It would be most football fans' dream to work backstage with NFL legends Howie Long, Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson and more. Today Bernie Kim, from the Class of 2002, takes us on his journey from WJPZ to what's known as the "Avocado Room" at Fox Sports in Los Angeles.
Like many in the WJPZ Family, Bernie got to Z89 with an intense love of sports - and he was able to marry that with comedy on-air with the Z Morning Zoo. It was there where he honed his comedy chops, parodying everyone from LFO to DMX.
Following his time at Syracuse, Bernie headed out to Los Angeles to further study the intersection of sports and comedy while working for The Best Damn Sports Show Period. And he's spent most of the last two decades with FOX.
He's worked with Fox covering golf (he shares a great Mike Tirico story), baseball and more. It's often on Bernie and his team to come up with funny bits during coverage of major events. He tells us about creating the "Hamm Slamm" chain with Jon Hamm at the MLB All Star game.
Most of Bernie's focus is on the NFL though. He spends his week coming up with bits for Fox's football coverage. And on gameday, he's working with the network's top analysts to hone what they're going to cover at halftime and beyond.
We ask Bernie for his best advice to current students and young alumni. It's simple - network, network, network. He talks about how it's helped him in his career.
Finally, here's the clip that Bernie referenced - redemption for himself with Donovan McNabb, years later.https://youtu.be/ZYCkQ3wdQa4
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. One of the cool things about doing this podcast is reconnecting with names that maybe aren't at the Banquet every year, but are cool to just have conversations with and learn about their backstories. Today I'm actually joined by a classmate of mine. That's Bernie Kim from the class of 2002. Welcome, Bernie.
Bernie: Jon, so glad you hit me up. When I saw your message to come on, it was awesome. Very honored to be here with you. Thanks.
JAG: We're gonna be more than just two ships passing in the night on Facebook and LinkedIn now and seeing what each other's up to. I'm gonna get the whole story from you.
Tell me how you ended up at Syracuse and at WJPZ.
Bernie: Much like probably you and many of the other people that went to Syracuse wanted to be getting to broadcasting. I think when I first applied to Syracuse I just wanted to be a local sportscaster. Just give the nightly news, sports updates. And Syracuse obviously went to the top of the list when you wanted to get into broadcasting. And then once I was there, I always thought there was something really cool about college radio. When my brother was in school, I remember one of his buddies was a DJ. It was more of a freeform format, but he was doing college radio and I thought it was the coolest thing to listen to him on the radio.
And I just found my way to Z89 and it was great. A lot of fun.
JAG: What did you do at the station while you were there?
Bernie: Like most people just started with I think, what do we have, like three hour, four hour shifts? What were they?
JAG: Depending on the time of the Yeah, it's three or four, I think.
Bernie: Yeah. It was strange. For some reason I decided to shadow at like midnight. I have no idea why I decided to do that. That was a poor decision. And whoever I shadowed, I decided to do it at like midnight and then took over those overnight shifts where it's just a beast. Got into the sports department a little bit, but it was really at that point, really interested in doing the morning show.
And so junior or sophomore year, I got my own Z Morning Zoo show. I think I had a Tuesday show. But yeah, I really wanted to do the Zoo. So I did the Zoo for a year and then another semester.
JAG: Who'd you do the zoo with? Do you remember who your co-hosts were?
Bernie: I did it with Jared Fialko. I think I did a little with Marty.Have you talked to Marty, by the way?
JAG: Yes. Marty actually did the illustration for the podcast. He did the artwork.
Bernie: I probably did an entire semester or maybe a year with Marty before I got my own show. That was a blast. Working with him, he's such a goofball. So that was a lot of fun.
JAG: Tell me about your career after JPZ. So you did sports, you did the morning show, did a little bit of audio on the music side too, and you've made quite a career for yourself on the sports side. Again, I've only seen clips on social media, but take me inside your journey starting graduating Syracuse in ' 02.
