
Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame 2020-21: Fred Gaudelli, Father of the Modern Pro-Football Broadcast By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Thursday, December 2, 2021 - 11:34 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
In a ceremony postponed by the pandemic, the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame Class of 2020 will be inducted on Dec. 14 at the New York Hilton. SVG is profiling the nine inductees in the weeks prior. For more information, CLICK HERE.
Few - if any - individuals have had as indelible an impact on the look and feel of NFL broadcasts over the past three decades as Fred Gaudelli. The producer of NBC's Sunday Night Football, ABC's Monday Night Football, and ESPN's Sunday Night Football has reimagined how viewers watch pro football, deploying groundbreaking technical innovations, inimitable storytelling tactics, and an impeccable sense of style to bring the game into the modern age for millions of fans.
There's no one better than Fred Gaudelli, says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer John Madden, who worked with the 24-time Emmy Award winner at ABC and NBC. He's the hardest-working person in TV, and he's a great coach.
The Early Years: Sports-Crazed Kid Eyes the Broadcast Booth A native of Harrison, NY, Gaudelli grew up obsessed with sports and was a fan of Knicks and Rangers announcer Marv Albert and ABC Sports' Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel, and Howard Cosell.
I figured out that I wasn't going to be a professional athlete around 13 or 14, Gaudelli explains, but I still had this great passion for sports, and I grew up constantly listening to sports on radio and watching on television. I thought it would be a fun job to call games and get paid for it. That's when I really started thinking hard about it and paying attention to the broadcast of games.
After graduating from Harrison High School, where he served as PA announcer for basketball and baseball games, Gaudelli headed to Long Island University - C.W. Post. As a communications major, he was extremely active at the campus radio station, calling football and basketball games and serving as sports director his senior year. However, he soon came to realize that his future was behind the scenes rather than behind the mic.
I just didn't feel like my voice was the kind of voice that you would hear at a Super Bowl or a World Series and realized that would put a pretty quick ceiling on how far I could go, he remembers. So I took an internship at Channel 5 in New York City in the production department. I fell in love with it right away and thought that it would be a better path for me because I would still get to use my sports knowledge and satisfy my passion for sports, but my success wasn't going to be incumbent on something I couldn't control: my voice.
Bristol-Bound: Landing at the Worldwide Leader in Sports After graduating and while working on a weekend sports-radio talk show at WFAS White Plains, NY, Gaudelli heard via the station's owner about potential job opportunities at a fledgling cable sports network in Bristol, CT. He soon found himself working in the mailroom at ESPN and, by 1983, had worked his way through the ranks of ESPN's remote-production department to become an associate producer on a variety of sports, including college football, basketball, and baseball; the USFL; the U.S. Olympic Festival; and the NFL Draft.
I was extremely fortunate to work closely with Fred from the very beginning of his career at ESPN, says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer and former ESPN exec Steve Anderson. Right from the start, he was the most talented, hardest-working, and best-prepared producer I have ever known. He always set incredibly high standards for himself and for everyone on his team. In my opinion, Fred has developed into the best live-event producer in the history of television sports.
Gaudelli got his first front-bench gig in 1986, producing ESPN's live Thursday-night college-football package, and he went on to produce the broadcaster's Big Monday college-basketball and College World Series packages as well.
The people and the camaraderie that we had at ESPN back then are what sticks with me to this day, as well as the work ethic that was embraced and shared by everyone, says Gaudelli. I was fortunate to have two bosses in [Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famers] Bill Fitts and Scotty Connal, who were giants in the business teaching a bunch of young kids that didn't know anything. They were demanding but, at the same time, understanding, kind, and they were terrific teachers in terms of storytelling, organization, and how to lead. I still use those lessons today.
In 1990, Gaudelli took over as producer of ESPN's Sunday Night Football package - the highest-rated series on cable television at the time - along with serving as producer of ESPN's NFL Draft coverage. Named senior coordinating producer at ESPN in 1996, he also oversaw the network's X Games broadcasts and its Cable Ace Award-winning Major League Baseball coverage in 1997.
He would go on to produce SNF on ESPN through 2000, with the show winning an Outstanding Live Sports Series Emmy in his final year.
In my opinion, Fred Gaudelli is quite simply the best NFL-game producer of all time, says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Howard Katz, who served as Guadelli's boss at ESPN and later ABC Sports. His knowledge of the game and the way he thinks like an offensive coordinator gives him an uncanny ability to anticipate in the truck what's about to happen on the field. Combine that with his instincts and intuition along with his ability to process information in the heat of the game on so many different levels, and you've got a very, very special talent.
Monday Night Football: Taking Over an Iconic Franchise From an Industry Icon In 2001, Gau
North America Stories
11/07/2025
PARK CITY, UTAH, July 11, 2025 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the 11 producers chosen for its annual Producers Labs, returning to Ucross Fou...
11/07/2025
L3Harris Technologies President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Jason Lambert and General Manager of L3Harris Waco facility Sean Ling held a ce...
11/07/2025
ARLINGTON, Va. WETA, the flagship public media station in the national capital area, has launched WETA+, a new streaming service tailored for the local Washingt...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission has emerged as one of the central players in the broadcast TV landscape in 2025, with its deregulatory policies sparking h...
