Dec 11, 2024; Dallas, TX, USA; A view an MLB Network microphone and Christmas decorations during the 2024 MLB Winter Meetings at the Hilton Anatole. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
HockeyLocal NetworksMLBRadioBy Al Daniel on

John Walton finished his first season announcing professional sports one month before Paige Capistran was born in 1998. Yet the Washington Capitals veteran play-by-play voice and the AHL’s Ontario Reign’s new color commentator agree about the mixed bag of today’s cyberscape.

Speaking from experience to Awful Announcing, Walton said that sooner is better for fielding audience feedback that might help refine one’s brand and product. He can recall waiting until midweek fan functions to hear what listeners liked or thought was lacking from the preceding weekend’s minor-league broadcast.

Still, he allows, “I don’t think social media is entirely positive.”

Capistran — who entered this vocation two years ago after playing in the Premier Hockey Federation — likewise moderates her online presence. She repeatedly described herself to AA as “old-school” in her sportscasting worldview.

“I would say that with hard work, you can totally use the tools with social media to promote yourself,” she said. But overconsumption, especially among kids, usurps time one otherwise might spend, say, playing neighborhood pickup games.

The latter activity helps to hone both the athletic and social skills that have forged Capistran’s profile. She studied communications at Northeastern University from 2016 to 2020, then discovered her post-playing goals while witnessing the works and forming high-end relationships at the New England Sports Network in between her two PHF seasons.

“It still goes down to the basic function of human communication,” Seattle Kraken radio host Mike Benton told AA.

Online introduction lends prospects an earlier breakout pass, but they still must physically venture into uncharted territory to take their best shot. The art of making plays in person, Benton says, “will never die, and it is the root for how people are able to advance in this business.”

Zack Fisch, a backup for Walton in Washington and voice of the Capitals AHL affiliate in Hershey who graduated college eight years after Benton and eight years before Capistran, similarly sums up the industry’s timeless indispensables.

“You gotta put in the reps,” he told AA. “You gotta network.”

There is ample proof that accumulating copious connections both feeds into and results from well-traveled, flexible broadcasting. Stephen Nelson — a TV announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers and an ESPN anchor — previously filled assorted roles under a half-dozen banners after finishing school in 2011.

“The big point is that there’s so much volatility in the industry,” he told AA, “and it’s created a lot of uncertainty for broadcasters of all generations.”

The latest generation to phase its way in has its exemplars for making the new web an ally. Frank Zawrazky, who completed his bachelor’s a year ago (one semester early), is the youngest broadcaster in United States Hockey League history. But before the Omaha Lancers hired him over the summer, he logged action with three other junior teams and compiled a who’s-who of A-list advisors.

At his Chicagoland high school’s radio station, Zawrazky’s sports talk show attracted a dense who’s who of players, reporters, and announcers, locally and at large. He later archived 156 installments on podcasting platforms.

“My generation is the first one fully immersed in Web 3.0,” he told AA, “so we understand how to promote ourselves using all of the new tools at our disposal. These tools allow us to review our own tape and make modifications more effectively, increasing our progression as broadcasters.”

Still, a dynamic delivery is only as good as it sounds on the air. To that end, Nelson and Fisch’s contemporaries marvel at what they were missing when they started.

“In college, I just had an audio demo,” Jared Shafran, a 2011 Northeastern alum and the Reign play-by-play voice, told AA. “Smartphones were a thing, but they weren’t as advanced now.”

Today, Shafran and Capistran use their own phones to shoot hi-res pre-game teasers when they’re on the road. The key section of that sentence is they’re on the road.

Between Covid-induced closed sets and overseas showcases, many major-league announcers have tackled the trick of calling contests remotely in recent memory. “They have the technology and the financial backing to make it okay,” Shafran says.

Conversely, in the same scenario, broadcasters still earning their stripes typically toil to compensate for resources that inevitably sell their performance short.

Visiting different venues helps up-and-coming announcers secure more personal, adhesive connections with peers and potential employers. It also tests and showcases their poise when handling the atmosphere of a new environment.

