Andrew Scaglione, Class of 2016, knew about WJPZ long before he was a student. That's because his father is a longtime friend of Hall of Famer Danno Wolkoff. In fact, Andrew's parents actually met at the Wolkoff wedding!
Today's guest dove headfirst into student media when he got to campus, working at WJPZ, WAER, and Citrus TV. He did exclusively sports at Z89, slowly rising through the ranks to Orangewomen play by play. In fact, he missed the 2016 Banquet because he was on the road calling the women's Final Four, the year that both the men and women made it. He tells how the station came together, all hands on deck, to create a ton of bonus content for a team that would wind up playing in the National Championship game. (You'll hear the audio of Andrew's final call of Syracuse's victory in the Final Four).
You'll also hear audio of a Z89 Sports Update, where Andrew covered another historical event, near and dear to our 2010's alumni: Z89's victory over Citrus TV in the first ever Watson Cup kickball game. Yes, it was the full 89 (ish) second sports update, and we have the whole thing - no regrets.
Following Syracuse, Andrew went on to cover the Arkansas Razorbacks and high school sports in Fayetteville, before following his wife to Cleveland. There he reconnected with Danno and began working in affiliate relations for Envision Radio Networks.
Today, he works for a cloud-based radio automation company called Radio Cloud. He explains what they do, and his current perspective on the industry.
(Note: Thanks to Newhouse Professor Tina Perkins, WJPZ Class of 1993, for guest editing today's episode.)
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Want to stay in the loop with WJPZ Alumni events? Subscribe to our newsletter on the right hand side of the page at http://wjpzalumni.org/
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. My guest today from the class of 2016, Andrew Scaglione. Welcome to the show.
Andrew: Thanks, JAG. Thanks for doing this. It's been a blast listening to all the episodes so far and just learning so much about our fellow alumni.
JAG: It's been a lot of fun to do, and I've learned a lot too as the host, and I'm excited to learn more about you. So start at the beginning. Take me through how you ended up at Syracuse and where you grew up and all.
Andrew: Yeah, so grew up in North Jersey as a lot of the Syracuse contingent comes from the Jersey and New York tri-state area. And my dad actually went to Syracuse, did not do anything on the radio or TV or JPZ side.
He was in Maxwell for public Policy, so he first planted the little seed in my head that Syracuse is cool. We would used to drive up through there to visit our cousins in Rochester. Went to some games growing up, always went to Varsity when we stopped on campus. And then one of my dad's best friends who he met in college was Danno Wolkoff, who's obviously one of our most talented and successful alumni. So Dan and I and my dad, and actually our families were very close growing up. And I love to tell this story. So my dad and Danno become great friends in college. My mom met Laura, Danno's wife, growing up in the Cleveland area, which is where I live now. And my parents met at their wedding.
JAG: Oh, wow. Your parents met at the Wolkoff wedding. Yes. Talk about full circle. That's amazing.
Andrew: It really is. And our families grew up vacationing together, so we were always and still are very close to them, so I always had that Syracuse seed in my head.
And once I got to high school, we didn't have a radio station. We had a TV program. I think it was just a couple of classes, but that got taken away before I was old enough to take those. Still, I wrote for the school paper, loved sports, realized, oh, I could actually do this as a career and do this in college.
Syracuse seems like the logical choice, and went for the campus tour. It was mid-February. It was a blizzard, and I absolutely loved it.
JAG: Even in the blizzard.
Andrew: Even in the blizzard. And that's when I knew, then I got an early decision to Syracuse, so it was a no-brainer from there on out.
JAG: I'm glad to see that you got the real teaser, unlike the folks who go up on a senior high school, senior reception and have a 70 degree day, and they're like, oh, it's beautiful up here.
No. They're just surprised when they get there, but you also had, 30 years of hearing about it from your dad and Danno, so I'm sure you knew what to expect weather-wise.
Andrew: Yeah, I knew what to expect and it was one of those things where we got snow in Jersey, we got cold, we didn't quite get the lake effect from Lake Onondaga and the central New York snowy winters.
