Bruce Beck has been working for NBC 4 New York for nearly three decades, becoming a staple in the nation’s largest market. But he still wakes up every day as if he is applying to Harvard University. As the lead sports anchor at the NBC owned television station broadcasting from Rockefeller Center, he is frequently on the road traveling to stadiums, arenas and everywhere in-between reporting on stories across professional leagues and collegiate programs.
Though some viewers may believe that Beck simply reads a teleprompter, the position is about more than just on-camera delivery. The same standards of traditional print reporting apply — assessing newsworthiness, understanding the audience and conveying the material. The waning minutes before air can bring a flurry of late developments and final scores, but once the segment begins, Beck is on the clock with the blend of journalism, highlights, interviews and insights to which New York viewers have been accustomed for nearly three decades.
“There’s a feel for the New York marketplace that I think I have,” Beck said. “I know what stories will resonate with the viewers, and I try to accentuate them as the lead or the most important element of the day, or the story I’ll spend the most amount of time on. But I’m not afraid to give a score instead of a highlight if that’s the way the day is unfolding — and there are days we have five leads, and there’s days that we’re struggling for a lead — and I’m not afraid to handle either/or.”
Beck has worked in the New York metropolitan area for the entirety of his broadcast career, and he still values being present for signature matchups. Throughout the year, he conducts interviews with key players and personnel while trying to “out-hustle the opposition.”
“[Derek] Jeter once said to me, ‘Bruce, tough but fair. No one can ever question you, and no one can ever bark at one of your questions,'” Beck recalled. “Boy, I took that to heart. ‘Tough, but fair.’ I think that I can ask a difficult question or a tough question in a manner that’s not personal.”
Beck has two producers, each of whom he has known for more than a decade, and he usually travels with a cameraperson who assists in shooting interviews and gathering footage. About 250 miles away and 87 DMAs smaller, Ashley Wenskoski is part of a two-person sports department at CNY Central, a station that is affiliated with NBC, CBS and The CW. There are only three days a week where she and her colleague are working, sometimes making it feel akin to a solo venture, and she films most highlights and press conferences herself.
“I probably go live maybe like two or three times a month, which isn’t probably as much as a lot of reporters,” Wenskoski said, “and so I think in a smaller market, the challenge is always, ‘Well, we’d love to have you live, but we don’t have a photographer. We don’t have the resources today,’ because sports in the newsroom does tend to come last in terms of those things.”
Wenskoski did have a photographer with her before the football season when she was reporting from a local menswear store that created custom suits for “NFL RedZone” host and fellow Syracuse University alumnus Scott Hanson. Much to her surprise, Hanson ended up participating in the story, and it gained significant traction and engagement on social media. Wenskoski was given just one take to shoot her standup since the photographer needed to travel for breaking news, and she ended up introducing the piece walking along a row of fabrics.
“I just said something, and that’s the standup at the beginning of the package now,” Wenskoski said, “which in retrospect, when it did go kind of viral and stuff, of course, like the perfectionist reporter, you’re like, ‘Damn, I wish I got to do that another time or two,’ but it worked out well enough.”
Changing paradigms of coverage
Nick Carboni has been reporting for WCNC Charlotte for nearly a decade and also serves as the station’s sports director, making time management essential for success. Carboni classifies the area as a mid-sized market trying to determine if it is a big city, and he finds it relatively simple to navigate. In his role on the Tegna-owned NBC affiliate, Carboni aims to objectively cover professional, collegiate and high school teams across platforms.
“I like seeking out opinions about the teams that I cover,” Carboni said. “I don’t like seeing hot takes on networks about the teams that I cover that are factually inaccurate and somehow go unchecked, so I’m not going to get up there and completely personally eviscerate somebody that I cover or go on TV and yell about them or go on our YouTube channel and yell about them, but I’m going to try to give you good, informative fact-based reporting, but also some opinion.”
While Carboni admits it would have been nice to enjoy the “heyday of local TV news,” he was still drawn to the profession and recognizes its value. There are instances, however, when the sports segment is deprioritized or slashed from a newscast. Some days are more difficult than others because of the effort and persistence involved in crafting stories, but Carboni does his best to take it in stride.
“That’s kind of the position that sports has always been in,” Carboni said. “As much as the job has changed in other ways, you’re the last block, and you’re going to be on the chopping block a little bit. But you also have to understand, and I think I always have, [is that] I don’t work for a sports channel. I work for a news channel, and what they’re doing is important to our community too.”
