Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Josh Ward and I believe anything is possible.
Welcome to Anything is Possible. I'm Hal Oren Hilton Hill.
These are great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.
I'm excited to have with me today Josh Ward.
Josh is a sports talk show host and producer.
Josh and Swain on the sports animal.
But we go way back.
Way back Hal.
How old were you when you walked into the radio station?
So I was 16. If you poll some of our coworkers you'll get different answers.
Many of them range below that.
I think some coworkers thought, why is Jimmy Himes 12 year old son coming to work every day?
What's going on here?
But I was 16 years old.
I wanted to be in sports radio. I wanted to be in sports media.
And I thought sports talk radio was the path I wanted to take.
And I thought, okay a lot of people probably want to do that.
So I had heard about getting your foot in the door.
You want to get your foot in the door, you want to get started.
And I figured I'd probably go to the University of Tennessee.
But why wait until then?
So I was 16. I could drive. I had access to emails.
So I fired off some emails, some cold emails and said hey I'd like to come check things out in the building.
And I did. And coming up on 23 years later I'm still there.
That is unbelievable.
I remember you being there and just in full disclosure you were interning.
You were working for free.
Technically interning. I think the statutes passed.
But I don't even know if I was allowed to be doing what I was doing.
I was a high school student. I was getting no school credit.
And I was getting no money at least at first.
But I remember how earnest and how hard you were working.
Dayfolk, God rest his soul he passed on.
But I've been there for a while. Dayfolk was my guy, my mentor, my friend.
I'll tell you a secret. We didn't like interns.
Should I leave?
No. But let me explain.
We all stood back in Marvel at the fact that you were working your butt off.
Who were you working for initially? And what were you doing?
So the start of it is I mentioned I fired off some cold emails.
So at the time it's News Talk 99. You're on in the mornings, afternoons, John and Jimmy.
And it's a smaller sports staff at the time.
It's John and Jimmy doing sports talk every afternoon.
And Dave Hooker's the producer.
And Jeff Chacoby. He was a part of sports, doing sales, part of sports with you in the mornings as well.
So I emailed John, Jimmy and Dave and I just said, I'd like to do what you do.
I think John might still have the email. Please don't find it if he does.
But I said I want to do what you do.
I had some cringe jokes that I tried to throw in to make some kind of connection.
For some reason Dave emailed me back and said, hey, if you want to come check it out, come check it out.
I'm sure he thought this teenager is going to come do a tour, see what we do, and then he can go on his merry way.
But he did say, if you'd like to come back, you're welcome to come back.
And I said, when can I come back?
So I started to come back every day after school.
I went to Farragut High School. When the school day was done, I would go into the school office.
I didn't have a cell phone. And I would call and say, hey, is it okay if I come in this afternoon?
I would do that every day. Eventually Dave said, why don't you call me if you're not coming in?
So I would do whatever they asked me to do.
I had a chance to go to University of Tennessee football practices.
That was cool, right, to be able to go and watch and observe and kind of be a second set of eyes.
But if they needed me to help with stats, if they needed me to get a cup of coffee, how hot, a soda, how cold,
I'd be willing to do it. And then from there, that created opportunities to do actual work that was not fun.
But I saw it as important.
So helping with high school football broadcasts on Friday nights, running Saturday and Sunday morning shows at 6 a.m.
is a news talk station. So there wouldn't necessarily be sports shows.
But it was a chance to work a little bit, but to show that I was willing to do whatever was needed in sports.
There's no more important ability than availability. I wanted to be available.
And I thought that that might create opportunities. And it did through producer roles that would come.
And then in the end, my goal was to be on air. And I had a lot of work to do.
I was not suited to be on the air for sure when I showed up at those opportunities game.
Tell me about growing up in Farragut. Tell me about your family.
Yes. So I grew up going to Farragut K through 12. And it was a wonderful experience.
Farragut is a community that I care about a lot. I live there now.
I grew up young. My parents divorced when I was really little, but they were both in my life.
So my mom's a school teacher. She taught sixth grade English at Farragut Middle for close to 40 years.
My dad was a fireman. So when I talk about work ethic and things that I would do, I saw them do that.
The school teacher. Fireman.
You have siblings?
I have a half sister. I grew up as an only child with my mom. But I was around a lot of great people, great friends, great school system.
I was really set up to succeed. I was very fortunate in that regard. I live in Farragut now. I love the community. Love the people.
You're also kind of challenged. It's competitive. A lot of people that are smart, hardworking, come from good families.
And that's part of the reason I feel like I'm blessed to have been around all of that.
And I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do. So once I decided, I'm probably not going to try it first to be a doctor or a lawyer,
I thought maybe those are other options if it doesn't work out to do what I want to do. I can go that route.