But I was prepared to a certain extent and everything that I had heard about Z 89 and Newhouse. on top of the weather. The weather was secondary to the experience and the education I was gonna get.
JAG: So did you seek out JPZ when you immediately got to campus or was it a little while later?
Andrew: Yeah, so I pretty much, I got involved right away in all three of the student media, Citrus TV, WAER, and then WJPZ.
And I always considered JPZ my first home because, as a lot of us, and as I've heard on this podcast, that was really the first student media organization that I was able to get on air and have that opportunity to actually do production and get on air. With Citrus TV and WAER. It was a lot more of, you gotta train, you gotta try out, you gotta cut your teeth.
And with Z 89 you did that too, but you also got the chance a little bit sooner than the others. So I, I did get involved pretty early and I think my first official assignment in the sports department, Fall of freshman year Thanksgiving week of 2012. So Jeff Cucinell is actually a good friend of mine as well.
He is from Basking Ridge, New Jersey, which is the town I grew up in. . So I was hitching a ride back to Basking Ridge with Jeff, who was a junior or senior at the time, but he had to stay an extra day. To cover a Zac Brown concert in the Carrier Dome. What was the carrier dome at the time?
JAG: We're all still gonna call it the Carrier Dome.
Andrew: It's never gonna be the j whatever wireless dome it. It'll never be that.
JAG: It went from a building named after an air conditioning company with no air conditioning to a building named after wireless company with crappy Wi-Fi.
Andrew: Yeah. So that's a full circle on the, on that side too. Because I had that extra day there. Syracuse women's basketball game down the road at Cornell and John Nolan was our sports director at the time. So I went to him and I said, Hey, I'm around the extra day. Can I tag along, shadow? And he said, yeah, you wanna come do stats with us? So I said, sure. So that was my first official assignment and my first taste of how you can get involved in the sports department. And just get your feet wet in every different possible way.
JAG: Andrew, let me stop you there for one second because I wanna just clarify for the non-sports listeners to the podcast, when you've got the broadcast team going down to do the game, you've got the two folks doing play by play and you got what, one or two folks doing stats that are helping them out along with them?
Andrew: Correct. So usually we'd have one person sitting right in the middle of the two, play-by-play. People usually one would do the first half or they'd alternate quarters, and me as the stats person or whoever's giving stats, just sitting in the middle, jotting down little notes on post-it notes, handing 'em over or flashing 'em right in front of the play-by-play broadcaster so they could read a stat without taking their eyes off the game.
So that's a good way to first get involved because I'm not special in that I have a knack for remembering stats and loving stats. Everyone who wants to do sports has that little cognition. . that's a great way to get involved because you don't have to be on air. You can just sit there in the middle, but also help out with the broadcast.
JAG: Got it. Okay. So you go down to the broadcast, you help 'em with stats. Where does it go from there?
Andrew: From there I just kept on writing the we'll call them practice sports updates for John at the time, and I was one of the first, I think second or third freshman from my year to get cleared to the sports.
And that happened I think early in the spring. It was either late fall or early spring of freshman year. And then I started getting involved with the sports talk shows because that was the best way to get the most airtime cuz we had a really awesome lineup of sports talk shows. By the time I left, there was a two hour show, Thursday nights, there was I think six hours Saturday morning, six hours Sunday morning.
There was also call it a rap, which was the 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM show on Sunday night. So between, if say you have two hosts and a producer for each show, that's a lot of opportunity and that's a lot of hours of on-air experience. So I started out producing an 8:00AM to 10:00 AM show on Saturday mornings, spring of my freshman year, and I remember at the time our talk director was Kevin Fitzgerald, who's a tremendously talented play-by-play guy for ESPN now.
And I remember seeing an email from him before the semester saying, hey, talk shows. Just remember all your imaging is due on this date. And I thought, wow, we're a student station and we're, we have deadlines to get our imaging in. So this is serious. This is exactly like it is in the real world.
JAG: Yeah. So take me from there. So you're producing a sports talk show, and then take me through your kind of career path at JPZ. From there.