Bernie: Totally. When I was done, I started sending out tapes. I think I was like a finalist, maybe like top two or three for some job after several months of sending out tapes. Didn't work out. I was very disappointed. I was frustrated and I said, you know what? Forget this. I'm gonna just drive out to LA and see what happens. I'd always wanted to work for the show Best Damn Sports Show period.
Cuz it was like a mix of sports and comedy, super entertaining. It just felt like the perfect fit for me. When I moved out to LA, to bring up Marty again. I was just searching for people in LA, Fox Sports and then Marty told me about this Syracuse alumni directory, a bigger one.
That actually helped me open some doors. I found some names that started cold emailing people. Eventually I got connected to one guy who's actually a WJPZ alum named Jason Cahill. And so I said, Hey, I'm a fellow Z89'er, and that kind of helped open the door and he, and I've been friends ever since.
And he hired me to work for Best Damn Sports Show. I think I started in '03 there. . And then I've been pretty much at Fox the entire time. I left a couple times. I worked for another show called ESPN Hollywood. I worked for the show Big Brother on CBS. But pretty much for the last 13 years I've been back at Fox Sports in some capacity.
And in the last 13 or so working for the NFL Studio show, studio production for all kinds of Fox sports stuff. I've gotten to do some baseball. NASCAR here and there, but predominantly football stuff.
JAG: We got a lot of sports to cover today, so let me be equal opportunity here. Before we get to the sports stuff, what'd you do over at Big Brother?
Bernie: So through another Syracuse connection, I met this guy. His name is Michael Sullivan. He does a lot of competition for all kinds of reality shows. He's now the EP of several reality shows. And so I helped create, I don't know if you've ever watched this show, but it's on three times a week and there's all kinds of competition.
So I worked on creating those competitions. And then within our department, one person is the lead. You work with the art department to conceptualize and make it all happen. So all these goofy wild things that the house guests do on Big Brother, I helped build those.
JAG: So the creativity piece has been really strong for you in your career in all of these different gigs, and I've gotta imagine some of that traces back to JPZ and doing news, sports and morning shows all at the same time, basically.
Bernie: Oh. I think that Z89, and certainly the morning show when you had a little bit more flexibility to do some creativity, I definitely tried out some comedy bits then to see what worked and it was a lot of fun to just try out things. Back then we were doing silly parody songs all the time.
Like I don't know if it still exists somewhere, but we do, we did several parody songs, one of which being it was a parody to DMX, "Party Up," and we called it "Potty up," and it was all about taking a dump, which is . I don't know how that flew, but it did, it was pretty gross. But it aired several times and it made us laugh a lot.
So yeah, I got, definitely got to test out some comedy chops on air for sure.
JAG: For better or worse. So after Best Damn Sports show, you end up over at Fox doing all kinds of NFL and sports stuff. Take me inside those roles and what you're doing there and the creativity and the segments and all the stuff you're doing over there, or have been throughout your career.
Bernie: Yeah, so the typical week, like we're in the heart of NFL season, so the typical week, our big day is on Sunday. Obviously we're in the studio on Sunday. But then once the week ends, we're starting up on Monday again, we're trying to think of ideas for the next week. So basically, I'm ideating right now.
We've gotten to a place where I have a team of a couple guys and then a few extra freelance writers. And we're just coming up with ideas, trying to get a couple comedy skits on air every weekend. What's funny in football? What are football fans thinking about? What's goofy that happened?
What's interesting on the schedule that's gonna happen? And so we just try to take a comedic take on that. We just really try to have our fingers on the pulse of what's going on in football and how we can, you know, sports are supposed to be entertaining and we really try to take that humor angle and find something funny and what's going on in sports.
So Monday we'll come up with an idea. I'll look through the ideas. I'll say, all right, let's work on these couple ideas. I'll pitch that to my executive producer. He'll say, all right, these are good. And then I'll work with my team on executing these ideas and we spend their week in pre-production. We usually shoot on a Friday, edit on a Saturday and airs on Sunday, and then on Monday the whole thing starts up again.
