Bob Goodrich Transcript

December 22, 2007

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is our Holiday Show. It’s December 21st. And my next guest is Bob Goodrich, winner of 14 Emmy Awards and his newest project is called Sports Cast Stars Training. Welcome to the show.

Bob Goodrich: Thank you very much for having me.

Dr. Gustavson: Who did you grow up listening to on television?

Goodrich: Wow, I grew up listening to Chris Shinkle and Jim McKay and, you know, some of the old-time great announcers, Curt Gowdy. You know, I remember listening to him when I was a kid on the radio all the time.

Dr. Gustavson: Who was your home team?

Goodrich: Well, I grew up in Dallas so I didn’t really have one until the Dallas Cowboys came into town. We didn’t have much pro sports back then.

Dr. Gustavson: And you produced Monday Night Football..

Goodrich: Yeah, yes I did.

Dr. Gustavson: … and that’s how the Emmy awards got… Are you an athlete yourself?

Goodrich: Yes, I played football through college and played basketball through high school and ran track in college and through high school and played baseball in the summertime. So, I’ve always been an active athlete.

Dr. Gustavson: Can you give us kind of a breakdown of what creating the show was like? You know, you worked with the sportscasters. You worked with..

Goodrich: Yes, yes. It…one of the things that I always tell people is that when you’re watching a sporting event, I decide what you see and the director decides how you see it. And then obviously you listen to the announcers for the description and replays and so forth.So, I decide where the replays go. I decide where, you know if we have to promote another show. I decide when a timeout comes, whether we’re going to do a commercial - all of those kinds of things.And then the director decides, as I said, how you see it. Whether he takes a tight camera of the participants or a wide camera or an in-zone camera, or whatever it might be.

Dr. Gustavson: Man, television sure has changed since then. When I was a little boy watching, you know, the tiny little television at my grandparents’ house-black and white and grainy-colored television at my folk’s house that didn’t do all of this fancy stuff with painting the first down line on the field.

Goodrich: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gustavson: How has television shaped the way that we think about sports?

Goodrich: Well, I think, the biggest innovation was color. I think, that was far more important than HD. Although we’re all being told that we have to have HD in another year-and-a-half or so. But, color made it so much easier to tell the difference between teams when you were watching sports and to be able to tell the various nuances of the game-whatever the game was. So, I think, that’s been the biggest.And the next biggest is obviously our ability to do replays from every single angle and every single camera that we have.Then the third thing is the recent addition of the Sky Cam. I happen to be a huge proponent of Sky Cam because you can - you sort of feel like you’re a part of the play when you see the play from a Sky Cam.

Dr. Gustavson: And the sound makes a lot of difference too; now days they can mic the field.

Goodrich: Yes. Yes, I am totally with you on that because most shows in all honesty don’t pay that much attention to getting the sound. But, I think, the sound can really add to the experience for the viewer of watching whatever game it is.It doesn’t matter whether it’s, you know whether its golf and you just occasionally hit a - hear a sound of the ball being hit and the crowd applauding. But, it makes a huge difference in the perception that the viewer has about the sporting event that they’re watching. And it’s all positive.

Dr. Gustavson: Tell us a little bit about some of these folks that you’ve worked with. You wrote a little bit to us about Howard Cosell and O.J. Simpson. Tell us a little bit about them and about a couple of other characters that you worked with.

Goodrich: Well, Howard Cosell is…I think, anybody that has either heard of him or seen him or knows of him, you know, would probably admit that he was a kind of a character.Howard was probably the most intelligent person I ever worked with, was certainly the most unusual person I ever worked with and you just never knew what was going to happen. One day he would call and tell me I was the worse producer in the history of television and two days later he’d tell me what a great job I’m doing and… You just sort you know - you just sort of took it and said, “That’s Howard and that’s his moods.”He knew a lot more about the sports he was calling than I think, people gave him credit for. He brought a different perspective to it because he was not an athlete. And he brought intelligence to whatever game or boxing event or Wide World of Sports event that he was calling.And he did his homework. He had a photographic memory and could remember anything he read about a participant in a game or an event. He was… by the blind is, he was a lot of fun to work with. And you know there were some trying moments, but so what? You know, it was worth it because he really, really made a difference in our business.As for O.J., I worked tons of shows with O.J.–Wide World of Sports, Super Stars, any number of events and I was a friend of his. Back then we played golf together and tennis together and so forth and I never, ever, ever saw a mean side of O.J. He would get frustrated or kind of mad at himself because he made a mistake and hit a bad golf shot or something but when we were working together or around people and stuff he was as charismatic a person as you could ever want to be around. So, I have nothing but fond remembrances of working with O.J.