Andrew: Yeah. So a, after getting cleared to air, there's so many opportunities in the sports staff, and again, I'm probably pretty unique because I just did sports and I appreciated the news department and the entertainment department and the music department, but I never had a DJ shift.
I never was part of a Zoo, so I'm like exclusively in the sports side, but you go from there and you start to do in-studio assignments for women's lacrosse and women's basketball games. You do sports updates usually during the zoos or during the afternoon drive shift. And you do different assignments, cutting highlights for games, producing, running the board, eventually working your way up to hosting.
And then usually sophomore year at some point is when you get your first crack at doing play by play for women's lacrosse or maybe one of the last high school football games of the year. Just depending on the size of the staff. I just worked my way up, kept on getting the reps and that's where it went from there.
JAG: Were you also doing stuff on air at the TV station at AER at that point as well?
Andrew: I was I got cleared for WAER late in my, actually, I think it was early sophomore year, so it was okay. Very much a stick to the process and keep writing the updates, keep coming in, but I wasn't actually able to go on air for a broadcast until sophomore year, so was still working there.
Probably spending more time at JPZ at the time and at Citrus TV because I was also a producer slash, I guess it was an analyst at the time for Cuse Countdown, which was our preview show. So spent a lot of time in Watson going right next door from Z89 over to Citrus TV. And I know a few people have mentioned the kickball games we had, and I was thought of as somewhat of a traitor to Citrus TV when I decided to play for Z 89, but that was never even a question in my mind.
JAG: Yes, I'm glad you were a team JPZ. Well, Speaking of rivalries, let me ask you this, because over the 50 year history of these radio stations, I feel like there's been an ebb and flow between AER and JPZ and I think there are always JPZ folks that we're gonna say, oh, AER blah blah, to those guys and whatever.
And then there are also folks who worked at both and guided a good experience out of working both. What was your experience between the interaction, if at all, between JPZ and a AER?
Andrew: My year, there was a lot of overlap when I was there, especially in the sports staff, and Sure, I think it was. To work at both because you got both sides of it.
You got the professional feel of a student run station at JPZ and how we ran it. But then you actually had a real NPR professional station where the students ran the sports department and ran it in a professional way. But you also got to interact with the, Chris Bolt was our news director at the time, Joe Lee.
Who I'm still pretty close with was the GM and just to see how they ran a real non-commercial NPR radio station was very interesting and how much they trusted us to run the sports department. So I think it was a really good experience when you put them together. Not that JPZ isn't a tight ship, but maybe it's a little more of a tight ship at WAER and you have a little more freedom at WJPZ. But working at both definitely helped me.
JAG: All right, fair enough. So you graduate in 16 and take me through your career path since Syracuse.
Andrew: After Syracuse, I thought I was gonna do what everyone else did, which is sports and just work my way up in sports and I did for a little while. So after school I went, I took a job as a sports reporter and anchor at KFSM TV, which was the CBS affiliate down in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Growing up in New Jersey, I was lucky to be fairly well traveled with my family had never set foot in Arkansas. But we looked it up when I got the job offer and it said Fayetteville was one of the top five places in the country to live. So I figured there's gotta be something there.
So I took the job, went down to Fayetteville in the summer of 2016 and just started doing everything covering the Arkansas Razorbacks. And when you don't have a professional team in your state, they go mad for the Razorbacks.
JAG: Oh God. Yeah.
Andrew: It's pretty entertaining coming from the northeast. The CC, the Big East. Going to the SEC. Football is a religion down there. It's pretty amazing to see.
JAG: I can definitely agree with you on that statement. Cause I can tell you that being in the Midwest now in Michigan, that, know, growing up in the Northeast, it's more about the pro teams. But in so many other parts of the country, it's more about the college teams. And I spent a little bit of time in New Orleans, an LSU country, and the SEC is a whole different ball of wax.
Andrew: It is. And even down there, high school football in my high school wasn't big. We had a good year. I think I went to four, maybe five games probably on the high end while I was a student. . Then we go down to Arkansas.