JAG: That's a tight turnaround. I think when you look at sports radio, a lot of the best sports radio hosts, they're not just talking about what goes on between the lines and the X's and O's and all that stuff. You've got a fairly long pregame show at Fox on Sundays, and you can't just do what's going to happen in the game, who's gonna play, what's the point spread, all that kind of stuff.
What goes into, and this is a generic question, but what goes into making a good bit that fits for that show? What kind of criteria are you looking at when writers come to you? What do you think works for that lifestyle and that brand?
Bernie: The thing is, you can't get too granular with football detail. You have to keep it. We have a great research team at our network. I remember something they told us like 10, 12 years ago, which is that the average fan can't even name three players on their own team. That gives great insight into how deep you can get, so you really have to stay big picture, just because something is interesting on social media that gets tweeted out and passed around.
You have to consider the echo chamber that social media can be. And that just because you're seeing it everywhere doesn't mean the average Joe fan in Indianapolis, Indiana is seeing that. So you have to stay broad. You have to stay big picture. There are some topics that just get more engagement than other topics for sure.
The Dallas Cowboys are always engaging. Whether you love them or you hate them, they're just so popular. Anytime you do a bit on the Cowboys, you'll get some kind of engagement on it. So you gotta stay big picture there. And you just gotta stay relatable.
You can't get to X's and O's, you gotta just consider, not the hardcore football fan. You don't wanna exclude people. So you gotta make it as relatable as possible. And understandable as possible. You don't want anyone to have to explain like, oh, he did this. You can throw that in there as a side joke, but it can't be like the big piece. It has to be a little more broad.
JAG: I remember one of my early radio mentors. I made some joke on the air and we were doing an air check, and he looked at me, he said, let me ask you a question. Do you think the average person walking into Walmart's gonna get that joke? And I said ah, maybe not. He goes, then don't make the joke.
He goes, this is a top 40 radio station. We are Walmart. Walmart. And I'm not just, I'm not saying that specifically about your gig at Fox, but making sure that it has that broad appeal.
Bernie: 100% that advice is exactly right. We wanna get, I'm sure you want to get deeper with some of your humor or you wanna be a little more nuanced. But you don't want to go there too often.
JAG: What are some of the more favorite bits that you've been a part of over the years? Any particular ones jump to mind?
Bernie: Ah, man. This summer we did a, I did a great one with John Hamm where we went to the All-Star game and basically the baseball producers came to me and said, we got Jon Hamm to do some bit for the All-Star game.
We think you'd be great at it. Why don't you think of something? Okay. What do I do with John Hamm? And so I found this stupid idea, and I say stupid lovingly, but in baseball, there seems to be this new trend of teams celebrating with chains in the dugout or some kind of prop in the dugout.
When someone hits a home run, they'll put on a home run chain, or they'll ring the bell, or the Red Sox would ride down the laundry cart. And so I thought we could do something with Jon Hamm where we made up a home run chain for him called the Hamm Slamm Chain . We took a giant canned ham and we bedazzled it and we called it Hmam Slamm with two M's.
And then we went around to different All Stars and we said, if you hit a home run, will you wear the home run chain?And we went to Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge and Mookie Betts. And now it's just a ton of fun. And, leading up to that I was super worried that Jon wouldn't be into it.
But he was into it and he bought in and it was a ton of fun. And yeah, that was one of my favorite ones recently that we got.
JAG: So you're doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes and you've been on air for some of these bits too, right?
Bernie: Yeah, it's been a while. There was a digital show that I did back in the day in 09 for Fox, and then when that ended, the boss of that show is now my boss for the NFL show.
And he used me early in the day on-air. I realized I was probably better suited to be behind, even though he was encouraging me to be on air more often. I just decided, I'm just gonna stay behind and I think I was better suited. It's better for the show.
JAG: Gotcha. You've mentioned some Syracuse connections you've made getting out to Los Angeles. Are there some folks that you stay connected with from Z89 that you were classmates with?
