BSM Writers
John Canzano Finds Balance In Mid Days
“When I was hired at The Oregonian one of the first questions was, do you ever want to do radio? They had a real aversion to it. The publisher was old-school and didn’t like it because he saw his competition.”
Nervousness.
John Canzano couldn’t escape that feeling as he sat behind the mic on The Bald Faced Truth for the first time ever. But the nerves weren’t for the reason you’d probably suspect. It wasn’t because it was his first show on a new station, it wasn’t because he was trying out sports radio after years as a successful sports journalist and it wasn’t even because he’d only spent a handful of months in the business. It wasn’t any of that. It was all because of his very first guest on his very first show: Barack Obama.
There probably wasn’t a more relevant guest during the summer of 2007 than Obama. Forget what format your station was in, news, sports, politics, it didn’t matter. If you could get the man that was attempting to be the first African American in the White House, it meant something.
The thing was, Canzano wasn’t a stranger to doing interviews with big-name people. He had covered Major League Baseball and the NFL at the San Jose Mercury News. He covered Bob Knight at Indiana as well as Notre Dame Football and various Olympic Games. But there was something about interviewing Obama that brought out the nerves.
“At that time, he was running for president and was in a tight race with Hillary Clinton,” said Canzano. “His camp decided they were only going to do one interview in the Portland market. We requested him and they picked it because they thought it was a real change for him from talking about healthcare and all the other issues.”
Though the get was huge, especially during his first show, Canzano was now conflicted on how he should conduct the interview. Should he interview Obama with similar questions as everyone else had done? Or should he just ask him the things he really wanted to ask? Luckily, Canzano found a voice of reason when he asked his wife, Anna, a local TV anchor in the market, which way he should take the interview.
Her response: “That’s a dumb question.”
Canzano asked Obama what it was like to throw out the first pitch at a White Sox game. He asked how the man kept not only in shape, but his sanity while out on the campaigning trail. But the connection really happened when the two started talking about their daughters and what it’s like to be a parent. It was much different than the normal radio hit the soon-to-be president had done, but it worked. And the audience loved it.
“There was a moment about two or three minutes into the interview where I could really feel him relax and go, oh, we’re not going to be talking about health care,” said Canzano. “He really settled in after that and acted like it was just two parents talking about sports. He was so interesting and so good.”
It’s one thing to come out swinging during your first show, it’s another to have on arguably the most relevant guest in the free world. That day was a pretty good indication Canzano would transition just fine into sports radio.
A sports columnist for The Oregonian since 2002, Canzano is still in both print and sports radio. His weekday show, The Bald Faced Truth, which came from a submission from a listener, is from 12:00 – 3:00 p.m. on 750 The Game in Portland and is syndicated throughout much of the state.
In the following Q&A, Canzano covers how he got into radio, balancing both writing and being on the air and even the demands of being the biggest sports media personality in the area.
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TM: So after so much success as a sports columnist, how did a hosting opportunity in radio come about?
JC: I had always been a newspaper guy who occasionally appeared on radio shows. Really, that’s how I got my start. When I was in The Portland market I would go on different shows and do five to eight minute hits. What happened was, the Blazers in the draft lottery, got the No. 1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft. Rose City Radio, who had a hip-hop station on 95.5, decided to flip that format in the sports, because Portland was going to win multiple championships. You’re going to need multiple sports stations. They took me, they did a really smart thing, for a period of about four to five months they stashed me on KXL, which was a political talk station and they had me do nights. I was just working out a lot of kinks and figuring out how to do a radio show and learning the format of it. Ultimately I think the first show was Labor Day of 2007.
TM: I have to imagine the cross-promotion between print and radio really helps each other out. But more specifically, how does the newspaper help out the radio show?
JC: When I was hired at The Oregonian one of the first questions was, do you ever want to do radio? They had a real aversion to it. The publisher was old-school and didn’t like it because he saw his competition. Over time they came to sort of embrace that, hey, this could be good for the column. It creates a conversation beyond the column and gives the readers a chance to talk to me about what I wrote. I’ve even had the former general manager of the Trailblazers, Kevin Pritchard, tell me he loves the show because I write something in The Oregonian and the show gave him a chance to challenge me on it.
They really walk hand-in-hand now, in that media has become so diverse. The radio show, podcasts, the best interviews, I’ll put them on OregonLive.com and give our readers a chance to hear part of the radio show. Of course I bring on the writers at The Oregonian who have written something interesting that day. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.