High school football is everything. And of course Texas is the gold standard for high school football. Arkansas is not too far behind. They produce a lot of good players. The amount that the community cares about high school football. They see you out there with your camera on Friday nights or shooting preview stories during the week, and the impact is right there.
Everyone covers Arkansas, Razorback football and sports. But we prided ourself on being the best high school coverage in the area. And it really showed, talking about building a following on social media from almost nothing. And suddenly all my followers are Arkansas high school parents and athletes and friends and family, and it was really cool and I really enjoyed getting out in the community and connecting with them that way.
JAG: Better than my half my Twitter followers are One Direction fans from 2011, so it's funny, how your professional job shapes your social media following. Yes. So how long were you in Arkansas? Where'd you go from there?
Andrew: So I was there for three and a half years. And after a few months working at the TV station, I also picked up a morning radio production shift across the street at the Cumulus station, which was KQSM FM, 92.1, the ticket. So I was producing. Usually once, sometimes twice a week.
In the mornings, we'd go in for the morning show, which was six to nine in the morning. Got a few chances to fill in, but did everything from booking guests to answering the phones, to putting together the podcast after the show, which at that point was really just cutting up the best of show segments and putting it together with the imaging.
JAG: That's a brutal schedule, to do that in TV and covering games at night. Isn't it?
Andrew: Yeah. And technically my TV job was part-time. So that's why I thought supplement it with another part-time gig. But yeah, it wasn't a great schedule. And two mornings a week, getting up at probably 4, 4 30 in the morning.
And then, yeah, usually the TV shifts revolve around the game. In the fall, that's football. And then there's the crossover to basketball and all those games are at night. So sometimes you're working three to 11 or two to 10 or weekends and holidays. And I think I relatively quickly realized that maybe that wasn't the best way to have a family, have a normal working relationship with my wife and my friends.
And I met my wife down there at the time, and we had started dating. I guess it was 2017. Okay. So we were together for two and a half years down there, and then she got a job elsewhere and we went to Cleveland from there. Back it up for a minute. In 2018 while I was still in Arkansas, I had just had shoulder surgery and was recovering.
Danno calls me and said, hey, we're starting up this thing at Envision Networks where we're doing remote or virtual news, weather and sports. We want you to be the sports guy. And I said, sure, that sounds great. From August of 2018, I was doing some virtual sports reports for the Maryland News Network, Radio PA, which are state networks of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and then one tiny little AM station in Muscatine, Iowa, KWPC AM.
So usually every night I would go in, I'd write these little minute long reports. I'd send one for the morning and afternoon to the two state networks, and I'd just send one a day to the am. So that helped me get more involved with Envision Networks. And then when my wife got a job in Cleveland, I called Dan and said, hey, we're moving to Cleveland. Anything full-time?
And JPZ connection pays off. And with Dan, the lifelong connection pays off. And he said, can you do affiliate relations? And I said I've never done it, but I'm willing to try. So I joined Envision in November of 2019, did affiliate relations. Kept on doing the sports reports for a while too.
And then I always joke about it with the guys at the company who I still see sometimes, that me joining Envision was the start of this like crazy... it just started a crazy chain of events because that was November of 2019. So a few months later, a Sun broadcast group comes in and the merger happens with Envision and Sun.
And then a month after that the pandemic hits, and then the next year was working remotely and getting everything figured out that way. And then we rebranded the company the year after that from Sun to G Networks. So it was just never-ending change from that point. But basically for the next two and a half years after that, I worked in network radio doing affiliate relations and then still doing some sports reports.
JAG: And is that where you are now?
Andrew: So now in February of 2022, and I can say that now because it's 2023 when we're recording. I joined a company called Radio Cloud, which is where I am now, and this was through a connection I made while in network radio. They tipped me off on this company and I looked into it.
It's a cloud-based automation system for radio stations. You have your audio vaults, you have NextGen, RCS, all the traditional systems. And Radio Cloud, it's a German product that was trying to break into the US market. So they hired a US team and that's what I'm doing, more or less affiliate relations or sales.
