The Olympics wrapped up at the beginning of the week and you might have followed news about athletes with Syracuse connections. But Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and WAER were also well represented in broadcasting the games.
2013 graduate Bill Spaulding has broadcast 28 sports which he says helped get him the Olympics assignment in Rio, then winter Olympics, and the recent Tokyo games. He announced track and field events and was moved by witnessing history.
“The men’s 400-meter hurdles final that a lot of people are saying was maybe one of the best track and field races that has ever happened. Karsten Worholm of Norway broke the world record by ¾ of a second and Rai Benjamin of the United States would have also broken the world record by more than half-a-second and he was the silver medalist.”
Bill also ran into alums Chris Lewis, Jason Benetti and others … and of course watched WAER alum Mike Tirico host the games.
Elissa Canidotti took a break from the NBC nightly news to supervise production of highlights.
“We had eyes on every single event. There was not one event that wasn’t covered. So we, per person, were watching 200 hours of Olympic footage by the time the games were finished. We would basically watch a specific event and put together three minutes or two minutes, tops from an event, here were the highlights of what you missed.”
Both Elissa and Bill say it was difficult adjusting to the hours, given that Japan time meant staying up and working all night in the U.S. to watch and broadcast the events live. Both also have memories of their time and development at WAER … like calling final four basketball.
“The aura of a big game, lots of ears on you, I think that prepares you for the nerves and the pressure you might feel before you might go on the air for an Olympic games when you know more than a million people are tuning in every night,” said Spaulding.
Bill served as Sports director during his time at Newhouse and WAER. Elissa remembers getting thrown pretty quickly into the journalistic fires.
“Donald Trump at the time was visiting Syracuse and I was able to have access to that. And it was quite an experience. Getting that story on air in a very quick turn-around and making sure I met the standards of the wonderful journalism at WAER.”
Both Elissa Candiotti and Bill Spaulding are looking forward to the next winter and summer Olympics.
