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10 Questions with ... Bob Bakken
June 24, 2008
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NAME:Bob BakkenTITLE:Media CoordinatorTEAM:Mississippi RiverKings, Central Hockey LeagueMARKET:MemphisCOMPANY:Mississippi RiverKingsBORN:August 5th, 1954RAISED:Fosston, MN
BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:
I have over 30 years radio experience in small and medium market radio stations in Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas, but a couple of years ago decided to move from a daily radio station experience to pursuing a dream of working in broadcasting and media relations with a professional hockey team.
While working in local radio the last six years, I was also working with a junior hockey team in Omaha, Nebraska, (Omaha Lancers - USHL Tier I Junior) providing their radio and Internet broadcasts and some game-day media relations information as part of my working relationship with them. That led to the opportunity to apply for an opening this spring with the RiverKings, and eventually being hired by them. I'll begin my first season broadcasting their games this fall. In the meantime, I'll also be working with the local media in the Memphis area where the team is located, assisting in community relations, corporate sales and ticket sales.
1. How did you get your start in radio? Why radio?
I was one of those people who, as a kid, thoroughly enjoyed listening to radio and wanted to be a disk jockey. I'd spend hours listening and dreaming about being behind the microphone and wanting to be the person everybody listened to. As much as I liked the idea of being a DJ, my interest in sports also spurred me to a desire to be a play-by-play announcer.
I went to school out of high school to learn more about radio broadcasting and during the summer got a job at my home-town AM/FM combo station. What I thought was going to be just a summer job turned into a full-time gig, and two years removed from high school was already doing play-by-play of my old high school's basketball games.
2. About what are you most passionate these days?
I've really found my excitement in working with minor hockey over the past few years. The people I've worked with in Omaha with the Lancers have been the best in terms of our working relationship and their support for me, and it's been wonderful to see our players move on to the next level. We have some of our "alumni" playing now in the National Hockey League, and it's nice to say they made it there by going through our program. While the USHL is considered amateur hockey, it's still done as a professional franchise, with all the glitz and glamour of the pros. It's helped prepare me for what's to come with the RiverKings, I think.
3. What are the best and most difficult things about calling minor league hockey? How difficult is it to start each season with, largely, a new set of players you haven't seen before? How does it compare to calling collegiate wood-bat baseball?
The best thing about the work I've done is the relationships I've developed with players and fans. I'm confident I can run into a former player years down the road and we can spend time talking about the time we spent in Omaha like it was just yesterday. I was able to connect with the fans, being an outsider coming in to replace someone who'd been the Omaha broadcaster for over ten years, and some of those relationships are going to stay with me for a long time. Omaha fans are great, and everybody wants to support the team with passion, but also with class. No other team in the USHL can make that statement.
While the USHL is amateur hockey done with a professional presentation, some of the league arenas are very challenging to work in. Lincoln, Nebraska is one place where I had to have security people check on me every period I was there, because their fans had the ability to easily get to my broadcast location and cause a ruckus, which they sometimes did. Lincoln and Des Moines were also places where we didn't have the best vantage point to call a game, being in the corner of their building and far removed from the action, so we just did the best we could.
There's a lot of player turnover at our level and learning more about them sometimes can be a season-long evolution. I leaned on the Internet a lot early in the season, researching and reading about the players and the teams' progress. It gets easier as the season progresses, but those early-season games can be a bit tough, so the time you spend researching any way possible is time well-spent.
I also spent last summer working Internet broadcasts for a summer collegiate wood-bat baseball team in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I saw a lot of similarities in presentation, but also saw similar challenges in research and knowledge of the players. Since I only broadcast road games when they came down to the States, I had to spend a lot of time reading about their past games at home and had to keep up with their progress before they hit the road.
4. You've pretty much handled every radio job there is, from programming to sales to production to news and sports to jocking and hosting. Other than doing play-by-play, what's been your favorite job in radio?
Some of my best memories in radio come from being in news, bringing the news of the day to the listeners. It also helped me connect with the communities I lived in by covering events and local governmental happenings. Doing news also allowed me to meet and speak to officials at all levels of government, from the local mayor to former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1976.