And then a little on the marketing side and trying to grow the brand and get it onto stations. Here, automation systems are not easy to sell, so it's still very much a work in progress. And a cloud-based automation system, which to dumb it down, is basically you can run your station in a web browser from anywhere.
JAG: Wow.
Andrew: So it's pretty futuristic and I've always found that Europe is a little ahead of the US in terms of technology innovations, especially for radio. So I'm pretty confident that within the next few years this thing's gonna take off. And it's exciting because. I know at JPZ we have always the best of the best for the students so they can learn and get ready to move into the market.
So hopefully with this next crop of students moving to the market, cloud-based automation systems become a thing of not just the future, but of the present. So I think it's an exciting time to be a part of this company Radio Cloud, and I'm excited to see where we go from here.
JAG: Very cool. Let me ask you a question. You probably heard me ask other folks who have been working in radio on other episodes of the podcast, Andrew. As somebody who's working in an automation software right now, and then also who did affiliate relations and spoke to all these other radio stations, what is your take on the state of the radio industry right now and what it needs to do to stay important in people's lives?
Andrew: Yeah, it's a really interesting discussion right now because everything is changing so rapidly with, you have your big companies, your iJearts, your Audacy, it seems every few months one of the articles write ups in the trades about the riffs. The reduction in forces and just consolidation, people downsizing their studios and all the news seems to be negative, but I don't think it is. Because we have this amazing crop of talent all across the industry.
Evolving and doing podcasts and doing digital content and sharing audio across multiple stations and across the ownership group. To stay relevant, it's just gotta be. I think one of the last episodes I listened to you guys were talking about audio in cars and how do you get audio into more cars, not just from the radio, but from other sources.
JAG: Alex Silverman, I think that was.
Andrew: Yeah, that's gonna be the key, is making everything as available as possible, because the younger generation does not listen to radio as we did growing up, and as people older than us, and maybe even just slightly younger than us did, it's a lot different. But it's all still audio, it's all still content, and people still engage with that content and with those personalities.
I still think radio's in pretty good shape and I think maybe it was Mark that said the other day when I listened to that episode that the, he thought the AM band was gonna go away. I could see that happening in the near future because I know in Europe right now they're going a lot of, what we have HD radio here.
They have DAB in Europe and a lot of countries, I think Norway is one of them, have gone completely digital with radio and just taken off not only the AM band, but also the FM band.
JAG: That is fascinating. Let me bring it back around to JPZ. Tell me if you can think of any lessons you learned while at the station that have served you well in your career since graduating Andrew.
Andrew: Yeah. One, one of the lessons I always go back to is always be willing to ask. Whether it's, and I've had to do it a few times in my career, ask for a raise as uncomfortable as it is. Just ask. What's the worst that's gonna happen? You're told no. When I was hosting a talk show at Z 89, I learned pretty quickly you can get really high-profile guests on, even if you're a student station, because people like to talk about what they do, they like to talk about their work.
And everyone in the sports industry I feel like has to have a little bit of an ego. That's a good thing when you're hosting a talk show and you say, hey, do you want to come on and be a guest on our talk show? So we were, through some legwork and some previous connections, we were able to get Peter King on our show.
We got Eric DeCosta, who's the GM of the Ravens now, was the assistant GM at the time. We got Mike Tanenbaum on the show who was the GM of the Jets and the Dolphins. I'm not sure which one he was at the time when he came on, but I think. Have to go back and see if I have this audio. I'm not sure if I do.
I think I straight up asked Eric DeCosta, and full disclosure, I'm a Ravens fan. I think I asked him, is Joe Flacco elite? Oh, you flat out asked him that? I think I flat out asked him that and I think he danced around it in a very good way. Joe's our quarterback.
And I love Joe Flacco. He got the Ravens of Super Bowl, but I think I had the, actually had the cojones to ask him that, which was pretty, I don't know. I feel like that's a very JPZ thing. We're always willing to ask whether, whatever it is. And I think that was one of the main lessons I learned.