JP Finlay primarily focuses his sports coverage on the Washington Commanders as the team insider for NBC4 Washington. Recognizing the broader industry shift towards digital content, he has been making a transition that involves spending less time writing.
During the Week 13 edition of “Sunday Night Football,” NBC Sports broadcasters Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth noticeably enunciated the surname of Commanders QB Marcus Mariota. Finlay noticed social media users commenting about their delivery, and he decided to ask the signal caller for the correct pronunciation. But rather than explaining it in writing though, he recorded a video that went viral online with over 670,000 views across platforms.
“I think you need to kind of be everywhere at once, as difficult as that might sound, because I think the audience you reach in a traditional television broadcast is obviously still really important, and I think digital metrics are so interesting because the space is infinite,” Finlay said. “So sometimes digital numbers on things just feel so massive, but you have no idea what you’re really reaching, so you can’t understate the importance of the traditional television broadcast.”
Thriving without a “Big Four” team
The team at WJCL in Savannah, Ga. recently engaged in a multiplatform effort from the GHSA Football State Championships under the leadership of sports director Amy Zimmer, shooting games, filing reports and filming live shots for the newscast and digital platforms. Prior to the games from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, she greeted some of the athletes, coaches and families and was able to see first-hand the impact the station has for those in the community.
Zimmer and her team make the effort to show up and function as a trusted source, lending additional credibility to its content. All of this, however, can take a toll on personnel, making it essential to maintain a routine that maintains stamina.
“You’re traveling, you’re working crazy hours, you’re on your feet, you’re shooting football games,” Zimmer said. “There’s still a lot of physical activity that goes into this job. It’s not just me sitting on my computer watching a game. … It almost sounds like survival mode, but you just want to make sure that you come prepared for anything.”
Zimmer joined the station in 2019, and three years later, she became the first female sports director in its history. While the team travels for some marquee events, it keeps a decidedly regional focus on the city and adjacent regions, including Jacksonville and Charlotte.
“My main goal was just to keep the main focus the main focus, which is local, and that’s what makes local TV so special,” Zimmer explained. “You can find the big stories on ESPN, but those kids and their parents and their families can’t turn on ESPN and see them every day, but they can with their local TV station.”
While Savannah has two NFL teams under three hours away in both directions, the Arizona Cardinals are over six hours from Albuquerque, N.M., a city that KRQE sports director Van Tate has called home for the last three decades. The No. 48 DMA in the country houses several collegiate and high school programs, along with the renowned Jackson Wink MMA Academy. Tate keeps in touch with star athletes from the area who have gained national attention, such as Holly Holm, Alex Bregman and Diego Pavia, and also continues to emphasize local storytelling.
“It’s got small-town vibes when it comes to their teams, but it’s a large city, and so they really support their teams, and they get so into it that sometimes, they’re overboard,” Tate said. “Like where if there’s some losing going on, they’re too emotional, and when the winning is going on, they have your back so bad that they will fight for you.”
During the COVID pandemic, KRQE highlighted local high school athletes as part of a series called “The Lost Season.” Tate sent over questions for the participants to answer through their phones, and they responded with their various perspectives on how they were dealing with the pause. Tate says that he received grateful calls from parents following these pieces.
Social media and NIL present opportunities and challenges
Even though Sara Cardona is now anchoring and reporting in Miami for NBC 6 South Florida, she understands the value of her past experiences in smaller markets such as Jacksonville and Lexington. Her first week in Miami involved covering both the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final, a stretch that she equates to almost being a blur.
Cardona remembers one of her professors at Middle Tennessee State University advising to keep writing simple and avoid overcomplicating matters. It is guidance she follows today by trying to author conversational scripts, and she finds that live VO-SOTs are optimal in contextualizing and sharing quotes from athletes. Although Cardona usually has two to three minutes for sports on the newscast, she regards it as plenty of time with modern consumption patterns and the proliferation of TikTok.
“I think nowadays, social media is becoming everything,” Cardona said. “It’s important to build an online presence, [an] online brand because everyone’s on social media, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. So I worked really hard in college trying to grow my brand online, and I think it’s a big part of the job honestly.”
Throughout the last decade, Louisiana State University has had its share of athletic luminaries, but the ability to profit from name, image and likeness (NIL) has fundamentally altered the equation of gaining access. For WAFB Baton Rouge sports director Jacques Doucet, NIL has opened another avenue to reach athletes outside the athletic department.