Bernie: Yeah, so I'm still in this fantasy baseball league that's been going on for 20 or so years now. Andy Lynch, and Bosse,he's in it.
And Seth Brody and Rahul Subramanian, who was at Z89 and Chris Carlson and various names that have come through the Z89 have been in this league. Chris Wojcik, Dave Friedman. So there's a lot of those guys that every summer will be chatting on the message boards and keeping in touch with them.
And Howard Chen I've seen recently.
JAG: Anything specific, Bernie, that Z89 taught you? Any specific lessons you can remember? Whether it's a story or just general stuff that has served you well in your career to this point?
Bernie: I touched it on already, but getting to test out comedy on my own for the Z Morning Zoo, it started my path on how to create something entertaining.
Kind of, what hit, what didn't? I think that was the best value I got out of it was getting to test out my creativity and on air. It wasn't just among friends, it wasn't just in the classroom, it was on air, on radio, which is a big deal to me. So I think getting the chance to really start that kind of creativity and find enjoyment out of making people laugh, not even just for the Z Morning Zoo even. We did an NBA show and I was able to do some more offbeat kind of, not just straight up Hey, Alan Iverson is the best player in the league. It was like more goofy stuff. So being able to like, make my coworkers laugh was very rewarding. And I think entertaining has always been something that I've always enjoyed before college.
And so really testing it out and taking it to the next level in college. It came very evident that's really where I wanted to go in life. And so I think that helped start my path really.
JAG: Do you have any funny moments or stories you remember from your time at the station that don't involve poop parity songs?
Bernie: That's a question.
JAG: I guarantee 50 episodes of this podcast. I'll never ask that exact same question of anybody else.
Bernie: Doing these guilty parody songs were just my favorite. The potty up song was a lot of fun. LFO was big and they were, I remember that song, Summer Girls.
That was a ridiculous song. . And we just did it about four guys who were nerds about guys who just pop sits every night of the summer. They're all gross. I guess that's where I figured out the line, Jon. I figured out where to go and then I pulled 'em back from there.
One thing I thoroughly enjoyed doing when I see Syracuse alums out in the field is dropping some Rick Wright.
When Fox had the USGA and the US Open Golf. We were in Southampton, at Shinnecock for the US Open, and there's this big television compound there. NBC had a presence there as well, Golf Channel. And Mike Tirico walked into our production trailer and he was talking to our executive producer and I saw him.
And so when he was walking out, I casually walked by him. He doesn't know who I am, but I casually dropped a "Major Market Radio" and he snapped his head around. And we just smiled at each other and I said, Hey, how you doing? Bernie Kim, class of '02. And he just smiled and we shook hands and chatted a little bit and yeah, that's, I guess that's a secret handshake of Z89 slash Newhouse is dropping some Dr. Wright references.
JAG: So if you ever see Mike Tirico at a Sunday night football game, drop a Rick Wright impression if you wanna get his attention.
Bernie: Oh, absolutely. He will snap his head around so fast. And I did that with him and then Jason Bonetti, who is a very talented broadcaster that just started working for Fox, dropped that in front of him too.
And you can't not smile when you start dropping Dr. Wright stories. He's a legend.
JAG: Bernie, you're working on one of the biggest shows of the biggest sports league out there working for Fox NFL's coverage. What advice would you have to a student coming out that wants to break into sports slash entertainment? Whether it's mistakes to avoid or things to do as they get outta school and start their careers, what advice would you have for them?
Bernie: I would say, Use Syracuse, use Z89 as your way in. Cold email people. If you're on LinkedIn and you see someone that's a Syracuse grad and it's somewhere you wanna work or someone you want to get advice from, just cold email 'em.
See what happens. Just say, yeah, short message. Hey, I'm a Syracuse grad, or I'm a Syracuse senior about to enter the workforce. If you have five minutes, I would love some of your time to just chat and get some advice. You'd be very surprised at how good people are with their time. If you say WJPZ, alum, that goes even further.