TM: It takes a lot of time to prep for a three-hour show. It also takes a lot of time to have well-researched and well-written articles that attract readers. How are you doing both and balancing your time?
JC: It’s a real challenge now, seeing that news is so immediate. You really have to have a rhythm when you host a three hour radio show that’s in the middle of the day. I do a lot of my writing in the morning. There’s overlap in the preparation and there’s overlap with the guests, too.
Maybe I’ll write something and then someone who I’ve written about will come the radio show. A great example of that, Saturday night I was at the Oregon State-Stanford game and I wrote about the economics of college football at Oregon State and how they were the least funded program in the Pac 12. On today’s show I have the athletic director at Oregon State which will fit in nicely with that column. Now, there’s not a lot of prep I need to do for it, because I did that all on Saturday. I also lean on really good staff members. I have hired two production people out of my own pocket that work for me, not the station. They do a lot of work behind the scenes, such as prep work, guest booking and just helping out the show on a daily basis. I could not do it without them.
TM: Are mid-days perfect for someone who has as much going on as you do? Or would another slot fit better?
JC: I like the mid-days because it fits with my life. I’m a parent and I’ve got kids that are in school. My 16-year-old plays volleyball and I get to go to all of her matches. I get to come home at the end of the day and be there for dinner. I think the radio station has embraced having a mid-day show, I’m the only local show on the station right now. They’ve embraced having that revenue in a timeslot that normally isn’t a huge revenue generator. They’re still able to sell afternoon drive to potential advertisers but having your mid-day show fill at a level that really fattens up your station is pretty good strategy.
TM: I really like your Facebook page. It’s current, has a lot of content and features a ton of videos. What’s your strategy with that?
JC: I’m just a big fan of, as a newspaper columnist, I feel like when I’m writing I’m doing so to one reader. As a radio host I feel like I’m always trying to talk to one listener. If I can draw in one more listener with the Facebook page or with Twitter, Instagram Live, I should be in as many places as I can possibly be in. Now, there is a balance there. Sometimes you’re a little frayed because you’re trying to do everything, you still want to maintain quality with what you’re doing. I just found out there’s a segment of my listeners who are on Facebook. I have to speak that to them when I need to speak to them.
TM: When people think about sports in the Portland area, do they think about John Canzano? If so, what comes along with that?
JC: I think that most people would probably tell you that. I also think that’s a tremendous responsibility. You have to be, if you’re the voice of a region, you have to be right, you have to be researched, you have to speak from authority, you have to be sourced and get answers when you don’t know them. I think there’s a lot of people that will sit back and spout their opinions, but what really set you apart is the ability to maintain those relationships, be critical when you need to be critical, but really, it’s not a race to be first when you’re the voice of a region. It’s an obligation to be right.
TM: Do you view your show as more Oregon and Oregon State or the entire Pac 12 in general?
JC: I think a Pac 12 show. I think you have a transient population that listen to the show. My show is broadcast pretty much state-wide and we get a lot of listeners outside of the area. Plus, we have the podcast and the stream.
I try to talk about and interview people that I’m interested in knowing more about. This week it was Herm Edwards at Arizona State. Today will be Scott Barnes at Oregon State and it might be Mike Leach of Washington State two days from now. I don’t consider my show to be the home of the Ducks or the home of the Beavers or even the home of the Blazers. I always joke that it’s the home of the truth. I do think there’s truth in that, because I’m trying to serve everybody but also do a show that I would listen to. The show that I would listen to would not be all Ducks all the time or all Beavers all the time. I think you have to have a real diversity of approach and interest. Sometimes we’re not even talking sports and I think that’s OK, too.
TM: What about the NFL? The Seahawks are the closest team, is there a big fan base in your market that dictates you talking about them?
JC: I think I probably talk as much Seahawks as any of the other NFL teams. It’s three hours away and it got force-fed down the throats of the Portland market back in the day when they could only watch one NFL game during one timeslot. There’s a lot of people here who are Seahawks fans just because that’s all that was on TV. So we address it but we also have a lot of 49ers fans, Rams fans, Patriots fans so whatever is big in the NFL that day is what I’m talking about.
Tyler McComas is a columnist for BSM and a sports radio talk show host in Norman, OK where he hosts afternoon drive for SportsTalk 1400. You can find him on Twitter @Tyler_McComas or you can email him at [email protected].
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