Another one being just don't burn bridges, because no matter who you meet, you never know who's gonna come back to help you down the road. In your career, in your personal life. Your story about asking Mary to get the the bottle from the distillery for you? I is an amazing example of that.
JAG: Jack Daniels. Yeah.
Andrew: Just don't burn bridges and build up your network and just do your best to keep in touch with them and you never know what's where it's gonna bring you.
JAG: In addition to having to carry you you-know- what's in a wheelbarrow to ask a question like that. Any other funny stories that come to mind from your time at JPZ?
Andrew: There's a few, we have so many great stories from our time there. I think of one, one or two mornings when I came in for an 8:00 AM talk show on the weekends. Got there at seven, didn't hear anything coming out of the speaker, went into the station and.
JAG: Oh no.
Andrew: Yeah, either someone forgot to flip it back to auto mode or what, but it just, nothing was playing.
So me at the time, being this guy growing up, liking rock music and classic rock and indie rock and everything , I'm like, oh, we don't need to play, 30 minutes of top 40 music to fill to the top of the hour. Let me just see what we have in the library. Green Day, great! Drag in a Green Day song. And now I'm like breaking the format. That's. That's a big no-no.
JAG: Sacrilege.
Andrew: It is sacrilege. So that was one memory I think of, and just a dog on myself a little for breaking the format. But I think when I came in, we were just transitioning from the Beat of Syracuse to Your Party station with the branding and the logo, which, you can't see, but I'm wearing on my shirt is the new logo.
So the rebranding kind of happened while I was there. We had so many talented people at the station in every department that were doing promotions and doing. I know Allie Gold was on the podcast. She talked about helping start that kickball citrus for Z89 kickball. I think that's still going on today.
That was a lot of fun. One year after we played kickball Z89 won. And I had a afternoon sports update that day, so I did 90 seconds on the kickball game. . That's great. And I know I still have that audio somewhere.
Sports Update Plays
I don't know. I was just, no one needs to hear about Syracuse Sports right now.
They need to hear about the important things. and your Z89'ers beating Citrus TV and kickball was the important things of that day. I'll give you one more funny story. Sure, sure. One of Danno's. Great family friends had a son who at the time was a senior looking at school and they figured, oh, let's just have Dan take him up so we don't have to make a trip to Syracuse.
His name's Max Spillman. So we went to Banquet. The three of us and Max got dragged along and he was probably thinking, whoa, this is such a tight-knit group. Like I feel very out of place here because even for some of the younger alums who haven't. Everyone who's made such an impact on the station, it's a lot of people just, yeah, it's a weekend for the alums to reminisce.
That's exactly what it is. And so after that, there was the two after parties, I think one was in the hotel lobby and one was at a house on Ostrom or something. So Danno was like, take Max to the house on Ostrom. I'm like, okay. What better way to introduce prospective student to Syracuse than take him to a Z89 after party?
And long story. Max Spillman is now a student at Syracuse. I don't know if if our weekend helped at all. I think he's sports management, but I thought that was a funny little story to add on the power of the Z 89 Alumni Association.
JAG: It's funny how stories echo through the generations. I remember as music jock with Brett Bosse who connected us our senior year. First year the Patriots won the Super Bowl and we're both Patriots fans. And I remember talking about the Patriots on JPZ, I think in a music show and I think somebody in management was like, you think a 16 year old high school student in Syracuse cares about the New England Patriots? I'm like, yeah, my team, they finally won the Super Bowl first time in, my life. Stick to Mary J Blige Jag. Okay, fine.
Andrew: So yeah, exactly. And I, on a sports talk show, I feel like we had a little more leeway with that. But even like I'm a big tennis fan. I'm a big golf. No one really cares about those sports.
They're listening to a top 40 station, even if they're listening for sports talk. So even I have to reign myself in a little and just, yeah, know your audience is another very important lesson. Try to make everything as relatable as possible, no matter who's listening.
