until the late news. There was no NESN or ESPN or smart phones. National news is covered throughout the day, and sports reports are available in a variety of ways.
Now weather dominates the late newscast. What is more important to viewers is generally the weather. The technology that makes weather reporting ever more precise appeals to viewers. And with both adults in a household going to work, not to mention children in school, people want to know what the weather will be in the morning when they leave the house. The equipment that supports weather reporting is very expensive, and the cuts in spending come from the sports budget.
The reason sports remains part of the late news is that people want to see their own kids or friends on the news. Local sports stories draw viewers, just as local news stories do. That is the emphasis on sports today. This is so much the case that Channel 3 is dropping reports of the scores of national teams in order to focus on local sports. And in Connecticut UCONN sports is local to everybody. So there will continue to be UCONN reporting, as well as special interest stories. In fact Channel 3 is now a media partner with UCONN.
Joe then answered questions that were mostly about college sports. There is concern about the changing conferences and what happens to the Big East, which is a basketball conference. Where will UCONN’s football team fit? What will teams from small schools do if they have to travel across the country to play games with spread out conferences? How is payment to student athletes going to affect college sports? Lots of questions to be answered that should keep Joe busy with sports for many years to come.
Thanks for giving us a glimpse of sports reporting today.
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