11/07/2025
Calrec will introduce usability, customization and system enhancements across its entire range of Argo consoles during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Amsterda...
11/07/2025
LONDON Encompass Digital Media said it will support live and on-demand viewing of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup across multiple global regions for sports enterta...
11/07/2025
Two-thirds of broadcast engineers reaped the benefits of a pay raise within the last year....
11/07/2025
CARY, N.C. SmallHD has launched the Quantum 27, a new 26.5-inch Quantum-Dot OLED monitor designed to deliver postproduction image quality in a compact, set-frie...
11/07/2025
The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau and Tegna have entered into a consent decree that will settle an investigation into the accidenta...
11/07/2025
WASHINGTON Following news in early July that Paramount had settled President Donald Trump's lawsuit, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Ben Ray Luj n (D-N...
11/07/2025
Model/Actriz Performs Lead Single Cinderella on The Late Show with Stephen Colbe...
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Too Hot to Handle: Italy Is Coming on July 18 Only on Netflix
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalItaly
Link copied to clipboard
July 11, 20...
11/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Will Release Death Inc. Seasons 1, 2 and 3
Entertainment
11 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Season 1
Season 2
Se...
11/07/2025
Ceramics - the humble mix of earth, fire and artistry - have been part of a global conversation for millennia.
From Tang Dynasty trade routes to Renaissance pa...
10/07/2025
NEW YORK - July 10, 2025 - Nielsen, the global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, today announced that it appointed Richard Pacheco as head of ...
10/07/2025
Local newscasts don't exist in a vacuum. News directors and station management constantly evaluate what's working, what isn't and perhaps most impor...
10/07/2025
Lawo has announced that Stuttgart Media University (Hochschule der Medien, HdM) has comprehensively modernized its central recording studio after selecting an I...
10/07/2025
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has opened early-bird registration for the Media Technology Summit, which will take place in a ne...
10/07/2025
NASHVILLE, Tenn. TNDV Television has launched Aspiration 35, a new version of its 40-foot Aspiration truck reimagined for cinematic multicamera productions....
10/07/2025
BURBANK, Calif. Key Code Education, a provider of instructor-led postproduction training, is growing its curriculum with new programs for beginner and intermedi...
10/07/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. Actus Digital will demonstrate how broadcasters can transform compliance monitoring from a necessary expense into a strategic revenue driver at...
10/07/2025
The Federal Register has published a summary of the Federal Communications Commission's Public Notice seeking comments on its ownership rules that lists a d...
10/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Presents the Official Trailer for SuperestarPlay Video
Play Video
Entertainment
10 July 2025
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard...
10/07/2025
In the race to understand our planet's changing climate, speed and accuracy are everything. But today's most widely used climate simulators often strugg...
10/07/2025
As one of the world's largest emerging markets, Indonesia is making strides toward its Golden 2045 Vision - an initiative tapping digital technologies and...
10/07/2025
5G for all? What the DFL's use of Easy5G and RefCam could mean for events in...
10/07/2025
Save the Date: PGA TOUR Studios Welcomes SVG Remote Production Summit on Oct 14-...
10/07/2025
Cloud on the Road: How Remote-Production-Service Providers Are Adapting to a New...
10/07/2025
Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber on the NHL Team Taking Live Game Productions I...
10/07/2025
FOX Sports Reboots Small Control Room in Los Angeles as Hub for Vertical-First P...
10/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: MSE's Zach Leonsis, ViewLift's Rick Allen Go Deep on Joint...
10/07/2025
Back to All News
Bringing Culture Into Focus on My Brilliant Career': Firs...
10/07/2025
Strategic Alliance Combines Daktronics' LED Display and Content Management S...
10/07/2025
Grab a friend and climb toward the clouds - PEAK is now available on GeForce NOW, enabling members to try the hugely popular indie hit on virtually any device.
...
10/07/2025
Coding assistants or copilots - AI-powered assistants that can suggest, explain and debug code - are fundamentally changing how software is developed for both e...
09/07/2025
By Bailey Pennick
There's something arresting about the way Jomo Fray captures the world. The cinematographer, now best known for his unparalleled work on ...
09/07/2025
Key Highlights
Centralized management interface for full control, monitoring, and diagnostics
Scalable, multi-site OTT decryption and distribution
Secure int...
09/07/2025
MELBOURNE, Fla., July 9, 2025 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) has appointed Rob Mitrevski as President, Golden Dome Strategy and Integration, a new role cre...
09/07/2025
Collaboration will result in improved data quality and understanding of genre-le...
09/07/2025
The National Association of Broadcasters is hitting back at critics who oppose its proposal to phase out the current ATSC 1.0 DTV over-the-air standard and tran...
09/07/2025
Zeam Media's hyperlocal streaming platform Zeam has announced a new distribution deal with LG that will bring the streaming service to LG smart TVs and devi...
09/07/2025
MetaBroadcast, the UK's leading metadata management specialist, announced today that it was awarded a three-year contract from TAM Ireland (Television Audie...
09/07/2025
More than 700 professional devices and applications already integrated through open software
Bitfocus, the specialist in media control and monitoring, is show...
09/07/2025
Actus Digital, a LiveU company, will demonstrate how broadcasters can transform compliance monitoring from a necessary expense into a strategic revenue driver a...