When it comes to the ways members of the sports media got to where they are today, I can’t get enough. That’s why my interview with this week’s guest will be broken into two parts.
Before we deal with that, this week’s “Sports News Read Like Real News” “dives in” to the Ryan Lochte saga (6:46). Hah.
Anyway, this week’s guest is none other than ESPN Radio’s Jorge Sedano, host of the Jorge & Izzy show, 9-11 p.m. EST. The stories of his journey from a small radio station to eventually making it to ESPN are fascinating. From humble beginnings at a ‘mom-and-pop’ station that folded, to getting back into the radio game and taking some risks that led to a much larger platform, to seriously impacting the night show radio game, to jumping aboard on possibly one of the best radio lineups in the country, he definitely put in the work before making it big. There’s certainly several chapters to Jorge’s radio path and he went behind-the-scenes for just about all of it, which is why his story is split into two parts.
In Part 1, we get into his early radio life, including:
How he fell in love with sports radio as a kid (15:13), growing up actually going outside and playing sports (18:20), intense weekly pickup games with the Miami media (21:27), who would be his starting five on an ESPN media pickup basketball team (23:06), how college didn’t prepare him for what he does now and the importance of forging relationships (24:04), his first job in radio, including having to work as a currier for 9 months and some added motivation for his station’s ‘funeral’ on a competitor station (27:28), starting at a Clear Channel station, how he made it to Fox Sports Radio and came to be known as ‘The Dean of Late Night Sports Talk’ (31:55)’ which included a bold decision to work Radio Row at the Super Bowl while at the 940 station in Miami (34:01) and how his night show changed the game of late night sports radio and why that crew is his favorite dynamic to this day (37:11), dealing with the criticisms from ‘The Morning Zoo’ show (42:59), working with some incredible talent after making the move to Miami 790 The Ticket, and overcoming some doubts in doing so (45:18) and how strong those friendships continue to be (54:12).
In Part 2, we’ll dive into how a failed opportunity at ESPN U and turning down a job at ESPN (not once, but twice), eventually landed him a job at the four-letter network, some of the different shows he’s hosted, the full story of his most famous on-air interview, and if he’ll still root for the Miami Heat now that Dwyane Wade is gone.
There will also be a major announcement made on next week’s show regarding the future of The Bridge. Let’s just say, our listening audience is about to get a little bit bigger.
You can follow Jorge on Twitter here. The interview begins a little after the 14:30 mark.
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Call or text the show at 929-BRIDGE7, that’s (929) 274-3437. Contact the show with your questions, comments, stories or hot takes and you might be featured in the next episode.
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Show music: ‘Actionable’ and ‘Epic,’ courtesy of www.bensound.com.
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