Among many lower-level teams, that luxury is becoming a budget-cut casualty. Shafran endured this firsthand when Washington’s ECHL affiliate, the South Carolina Stingrays, temporarily abandoned live road broadcasts.

Were he interviewing for a job at that level today, he says, that missing piece would have been a dealbreaker. Having also started his career in the USHL, he added that Zawrzaky’s arrangement in Omaha as a full-time staffer is more the exception than the norm nowadays.

“I completely understand the organization, but I think it’s a huge miss for them,” Shafran said. “It sucks for the fans.”

Refreshingly for at least the Hershey Bears and the Stingrays, Walton stresses that the Capitals and their parent company, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, are always eager to provide exposure.

When Washington’s season ends in April while the Bears or Stingrays reach their final playoff round, the Caps casters come out for added digital coverage.

“We’re not worried about the money so much as doing it right,” said Walton, whose protracted proving phase in the AHL included eight years in Hershey.

During the regular season, Caps Radio 24/7 supplements its slate of games, podcasts, news, and features with select minor-league games. Shafran calls those gestures “confidence-boosting,” and they are one example of the movers and shakers embracing change and encouraging adaptability.

Even as Benton admits that compiling cassette or CD demos has “gone the way of the eight-track,” Capistran says the obsolete art of pushing those long-welded portfolios through Priority Mail “shows how much these people before me wanted to make it and how hard they worked.”

Nelson fondly remembers that process himself and even needed a push to choose the future over the familiar. In 2014, Bleacher Report went from a mainly written commentary startup in San Francisco to a bicoastal multimedia enterprise seeking anchors in New York City.

Nelson entertained an offer there and an old-fashioned network job in Houston, figuring he would take the latter after filling a similar role in Eugene, Oregon. His wife, Cori Coffin — an accomplished anchor herself — made him think twice.

“If you turn down New York, I’m gonna kill you,” he remembers her saying. “I didn’t want to die, so I listened.”

Sure enough, Nelson cites B/R as where he found his professional self, which later went through MLB Network en route to ESPN and SportsNet LA.

With the Dodgers — where no one can escape Vin Scully’s 67-year shadow — the more modern notion of sharing the wealth is in full play. Nelson rotates with Joe Davis and is joined for color by any one of five analysts plus a field reporter.

“I can’t imagine that’s been an easy thing for certain generations of listeners,” said Nelson.
“But now, as it’s becoming more commonplace, it’s not going to be as jarring.”

Neither is the specter of what astute sports historians might call getting Wally Pipped. “We don’t have to be so provincial and protective about our jobs,” said Walton, who first attempted sideline reporting in Hershey for the Caps’ auxiliary coverage of the Calder Cup Finals.

Versatility for the person, diversity among personnel and programming, and common courage to try something new are the keys to rewarding all aspirants. Capistran knows this from all sides.

When she was a student-athlete, only her conference championship game was televised. This decade, she demonstrated her deftness in the booth and at rinkside when ESPN, NESN, and their digital offshoots expanded their coverage of the new Professional Women’s Hockey League and its NCAA feeder system.

All of which led her across the continent to the Los Angeles Kings primary affiliate.

“I think it’s just helping to open eyes that women can also work in men’s sports,” she said.

Through platforms like Caps Radio 24/7 and LA Kings Insider, a litany of podcasts and other content gives hope for the natural-born and naturalized citizens of multimedia sportscasting. Moreover, the likes of YouTube are no longer just spaces to display samples of one’s work but can be the whole kitchen where it is cooked, served, and consumed.

“You see NHL teams doing a real good job having different positions, whether it be a social media host or a radio pre- and post-game host,” said Fisch, citing Benton, a two-decade journeyman play-by-play specialist before his first big-league offer in Seattle, as an example.

Uncertainty may persist around traditional radio and basic cable bigwigs. But the growth in women’s sports’ presence and popularity and demand for passionate, personable voices covering any entity can be the glue.

“Not only is the ladder shrinking now,” said Nelson. “There are several new ladders being built next to it.”