Sports broadcasting has been evolving for over a century. We can look back at the first live broadcast of a sporting event in 1921 when a boxing match aired on the radio in Pittsburgh. We jump ahead 18 years to 1939 when NBC hosted the first North American television broadcast of a college baseball game.
Now, we seem to have endless ways to entertain ourselves with sports broadcasts. We can still listen on the radio, we can watch live on TV, we can record a game on TV and watch it later when we are not busy. We can follow along with live updates on social media where people will clip all the important plays from a game in real time.
There’s even this thing called the “Nickelodeon” broadcast of some NFL football games targeted toward kids. During these games, they add animated characters like Spongebob Squarepants onto the screen to teach kids football rules. When players score a touchdown, a cannon shoots green goo onto them (don’t worry, it’s not a real cannon. It’s just special effects added for the TV broadcast).
We sat down with Mike Stubbs, the radio play-by-play announcer for the London Knights hockey team. Mike has been working for the Knights for over 20 years now. He has experienced the recent evolution of sports broadcasting firsthand.
Mike Stubbs – Radio play-by-play announcer for the London Knights (Credit: Mike Stubbs)
“I was five. I maybe didn’t know that I liked sports, but I would sit on my dad’s lap and watch Hockey Night in Canada” Mike says as he reminisces about when he first started watching sports around 30-40 years ago. “I got home, I cut up a poster of cards and started making play-by-play hockey games on my mom’s table.”
Mike also mentions that he used to read the newspaper to keep up with sporting events from the previous day. That’s something that we take for granted these days. Every single detail and statistic about every game that is played is available at our fingertips. We can use our phones and open one of the many sports apps or google any information or statistics we are looking for.
Some broadcasts are starting to give alternate ways of watching a game. Sometimes you can watch the game while a retired player from the sport interviews celebrity guests during the game. Some content creators will stream themselves on youtube or social media while they watch the game. They find creative ways to entertain us while the game is being played.
“The analysts do an amazing job with the NFL, but every sport can be a little boring because the brain starts going… this is kind of the same thing that I’ve been watching for the last hour. They’re doing the same, they’re still running around. They’re still skating around. They’re still standing around. And your brain looks for something new, especially now, the way that our brains are going” says Mike.
Many Toronto Maple Leafs fans have probably heard of Steve Dangle by now. Steve is best known for his “Leafs Fan Reaction” youtube videos that he makes after every single game. He hasn’t missed a game in 17 years. He is best known for his brutally honest and emotional responses.
The new LFR video is up and this team is ruining my life. https://t.co/alcXg7pp2w
— Steve “Dangle” Glynn (@Steve_Dangle) April 24, 2019
Mike tells us about his reaction to Steve Dangle content “At first, I didn’t like it. I appreciated that it was going to work, and Steve was basically, and he’s very good at this, summing up the emotion of every Toronto Maple Leafs fan.”
Broadcasters and content creators continue to find new ways to entertain us and grab our attention while watching a 3-hour game. Mike described the current landscape perfectly during our conversation on the podcast:
“We’ve taken off the shackles because everything is available. Everything could work. Nobody looks and says, that’s dumb. You let the audience decide.”
If you want to listen to the full conversation with Mike Stubbs, check out our Almost 107 Podcast which can be found wherever you listen to your podcasts.