JAG: Any relationships that come to mind? You've already mentioned a couple folks, but people that you've met at the station, either that were classmates of yours or other alumni that you've been able to maintain relationships to this day. Obviously you mentioned Danno.
Andrew: Yeah, so Danno has been one of my great friends and connect. I would say Mike Couzens has become one.
Recently, we were both in Cleveland for a few years and became close. We actually even had him on our sports talk show once while we were in school. He was up to call a game at the Carrier dome and came in and I just remember my first thought was, wow, he's really tall. But we became great friends. When we moved to Cleveland, my wife and I, and then Craig Hoffman has always been, I was just always very connected with him.
He was always willing to critique my tapes and listen to my sports talk segments. And Craig was very helpful in 2016, so when the Syracuse women made the national championship in basketball, I was fortunate enough that year. Knowing my pecking order at WAER I was not gonna get to call a men's tournament game, right?
So I said to our sports director at the time, who was Paul Mancano at Z89, I said, I want to do the women's tournament run. And he said, yeah, fine. It's yours. So Seth Goldberg, who's one of my great friends to this day from Z89. He and I did the first two rounds in the Carrier Dome. Syracuse made the Sweet 16.
I said, great. Where are they going? They're going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, . How do we get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota? But Z89. And Sam Kandell was our GM at the time, and she found some money in the budget but only for one person and that one person was me. So I spent a weekend in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in March.
Really cool town, actually. Just not when it's freezing. and got to see Syracuse, beat Tennessee and then South Carolina. Just perennial powers. Make the Final Four. And then the Final Four was in Indianapolis and went to that too. I think that was during banquet week in 2016. Because I think I had tickets to banquet and had to say I'm not gonna be able to go, because we have the national semi-finals going on during the banquet.
I'm pretty sure it was a Saturday. And we got to broadcast the Final Four from that game. And I guess the tieback to Craig is that he helped with a lot of the imaging and he helped us voice a new open for the semi-final and the national championship game. But that was just a really cool experience because we figured this is a probably once in a generation event to broadcast on the station even if they lose in the final. Let's give it our all. So we did what normally is a 15 minute pregame show. Orange Women's Warmup turned into a 30 minute pregame show and we ran some special features. Did a few interviews on site and it was a great broadcast. I think Paul Mancana was the producer of that broadcast.
Stephen Conowitz, who's one of my best friends to this day from Z89 and from Citrus TV. He was on running the board for that broadcast. It was an all hands on deck thing, and it turned into Syracuse making the national championship against UConn. And back to the lesson of just ask for opportunities.
I asked whoever was the media contact at the Final Four. My broadcast position was corner on the second deck. It was a great vantage point, but I said, hey, now that two teams are gone, is there any press space court side for a broadcaster? And he said let me look into it. I'll get back to you.
And a little while later he comes back and finds me and. I have a seat for you. Second row, mid center court. I'm like, that's amazing. So I'm gonna be calling a national championship game, courtside. And that's exactly what happened. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. It was an amazing moment.
Now, UConn gave Syracuse about one minute of hope in that game, and I think won by 30.
JAG: It is the UConn women's team.
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. And then once Syracuse won, we decided let's do an hour pre-game show. Sure. Okay. Instead of a 30 minute, so that was. Just two days and I'm like, let's see how much content we can pump out.
So I did an interview with the UConn Play by play guy Bob Joyce. Talked to Charlie Creme on site, who's the Women's Bracketologist, he's the Joel Lunardi of women's basketball. And just put out a lot of content. Talked to Coach Quentin Hillsman, Coach Q at the time. And it was a really good weekend because we brought the whole station together for these events.
And I think it coincided with a Banquet weekend. It was actually really cool and that's one of my fondest memories is getting to be the voice of that run and having the help from Craig and from some other alums and then having all hands on deck of the current staff just to make that happen.
JAG: That is an excellent story and probably a great place to leave it. Andrew Scaglione, Class of 2016 and the man who called Syracuse playing for the national Championship in women's basketball. Thank you so much for your time today and being part of the podcast.
Andrew: Thanks, Jag. Appreciate you doing this.