Any kind of connections you can build. When we were coming outta school, there wasn't LinkedIn, there wasn't Twitter, there wasn't Facebook or whatever. What did we have? For me it was the NACAN directory. Yeah, it was the Syracuse alumni page, the Syracuse alumni directory that you'd have to just search through and that worked out very well for me.
Now there's so many more resources out there, LinkedIn. Whatever that people have already hit me up on to connect with. I've chatted with them. I've tried to connect them when I can with other people, but for sure reach out, start building your network and that starts with the place you went to school. I think that's a very easy in, I think even with people that didn't go to Syracuse I've just reached out to people on air off there trying to get their time.
So just reach out to people. they can connect to the people who are willing to pay it forward. They want to pay it forward. So that's the first bit of advice I would give to anyone trying to enter the industry. If you're still in school, especially somewhere like Syracuse where there's big time sports. Anytime a network comes in to do a broadcast, they're gonna need a runner.
Which is just the easiest entry in, it's a freelance job. You'll get paid to do whatever the production needs. It's a great way in, it's a great way. I think ESPN was just there. Anytime a network comes in, they're gonna need what's called a runner to just be a gopher and just do whatever you need.
Try to contact people, make your way in there, there's nothing better on your resume than paid work. A lot of people in Newhouse, or Syracuse in general, want to be on air. And it's never bad to do things behind the scenes. So we have a lot of , plenty of Syracuse people actually, that have come to be production assistants at Fox Sports.
They've just started and made their way up the ladder. But some people leave to do on-air stuff and that's totally fine. If just cuz you wanna do on air doesn't mean you have to do it year one, right outta college. Getting experience behind the scenes will help you a ton. There's no set path.
Once you get into the workforce everyone's path is different and there's no just because you did this, you're going to do this. So just know that, especially on air, but definitely in the television and broadcasting industry. There's ups and downs. I've been laid off from a job, I've been on shows that have been canceled. You have to be prepared for the ebbs and flows of job stability in this industry, cuz it, it's always changing.
JAG: Last question for you. So you mentioned different shows that have, you've been on the show that you're working on now, one of the most high profile shows in sports. Take me behind the scenes there.
What's it like, with the crew there and the whole cast there and what's it like being at the top of the mountain? So to speak.
Bernie: Yeah, it's great man. I'll just talk about Sundays. Really, Sundays the guys get in, they're having their first meeting at 6:30 AM cuz we're on the west coast, we're in LA right?
And the games for us start at 10:00 AM The guys get in. First meeting at 6:30. The rest of their production crew, they're already jamming. We have graphics being built, tapes being made, everyone else is jamming. The talent gets in at 6:30. We start rehearsals just after 7:00 AM. Our first pregame show with Karissa Thompson and Sean Payton and Michael Vick starts at 8:00 AM. And then the Terry Strahan Curt Menifee show starts at 9:00 AM. We're live on at nine, and then once the game kicks off at 10, all the talent goes into the green room. We call it the avocado room, and we have all the games up. The key there is, any given Sunday, we'll have 3, 4, 5 Fox games to do a halftime show for.
And so I'm in there. I'm helping the talent formulate ideas for what halftime tape they should do analysis for the game. For example, this weekend we have Carolina versus Baltimore, and so that'll get assigned to somebody. Maybe Sean Payton will get assigned that game and everyone will have the games up and maybe Lamar Jackson will have some great runs or great throws or we'll say, Hey, Lamar's doing great deep throws. So we'll put together a tape on that. The analysts, of course, are leading the way on that, and I'll just help supplement their ideas or maybe if they're struggling to formulate an idea I'll toss out some ideas and we'll come to an agreement on the tape and then we send that information back to our guys at highlights and they'll start compiling the tapes in the first half. So that when we get to half ,we'll go through all the highlights, and then Curt will say, all right, Sean, what are you seeing in this Carolina game? And then he'll go into his analysis and we'll put it on the tape. So in the morning, it's just while the games are on, we're watching the games, we're seeing what we want to talk about, and I'm just making sure that our talent are in the right place.
