Photo by Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Charlie Pallilo never thought he'd wind up in Houston, yet there he is. Born in Bayport on Long Island, Pallilo says he had the clichéd realization that his World Series dreams would never come true. He, like many other former athletes who have the same realization, decided that broadcasting was the next best available option.
He took that notion to heart, applying upstate to Syracuse University for its well-reputed broadcast program. An autobiography by his childhood "first favorite broadcaster" Marv Albert only increased his desire to attend SU and pursue a career in sports broadcasting.
As an undergraduate student at Newhouse in the late '80s, Pallilo got involved in several opportunities on campus. He wrote for the student newspaper, the Daily Orange. He broadcast on WAER radio.
"The outside-the-classroom stuff probably feels more important than the inside-the-classroom stuff," Palillo said about his time on campus. Yet he was open to "anything that broadens your mind, develops your analytical thinking, pushes you maybe outside your comfort zone a little bit."
Pallilo got his first job straight out of school in 1988 in Morgantown, West Virginia, covering West Virginia and Marshal University athletics.
"I was there nine and a half months," Pallilo said, "which jokingly I sum up as either a long pregnancy or a short prison term."
After his stint there, Pallilo moved down to Houston where he's been ever since. He now has his own four-hour talk show every weekday for Sports Talk 790.
"If you told me that this is where I'd wind up for the long haul, I would've said you're crazy," Pallilo said. "While there are definitely things that I miss about the northeast, almost all good here, and they haven't run me out yet, so. It's worked out okay."
Pallilo says that some Southerners are not as passionate about sports as the fanatics in the Northeast. A few years ago, in the midst of the Astros' third-straight 100-loss season, fandom was at an all-time low in Houston, he said.
"Baseball summers were just a disaster around here where nobody cared. It's as if Major League Baseball died... Summers of 2011 through 2014, four-hour show was the longest nine hours of my day every day."
It's not always easy talking four hours of sports everyday, but Pallilo is thankful to be where he is today.
"I always come back to the same place that all kinds of people would trade places with me in a heartbeat," Pallilo said. "A bad day talking sports is better than a good day doing a lot of other things."
Full Interview: Audio
Jake: Just for those who don't know who you are, do you mind just talking a little bit about yourself?
Charlie: Yes. Part of the massive, far and wide Orange brigade of media, I work in Houston, do an afternoon drive talk show with Sports Talk 790 AM, part of the iHeart radio media empire, here and elsewhere, and Syracuse class of '88.
Jake: And where are you from?
Charlie: I grew up on Long Island. Native New Yorker whole life, lived there whole life, upstate for school, and when I moved down here, if you told me that this is where I'd wind up for the long haul, I would've said you're crazy. I have my share of arrogant Yankee genes and the world's built around the northeast, specifically New York. Life went well, career went well, cost of living went well, and while there are definitely things that I miss about the northeast, almost all good here, and they haven't run me out yet, so. It's worked out okay.
Jake: Okay, and why did you choose to go to Syracuse?
Charlie: Like you and so many others, aware of the lineage, the quality of the broadcast school. Marv Albert was about my first favorite broadcaster, and he did an autobiography called, appropriately, "Yes," which I read when I was about 11 or 12 years old, and soon enough I realized I wasn't gonna play in the World Series or go win Wimbledon, so if I could get in any sort of career track that would blend work with play as much as one could possibly ask for with actually getting to play, and so Marv wa the Syracuse guy that was... I was the acorn that grew into an oak kind of thing.
Jake: What was your time like here? What did you involve yourself in?
Charlie: My time was spectacular there. When I first got there, within probably the first week, there was a general casting call meeting for WAER, which extra--curricularly was certainly the number one going in, but I also did at Z89 my first full freshman year. I wrote for the Daily Orange during my freshman year, and then narrowed the focus after that, and condensed my AER opportunities, responsibilities amped up in to my second year there. The other stuff was fazed out and it was all up from '88 from there.
Jake: Did you always want to go into radio?
Charlie: That was my primary emphasis... play-by-play, when I was in school initially, I thought for sure was the objective, and that was just merely a matter of having a career track, a life track... took me. Pursued a couple things of some note fairly soon out of school, but the first major opportunity, because I am a city mouse, not a country mouse, and so when I got the job down here pretty young, not doing what I'm doing now, but to get to come to a major market even not know a whole lot about it as a market, knowing exactly one person down when I moved here, it was an easy choice opportunity, and once I got settled in here, and it evolved fairly quickly in a very acceptable direction, it just didn't appeal to me to go into a play-by-play track where, you know whether it's minor league baseball or small college working your way up, because the urban lifestyle is just one that I wanted, and so it moved primarily in the talk direction, which actually in my time at AER was one thing that I really didn't have an opportunity to do. There was no Orange Overtime or Double Overtime or whatever it's called. We did football, basketball, lacrosse, sportscast features, pregame stuff, all that type of stuff. There actually was no specific talk show duties available during my time there, but that's the way it worked out.
