Sports on the Air
Rosinski’s career takes another turn
Decades ago, I rated the voice of Tonawanda native Bill Rosinski as the top one in Western New York.
He was a broadcasting puppy at the time with a short resume. I never envisioned him making it to the Super Bowl, but he made it as the voice of the Carolina Panthers in 2003.
A year later, he was out of a job.
It came as quite a jolt to Rosinski, who was the voice of the expansion team at its inception in 1995 and figured he’d be calling Panther games until his retirement.
“I thought I’d retire and they might have a day for me in the stadium and ‘So long, Bill, it’s been a great 25-30 years,’ ” said Rosinski in a telephone interview. “But it was a good 10 years.
“Every other job change was me leaving,” added Rosinski, who came home recently to visit his 92-year-old mother, Jean. “If there was a positive, [Charlotte] went crazy. It would have been like the Bills letting Van [Miller] go for no apparent reason.”
Rosinski, now 56, briefly faced career uncertainty but got a lot of support from the broadcasting community.
“NFL jobs are hard to come by,” he said. “I call them 32 precious commodities.”
He didn’t get one of those commodities but eventually landed on his feet, calling NFL games on Westwood One from 2005 to ’09 that were carried locally on WGR.
And now he’s moving to ESPN radio, where he will call college football and college basketball games. When ESPN comes a calling, it usually is a no-brainer. But it wasn’t easy for Rosinski to give up Westwood One, which offered him a contract to continue calling NFL games.
He decided the ESPN job was too good to turn down because it paid better than Westwood One, ESPN is on solid financial footing and he has known the guy who hired him for 25 years.
Still, Sundays won’t be the same for Rosinski, who has worked NFL games for 20 years with Westwood One, the Panthers and the Atlanta Falcons.
“It is going to be weird on Sundays,” said Rosinski. “I love the NFL. I thought long and hard [before taking the ESPN job].”
Rosinski won’t have long to think during the season. He also does play-by-play for ISP Sports, which has the rights to Atlantic Coast Conference games and to several other schools. In one nine-day stretch, he’ll call five games for ESPN Radio and ISP.
The moral of his story is simple.
“If you do a good job, you’ll survive in this business,” said Rosinski.
• Speaking of Miller, the retired voice of the Bills is among 16 nominees for the National Radio Hall of Fame. Voting ends after today. Details are available on www.radiohalloffame.org.
“I hope he gets in because he was my idol,” said Rosinski.
• Jim Aroune, the executive editor of YNN Buffalo, Western New York’s first 24-hour news channel, notes the Time Warner channel has the market’s largest sports staff. Sad, but true. Channel 7 only has two on-air full-timers and Channel 4 only has two for now until Robin Adams returns from maternity leave.
With some of YNN’s sports staffers based in Rochester, it makes it easier to provide comprehensive coverage of the Buffalo Bills’ 2009 training camp at St. John Fisher. It also plans full coverage of the induction of Bills Owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr. and defensive end Bruce Smith at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio from Aug. 7 to 9.
YNN will carry half-hour specials on Aug. 7 and 9 at 6 p. m. Bill Pucko will anchor the shows along with Ben Arnet and Sam Lordi. The Friday show will focus on a preview of the induction of Wilson and Smith. Sunday’s show will review the induction ceremonies and preview that evening’s Hall of Fame game between the Bills and Tennessee carried on NBC.
• On Tuesday, The NFL Network’s Total Access will “take a look at Ralph Wilson’s impact on the NFL.”
• ESPN’s Chris Mortensen will visit 20 NFL teams in three weeks on a feature called “Mort Goes to Camp.” Mort won’t be camping with the Bills. You might have thought that Terrell Owens would have gotten him here.
• Speaking of Owens, the improved second episode of VH1’s “The T. O Show,”—which was focused on Buffalo— almost had the same national rating as the premiere. That’s a good sign in the reality TV world.
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