Dr. Gustavson: When you’re planning these shows, do you plan it and how much doest he forecaster-how much does the voice sort of improvise on its own?

Goodrich: Well it depends on the event but for the most part the event dictates what I do and what the sportscaster does. Hopefully we stay in sync with what we’re doing. That’s part of my job is to make sure that we stay in sync because if you have a blowout football game hypothetically you’re going to treat it differently than you would a tie game because there are so many additional stories you can tell and so many additional features that can be used in a blowout. In a tight game you don’t want to lose sight of what’s going on on the field. So, it’s more, I think, the event than anything else.

Dr. Gustavson: Let’s talk about the holidays a little bit. Where are you going to be for the holidays?

Goodrich: In Las Vegas for a bowl game and in Atlanta for a bowl game.

Dr. Gustavson: You’re still working hard after 35 years in the business?

Goodrich: Yes, because I love it. It’s so much fun to do and the people are so great. I enjoy sports. I’m not a sports junkie. I don’t sit everyday and read box scores everyday and stuff but I enjoy producing the sports and enjoy being there and working with the great people I work with and getting to enjoy the people that are participating in whatever the event is.

Dr. Gustavson: And speaking about that I’d love to talk a little bit here about…you also founded the Sportscast Stars Training?

Goodrich: Yes. What we’re trying to do is take people who have a great desire to be a sportscaster, that are coming out of college or changing professions or whatever. Or people that are working somewhere in the business now but are not at the highest level and they’d like to be at the highest level and believe they can be at the highest level. That’s why we call it Sportscast Stars Training because we’re going to show them how to become a star.I have worked with all the greatest sportscasters in the last 35 years but they’ve pretty much been in the business so I know what it takes and I know what you need to do to become a great sportscaster. So, that’s what we’re doing. We have a very limited size on the seminar. We can only accept sixty people and we’re hoping to get sixty people that have this great desire and that out of that we will help the industry by finding some really great talent that will move on and work in the industry and people will say ‘boy, that person - he or she - is terrific. Where’d he come from or where’d she come from? And we’ll be able to say we helped them with our seminar.

Dr. Gustavson: The industry sure has changed a lot also. I mean even from when I was a kid. It was so much more focused on the voice and now it’s so much more media personalities and all of that. Do you think it’s going a good way?

Goodrich: Yes, I think, it’s going a good way as long as it doesn’t go too far away from the calling of the game or event because that’s what in all reality - and we all know this - that’s what people are tuning into the event for or the telecast for. It’s for the event. So, I’m all for having some fun. I’ve all for interviewing people. I’m all for putting little features into the events, I’m all for any and all of that - sideline reporters - but as long as it doesn’t take away from people enjoying the game. I’ll go back to what I was talking about a while ago, the difference between a blowout and a tie game.

Dr. Gustavson: Tell me what your greatest accomplishment is.

Goodrich: Ohh, probably my five-year-old daughter. That would be my greatest accomplishment. In terms of my work it would probably be producing the first Super Bowl for ABC Sports back in 1985.

Dr. Gustavson: Those are both wonderful events. You’re the winner of 14 Emmy Awards and which one of those are you most proud of?

Goodrich: Probably the Indianapolis 500 because it is such a difficult event to do and requires so much teamwork by so many people and to put it all together and have it work and work so well and have a great race and then win an Emmy Award for it was very gratifying.

Dr. Gustavson: Well thank you so much for being on the show. Bob Goodrich’s new project is called Sportscast Stars Training. We can find out about that - where can we find out about it?

Goodrich: Our website is sportscaststarstraining.com, just like you said. And there it gives you all the contact information, email, 800 numbers and all that kind of stuff to call us about any questions and we’d love to talk to anybody that has any interest in it.