Jake: Okay, well obviously you were able to master that somewhere along the line. How exactly did you get from being a student at SU to where you are now?
Charlie: Yeah, it's... one notable stop along the way has been somewhat of a pipeline I guess through the years, Tony Caridi in West Virginia hired me when they had an opening looming, so I was fortunate to not have to sweat out the first job which is typically the toughest one to get, but I guess it was about March or so in my last year of school that I knew where I would be going, at the end of June is when we worked it out, so just finish up school and then travel with my family a little bit and then get going. So that was a nice landing to start. Great first-time full-time job, local AM, FM, state radio network contributing to a lot of West Virginia's pregame shows. They also ran Marshall University's network, and so I did pregame and postgame shows for that, and that was actually my first full on-air talk opportunity, because I would fill in for Tony or sit in with Tony sometimes. It was a one-hour nightly, state-wide call-in show. And so I was there nine and a half months, which jokingly I sum up as either a long pregnancy or a short prison term, but it was a college campus, and Morgantown's a college town, so you're 21, 22 years old in a college town, you can figure out how to have a good time. The football team was tremendous the one season I went there, the basketball team had a 22-game win streak, and the following April is when I got the initial job in Houston, so frankly it would have gotten slow in a hurry I think if I had to spend the whole summer in Morgantown, with school out of session I would have gotten cabin fever and went to the next stop in a hurry, but the right tumblers clicked into place, and so it was April after the nine and a half months in West Virginia that I made the move here.
Jake: So now you've witnessed two 22-game win streaks working in those respective areas.
Charlie: There you go. That's right, with the Rockets a few years back.
Jake: What would your advice be for someone like me trying to get in this business?
Charlie: Yeah, it's pretty broad. There is no silver bullet that you can fire or clear bread crumb path that you can track. I would say definitely dip your toes in to as many different pools as you can to find out what you like more than other things, what you may have aptitude for more than other things. The outside-the-classroom stuff probably feels more important than the inside-the-classroom stuff, but I just think anything that broadens your mind, develops your analytical thinking, pushes you maybe outside your comfort zone a little bit, just to explore all the different job tracks that you might be able to pursue. I know that the media business has changed dramatically, undersell that over the years, and there are so many people like yourself coming out of SU and other places, it might be daunting, you know, how do I break in? And I, I guess fortunately you know, don't have a story of having to grind through here, 76 months to find a first gig, but that's the reality for a lot of people, so patience is not a virtue of mine, but at least an element of patience is something that needs to be there for everyone trying to get started, and there will be moments when you feel like you have to hurry up and wait at the same time, and be pretty flexible, especially for the first job if it's, not some place glamorous, not some place in the country you're thinking yeah that's where I want to wind up. Well, it's likely, in all likelihood not where you're going to wind up, just where you're getting started and spring-boarding as Morgantown was for me.
Jake: For a four-hour talk show, do you ever struggle to fill that up, you know, going by yourself, and how much preparation goes into that?
Charlie: Yeah, there are slower times than others, I'm sure just like in any business. If you're a department store, you know, you run up to the holidays as the best times of the year. Other times of the year when you're like alright, when can the holidays come around again? You know as a Houstonian, there were a few years not long ago where baseball summers were just a disaster around here where nobody cared. It's an element to being in the south or in the Sun Belt that's it not as angry a sports culture, where as in the northeast or midwest, New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago, there's going to be an overall more strongly maintained interest or intensity level in the teams, good, bad, rarely indifferent. Here, and especially doing a talk show that's day-to-day where you want passion to be included, indifference is the worst thing of all, and that's what happened with the Astros, it's as if Major League Baseball died. So I would strategically hoard a lot of my vacation time during the summer months of the year, along with it's rarely a bad thing to leave Houston for a week in July or August. In terms of preparation, the closest thing to a normal day for me, probably an hour, hour and a half of reading different things, websites, kind of the beat check I guess if you're working at a newspaper. Things that I just go to on a daily basis, from the Houston Chronicle, the newspaper here, to a few of the national websites, a couple of aggregate blog-type pages that I'll check. I do a little bloggy, one-page thing for the station's website that typically I'll get to post 9, 9:30 in the morning. Catch up on some email, I go on at 3, so closest to typical getting to the station would be probably 1:30, quarter to two, where I follow up on everything I had in the morning. That's the time where I'll definitely finish up following through, catching up on listener emails from the prior day or that morning, any production I might have to do according to commercials or promos, anything like that, and then three o'clock rolls around and we settle in for four hours. And some days it feels like an hour and a half, summers of 2011 through 2014, four-hour show was the longest nine hours of my day every day. But again, I always come back to the same place that all kinds of people would trade places with me in a heartbeat, so a bad day talking sports is better than a good day doing a lot of other things.
Jake: I'd have to agree with that. I really appreciate your time today, thank you so much.
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