Talk about the games, getting the statistics they need. We're highlighting the things that we want to express to the audience and give them a better understanding of the game. So as a football fan, It's pretty cool to be in a room with Jimmy Johnson and Michael Strahan and Terry Bradshaw and Sean Peyton as we're just watching football.
And me with zero football experience outside of flag football. I have zero football experience. I didn't play college or definitely didn't play college. I didn't play high school.
JAG: Was there flag football at Z89? Did we do that?
Bernie: Maybe we do some intramural stuff. Yeah. But definitely that's not gonna give any street cred with Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan and Jimmy Johnson.
JAG: Gotcha. Okay. Yeah,
Bernie: But I will say that I've built up enough credibility where we can balance ideas off each other. And like I said, I'm not leading the cart there at all. I'm not gonna try to give any misconception. These guys, Howie Long knows what he wants to talk about, but he'll definitely formulate his ideas with me. The guys always want a little advice on how to craft it and say it and I'll just help him out doing that. And I gotta tell you, as a football fanatic. Being in that green room every Sunday is pretty wild. Definitely like a pinch me moment where you're chopping it up.
I'm sitting next to Charles Woodson, he’s just done his morning show at eight and it's just wild. I'm just chopping it up with Charles Woodson. You're a Michigan guy now. He's a legend and the guy's a legend, so it's pretty cool to be in that room and listen to those guys, the best of the best talk about football. It's pretty wild.
JAG: Any run-ins with any big time football players you've done segments with or done bits with that come to mind?
Bernie: I try not to get starstruck, but yeah. Boy, so many different people have come through. When I first started Best Damn, I remember turning to my right and seeing Emmett Smith and being like, holy crap, there's Emmett Smith.
They're like, walking next to Tony Dorsett as we're walking in a set, or, I think the only time I felt starstruck was early in my career, talking to Dion Sanders on the phone cuz he was gonna be a guest. And I'm like, man, this is wild. So we've just had so many run-ins with different athletes and you try not to let it phase you.
But then when I looked back at it, I was like, yeah, that's pretty cool. I don't know if you saw this, but maybe you can supplement this somehow, but years ago we used to work with Donovan McNabb. And back in the day, do you remember the Syracuse Virginia Tech game?
JAG: We stormed the field, our freshman year.
Bernie: Yeah, that's right. There was one of our classmates named Adam Levinson, and he was like, oh, yeah, I saw you on tv. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he showed me a tape where I'm running behind. McNabb. Totally blew right by him, didn't pay him any attention. And so when McNabb was working for us, I was like, I'm gonna make up for this.
I'm gonna get my own little redemption here. So I made a video. Where I showed the moment where I run right by him and don't say anything to him. And then I did this video where I run by him again and this time I acknowledge him and that was it. It's super goofy, but that was my favorite, again, as a Syracuse guy, getting to recreate a moment with Donovan McNabb, who was like, as you remember, in 98, coming in as a freshman. That guy was an icon.
JAG: Is that online somewhere? If you have a link to that, I can put that in the show notes.
Bernie: Oh yeah. I'll fire you off a link.
JAG: So here you are now on Sundays, you're hanging out with the, A-list of the, A-list of NFL analysts and you're helping them craft content. And in some ways it goes right back to some of the skills that you learned at WJPZ some 20 years ago.
Bernie: Oh yeah. Like doing those sports stuff and doing sports shows and you have to formulate ideas and they have to be strong ideas. That was my first experience in crafting ideas and making sure you're not giving fluff. You never wanna give fluff, you just want to give efficient takes, and definitely that was my first experience was for sure doing those shows on the sports shows,
JAG: Bernie Kim from the class of 2002 working on Fox NFL Sunday, and so many other things. Great to reconnect and thanks for taking some today.
Bernie: Thank you, thank you so much for having me Jon. This was awesome.