A major part of why I posted my Blueprint to Broadcasting Success was so it could be helpful to other broadcasters. I also posted it for selfish reasons to hold myself accountable for putting in the extra work to get better. As part of that accountability I’m going to post monthly on how closely I stuck with the plan, the challenges faced, and how/if I’m hearing improvement in my self-critiques. From there I can determine what I need to focus on to continue improving and moving down the path towards becoming a great broadcaster.
November was a pretty good month following the plan. I had a moderately heavy broadcast load with eight games but many of them were a long way away and required a good amount of travel. I got better in November.
*The plan called for at least 7 minutes of practice play-by-play each day, for a minimum of 210 minutes. This month I called 86 minutes of practice basketball and 88.5 minutes of football. That’s 174.5 total minutes. That’s 4.5 full 40 minute basketball games.
*The plan features nine days in November of picking a term and coming up with a minimum of five different ways to vary that description. I was short here, completing five such vocab sessions. It’s worth noting that as I’ve been doing this for a full year the difficulty of coming up with new terms has increased exponentially.
*I was supposed to listen to 13 other announcers and pick things I like and dislike. I was short with only seven.
*The program calls for four self-critique sessions. I completed two self critiques.
*The blueprint includes emailing other broadcasters about their careers on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a total of nine times in November. This was again a bright spot where I exceeded expectations contacting 15 fellow sportscasters.
Totals For November
86 min bball
88.5 min fball
5 vocab sessions
7 listening sessions
0 critiques of other
2 self critiques
3 critique requests
15 contacts made
Totals Overall Jan-November:
2,848.5 minutes of practice play by play(47.5 hours).
72 sessions of coming up with a minimum of five new vocab words.
29 self critiques.
29 critiques of others.
74 listening sessions of other announcers p-b-p.
231 relationship building contacts.