A couple of good memories in news reporting came in covering elections and anchoring our coverage. I worked overnight and into the next morning in 1976 while the country was determining a new president and was quite proud of our work that evening in reporting the results all night long. I was also involved in a station's extended coverage of the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, anchoring our initial wall-to-wall coverage and working on the local angles of residents who were called into service for that event and how the people they left behind were handling that.
5. What's the proper balance between homerism and objectivity in doing minor league play-by-play? Do you see it as different from what it's like on a major league level -- is there more of a fan expectation that you're looking at things from the home perspective?
I think I have a responsibility to let the fans know if I think the team is playing well or not playing well on a particular night, but there are ways to say it without calling a player or coach on the carpet and getting personal about it. At the same time, I want our team to win and I know that 99 percent of people listening to my broadcast feel the same way. So, I believe it's all right to get a little more excited when our team scores a goal. The key is to really balance the reporting aspect and the entertainment aspect of the presentation; get the facts and information about both teams out there, but do it in a way that has the listeners wanting to stay tuned. I want to do a professional broadcast that hooks the listeners to stay with me, and at the end of the day, the "good guys" win.
I don't think my issues are too much different than broadcasters at the major-league level who are working for one particular team for the entire season. Their integrity as a broadcaster is at stake by their preparation for both teams and for their presentation as a professional. But, I don't expect John Gordon or Dan Gladden (Minnesota Twins radio broadcasters) to get personal about a slump Justin Morneau or Joe Mauer may be having, and their home run calls definitely tell me I've tuned into the Twins' broadcast over the team they may be playing that night.
It's at the network level where the broadcaster really has to toe the line to keep from showing any favoritism toward one team over another, because fans from both teams are tuning in.
6. What's been your most memorable moment in your career thus far?
My most memorable moment so far has to be the Omaha Lancers' recent Clark Cup (USHL playoffs) championship victory, and calling the title-clinching goal in overtime of the final game of the playoffs. By winning the championship, we also won the national title for junior hockey at the highest level in the country, and we did it by coming from behind in the final series and beating a team in that final game that had not lost in overtime prior to that night. The Lancers were always considered the team to beat in the playoffs, but the team survived three strong challenges in the playoffs. It was terrific to see some great young men, who had worked very hard on the ice during the season, yet were equally good and giving guys off the ice, achieve a goal they had sought since the beginning of the year and my being able to describe that moment to their families and fans means quite a lot to me.
7. Of what are you most proud?
I'm most proud that I've been able to work a craft that gives me the ability to do the radio "Theatre of the Mind," providing the information a listener needs to feel like he/she is actually at the game, even when they're not, and to be able to do it for as long as I have. I think I'm also proud that I've been associated for nearly two decades with a level of hockey that provides academic and athletic possibilities to its players and growth opportunities to its coaches, officials, and even an occasional broadcaster.
8. Who are your influences?
My influences are the broadcasters who are at levels above me; because I've always felt that you have to do the things those people are doing to get to where they are. If I want to be in the National Hockey League, I have to learn from people like Pat Foley and Mike Emrick to get where they are. And, even I don't get where they are, my listeners deserve to get that level of a broadcast from me. Thus, if I can inject those aspects of work from people like Foley and Emrick into my work, I am doing a service to my listeners in Omaha and now in the Memphis area with the RiverKings.
9. Fill in the blank: I can't make it through the day without ______________.
...spending a good hour in the morning reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, and checking out the Internet to see what's going on around town and around the world. I'm probably addicted to the highest degree for my media fix in the morning.gotta know what's going on.
10. What's the best advice you ever got? The worst?
The best advice I ever got was from another sportscaster who said, "If you root for everybody, you can't be accused of being biased against anybody." Basically, he's saying that if the other team makes a good play, say so. If your team makes a good play, say so.
It's tough to recall the worst advice I've ever received, although I could have probably avoided some extra stops in my career by rethinking a move spurred by people who may have told me it was good one to make, when in fact it was not.
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