The Sports Talk Life

This Emory business grad decided to skip finance to live out his dream, working as producer for a hot ESPN Radio show. Here's a typical day

by Scott Shapiro

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Scott Shapiro
Producer, Mike & Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio and ESPN2
BBA, Class of 2002
Emory University Goizueta Business School

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You may find it odd that someone who graduated cum laude in finance and consulting from Emory University is now in the world of sports talk radio. But here I am, living the dream! Working in sports, rubbing elbows with celebrities and athletes on a daily basis, traveling to sporting events around the country, and even getting airtime on national television every morning has never made me think twice about passing up finance jobs.

I'm the producer of ESPN Radio's flagship program, Mike & Mike in the Morning. This is ESPN Radio's national morning-drive show airing weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET. As producer of the show, my responsibilities include booking all guests, developing content, running ideas meetings, and serving as point person. It's my job to see that the show is growing in the ratings. Ratings drive all of our ad revenues, and I'm responsible for improving them on a quarterly basis.

When the show isn't on the road in various cities across the country, we broadcast from ESPN (DIS) headquarters in Bristol, Conn. The ESPN headquarters is like a college campus. Talk about an impressive place. Nearly all of ESPN's studio shows are broadcast right here live in Bristol—SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, and ESPNews.

Enough about my background, let's get into what makes my job so exciting. Here's a typical day:

3:30 a.m.—Oy vey! The alarm goes off. Another night of only four hours sleep. Thankfully, I love what I do. Once I'm somewhat conscious, after hitting snooze on my alarm multiple times, I realize that I have a national sports show to put together, and I leap out of bed with anticipation.

4:40 a.m.—I arrive at work and it's still pitch black outside. It's amazing to see a massive parking lot completely empty.

4:45 a.m.—I sort through the many sports headlines from the previous day and begin to determine which stories we will cover on the show. This is also the time to sort through sound clips and decide which to use. And it's time for my first cup of coffee.

5:30 a.m.—Meeting time. I sit down in the studio with hosts Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg and our production team and set up our exact game plan for the show. We typically create a pretty rigid rundown of the show's first hour during this meeting. The rest of the show will be determined as we go, once we see what worked and what didn't work.

6:00 a.m.—If the last hour didn't fly by quickly enough, the next four hours are like being launched into outer space. The show begins, as millions of sports fans around the country tune in to be informed and entertained. If we're dull for even a second, listeners need only hit one button to change the station, and once they do, they may never come back. Our goal is to be so compelling, so informative, so entertaining, so thought-provoking, and so fast-moving that our listeners would never even think of hopping stations.

6:01 a.m.—Throughout the show, I continue to scan the Internet and countless newspapers for pertinent articles to enhance the stories we are covering. At 8:00 every morning, I am able to quickly scarf down the breakfast that is delivered to the entire radio and television staff.

10:00 a.m.—As a staff, we engage in our post-show meeting where we discuss what we liked and disliked regarding that morning's broadcast. We also plan for the following day's show.

11:00 a.m.—The desk portion of my job. I book guests, develop content for the following day's show, and respond to pitches from publicists. I also find a few minutes to grab lunch from the ESPN cafeteria, but I always eat it while getting work done at my desk.

4:00 p.m.—I arrive home and need a nap. Since I only sleep roughly four hours a night, this is the time of the day that I get some catch-up. And this isn't beauty sleep, it's survival sleep.