Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame Welcomes Nine Industry Legends During Touching NYC Ceremony Ackerman, Barrow, Collinsworth, Fletcher, Hellmuth, EJ, Joyce, Petitti, and Zachary are inducted By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Wednesday, December 13, 2023 - 10:42 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The sports-broadcasting industry came together in New York on Tuesday night to induct the 16th class of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Nine legends from both in front of and behind the camera were inducted during an unforgettable, emotional ceremony at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel. Hosted by CBS Sports' James Brown, this year's event once again donated all table sales to the Sports Broadcasting Fund, which supports industry members in times of need.
This year's class of inductees comprises Val Ackerman, Big East Conference commissioner and first president of the WNBA; Lance Barrow, former CBS Sports producer; Cris Collinsworth, NBC Sunday Night Football analyst; Tom Fletcher, inventor of the super-slo-mo camera and other innovations; Steve Hellmuth, former NBA EVP, media operations and technology; Ernie Johnson Jr., long-time NBA on TNT studio-show host; Andrea Joyce, leading sports reporter; Tony Petitti, Big Ten Conference commissioner and former TV-network executive; and Jeff Zachary, legendary camera operator.
Cris Collinsworth, the Familiar Football Analyst in Primetime Hanging up the cleats after a 15-year playing career and moving directly into sports broadcasting can be quite daunting, but no one has transitioned as seamlessly as Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Cris Collinsworth. Becoming synonymous with immense energy, the expertise of breaking down a play with precision, and the smoothest entrance to a broadcast in the business, the 17-time Sports Emmy Award winner - nine as game analyst, eight as studio analyst - is one of the most accomplished on-air talent in sports television.
The only NFL analyst other than John Madden to receive a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Sports Event Analyst, Collinsworth has taken home the award nine times. He currently sits alongside Mike Tirico in the NBC Sunday Night Football announce booth. His career began in 1990 when he joined NBC Sports as a game analyst for NFL coverage and selected college-football broadcasts. In 2005, he entered the NFL on Fox broadcast booth alongside play-by-play announcer Joe Buck and former quarterback Troy Aikman to form the broadcaster's lead broadcast team.
Val Ackerman, Basketball Pioneer, and Women's-Sports Trailblazer Few people in the history of sports business and media have built a more successful and impactful career on making the sports world better than she experienced it than Val Ackerman. Founding president of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). President of USA Basketball. An executive behind the iconic Dream Team. Commissioner of the Big East Conference. Ackerman's life has taken her across the executive offices of her beloved game of basketball and forever reshaped the world of sports - for athletes, for fans, for television, for women, for all of us.
A member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Ackerman has served since 2013 as commissioner of the Big East Conference. She previously served as an attorney and senior executive at the NBA and, as founding president of the WNBA, helped lead the groundbreaking launch and the day-to-day operations in the league's formative years. She has served as president of USA Basketball and as U.S. representative to the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and advised various organizations on women's sports strategies.
Tom Fletcher, a Passion for Production Innovation Many familiar angles of sports coverage did not exist before Tom Fletcher: in NBA and big-time college-basketball coverage, for example, the ubiquitous Above the Rim (atop the shot clock) or remote-controlled Slam Cam (behind the glass) camera position. Coverage has come a long way since the days of the 1991 NBA Finals with a full-size Hot Head or the 1994 NBA All-Star game, which deployed an industrial security camera requiring two people to operate it.
Transforming sports production with such innovations as the super-slo-mo camera and smaller remote-controlled and RF cameras, Fletcher changed the nature of sports coverage by allowing cameras to be located to deliver maximum emotional impact. Tom and his father, Archie, started Fletcher Chicago in 1987, and the company now provides specialty cameras to NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL broadcasters throughout North America.
Andrea Joyce, the Resourceful Reporter During a career that spans nearly 30 years on the national stage, Andrea Joyce has spent time at ESPN, CBS Sports, and now NBC Sports, building a reputation for solid reporting on a wide range of global and national sports events. Since 2000, she has been a reporter for NBC Sports Group. She has served in a variety of roles at 12 Olympic Games, including the past eight with NBC. She has served as a reporter for NBA on NBC and WNBA on NBC broadcasts.
Joyce debuted as a reporter for ESPN at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Summer Games and worked three Winter Games for CBS: 1992 in Albertville, France; 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway; and 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Since her first Games, in 1988, she has embraced the Games' communal nature, which brings countries of the world together. An appreciation for sports, the tact to comprehend others' situations, and the ability to grab the story without being inconsiderate or disrespectful has carried Joyce to the pinnacle of her profession.
Steve Hellmuth, NBA's Technology Visionary Firsts are always an important part of a Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame r sum , and Steve Hellmuth, recently retired EVP, operations and technology, NBA and former chair
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame Welcomes Nine Industry Legends During Touching NYC Ceremony Ackerman, Barrow, Collinsworth, Fletcher, Hellmuth, EJ, Joyce, Petitti, and Zachary are inducted By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. 