“Some of the athletes here at LSU, you can’t get them for one on ones,” Doucet said. “They only do them with certain people or it’s written into the NIL deals, and so you’re competing against that as well, so you are in a fight to stay relevant. You are in a fight to let people know that, yes, you’re still a prominent figure when it comes to covering their teams.”
Sports to news and vice versa
Following years of hosting and reporting for sports networks, Jaime Maggio joined the team at KCBS/KCAL in Los Angeles, Calif. where she has contributed to newscasts and other programs. In a market the size of Los Angeles, the job of a sports reporter can include covering championships, contenders and teams rebuilding for the future — to say nothing of the instances when sports crosses into news coverage.
“I’m a sports fan, and when I started in the industry, people said, ‘Oh, you should get into news. There’s so many more opportunities,'” Maggio recalled. “I don’t necessarily have the stomach for news, so it’s not like I enjoy that side of the industry. Kobe’s passing was one of the hardest days I’ve had on air, but it comes with the territory.”
Maggio credits her boss, Armen Keuilian, for encouraging the sports department to discover stories that are not well publicized, and she finds inspiration in highlighting positive stories in sports. For example, she recently reported on Angel City FC defender Savy King, who is using her platform to provide free CPR training for the NWSL after experiencing a cardiac event on the field.
While Maggio transitioned to news from the all-sports format, Ruthie Polinsky took the opposite approach in departing NBC 5 Chicago and joining the Chicago Sports Network last fall. Polinsky, who currently hosts “The Big Pro Football Show” throughout the year, frequently moved and reported for a variety of local news networks early in her career.
“I did it all by myself, and I was trying to balance and do it all, and also while holding a camera, even at times in Miami in 102-degree weather and then have to flip the camera around and go on the air, so I think the appreciation is a part of it,” Polinsky said. “I think the reps, the live reps that I got — just every single day being on the air, live television, figuring how to adjust, I just feel really prepared for anything that would ever get thrown my way in the chair that I’m in now.”
Navigating a multiplatform business
Some sports anchors and reporters at news stations are content with their positions, while others hope to land roles in larger markets or with sports-focused networks. Cardona believes reporting locally prepares industry professionals to make the transition to a national stage, and if it works out for her, she would arrive with immense versatility as a producer, anchor and editor.
Similarly, Carboni remarked that local media practitioners bring the advantage of having been in the locker rooms, gathering stories and developing professional relationships with athletes. As the industry faces the realities of consolidation, deleveraging and realizing synergies, having multifaceted skillsets and expertise is becoming invaluable.
“When they’re looking to shrink the budget, they’re not going to be looking at you because they know that you’re all encompassing,” Tate said. “Let’s face it. There’s people in this business who’d never want to touch a camera. They’re too good for that — they consider themselves too good for that — and they just do the bare minimum. Well, those people are the first ones shown the door because they’re expendable.”
Most of the news anchors and reporters featured in this story produce content that airs outside of the traditional newscast as networks aspire to reach audiences through multiple distribution methods. Wenskoski, for example, co-hosts two video podcasts for CNY Central for which she completes post-production work and creates custom thumbnails. Doucet gives sit-down interviews that are uploaded to the WAFB website and posted on the station YouTube channel. In the larger markets, Beck and Maggio both participate in the standalone sports programs with more time for comprehensive storytelling, conversations and nuance.
“I think things are changing, and I have friends that are working as play-by-play [announcers], and they’re like, ‘Are all of these teams just going to go to the streamers now?,'” Maggio said. “I just want to stay employed and continue doing what I love, and I love the storytelling in the community and I love the familiarity that I’ve been able to build in this market.”
Over the summer, Beck leads a sports broadcasting camp where he teaches the next generation of aspiring journalists about anchoring and reporting. When he discloses realities of the business, he refers to the craft as “good old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism” and identifies “preparation, attention to detail and relationships” as essential for success. In the end though, the consumer is responsible for deciding how to allocate their viewing entrenched amid the incessant battle for attention.
“Look, you can go and get 160 characters somewhere else if you want,” Beck said. “I don’t know if I can always reach everyone, but I’m telling the viewer if they [tune] in, that I’m going to be able to give you the material in a fair, equitable way, and to do it with energy, enthusiasm and excitement.”