But my family encouraged me. They said, hey, you want to be a sports talk host? Why don't you go try?
Where did your love for sports come from? And where did this desire to be a sports talk host come from?
Were there icons or markers or experiences that brought you to that?
I just loved everything about sports from the beginning that I remember watching.
So when I was little, five, six years old, I was an Atlanta Braves fan. They were really good in the 1990s. I'm a kid of the 90s.
So I loved watching. I loved playing. I played soccer for a little bit, then baseball, then basketball.
I wasn't built necessarily for football, but I loved to watch football. And we're in Knoxville, University of Tennessee.
So football is big. So I love to watch. I love to play. As I got a little bit older, I think one thing that I've benefited from in my career is,
I have an ability to see reality. And I saw that while I was gifted with many blessings and I love sports, I was not gifted with professional athleticism.
So when you're seven, eight, nine years old, you dream of playing for the Atlanta Braves, for the Bulls, for the Raiders, whatever opportunity.
Can I be a Dallas Cowboy one day? And I learned pretty quickly, nope, you cannot. So what else can I do?
Well, I love listening to Sports Talk Radio. I love the commentary of sports on television.
I'd be one of those kids every morning watching Sports Center at 9am, the 10am, the 11am during the summers.
And I listened to Sports Talk Radio with Mike Keith. I listened to John and Jimmy when they took over Sports Talk.
I loved the talk radio format. I was a kid, Hal. I listened to you. I'd be in the car with my dad.
When I was a little bit older, I'd come home after school either doing homework or hanging out or working out, whatever.
A lot of times you put on music, right? I'd put on Sports Talk in the afternoons and I'd listen.
So I decided, hey, if I want to be involved in sports, if I'm not going to be involved as an athlete, at that point coaching is probably not my route.
Can I talk about sports? That's the route I decided to take.
So you're at the radio station. You're working for free is what it was.
We just had the CEO of our company in the building the other day and she was explicit. You cannot do that anymore, right?
Yeah. My activity would be frowned upon.
Right.
But when did you get a chance to go on the air and who made that decision?
The first time I went on the air was the end of the 2001 Tennessee football season.
Earlier that year, 9-11 occurred. So Tennessee, which typically plays Florida in September, had the game postponed until the end of the year.
It's a huge game. Tennessee and Florida both top five teams.
Dave Hooker was typically the guy that would go cover practice. He'd stay there, watch the whole thing, listen to Coach Phillip Fulmer, and then call in with a report.
On days when he was unavailable, Jeff Chacoby would step in.
On this particular day, Florida week, huge week, Dave can't be there. Jeff can't be there at the start.
He tells me, hey, be there, pay attention, take some notes, let me know what you see. I'll get there when I get there.
Well, he didn't get there until practice was over and Phillip Fulmer had talked to the media.
So Jeff said, I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything. You need to go on there and do the report.
And I'm like, oh, I've never been on the air. So here's an opportunity to go on the air and do a live report on Sports Talk.
I'm 16 years old and Jeff Chacoby has said, you're going to do it. So he tells Jimmy, hey, Josh needs to do the report.
I didn't see anything. Jeff runs to his car, pulls out his, remember those big morant steps.
He turns on the radio and records it because he knew how much that opportunity would mean to me.
I think I have that cassette tape somewhere at my mom's house. I hope we don't find that either.
But it was a chance to go on the air and give a report about the Tennessee Florida game probably three months after I had started interning there.
Who made the decision to give you a show?
So along the way, working at the radio station while attending the University of Tennessee, I had opportunities to do different on-air things.
I could do reports, got a chance to do some weekend shows, would step in and help host with a Saturday Sports Talk.
I got to do high school football on Friday nights, a number of things.
I graduated in 2007, spent another year producing Sports Talk in the afternoons.
And at that point, the shift had already been made a couple of years prior to an all-sports format.
So there was News Talk and there was the sports animal.
And part of it was local, part of it was syndicated.
And in the middle of the day, there was a syndicated show, the Jim Rhoam show, which is very successful.
But it wasn't succeeding in Knoxville.
He's more of a national pro-sports format.
The interest locally is the University of Tennessee, the SEC and college sports.
So they were creating a local show and John Pennington was going to be the host.
They needed a co-host.
At first, I didn't go for the other host position.
I don't think at the time I was confident that I was ready to be a full-time host.
John pushed me to go for it.
John Wilkerson, Jimmy Himes were very encouraging for me to, hey, why don't you take an opportunity?
Mickey Dierstone was the program director and I went and talked to him about it.
And I believe his response was, I was wondering why you didn't.
So I did, I had others pushing for me to get that chance.
So around August 2008, I started to host a 12-3 show, the show leading into sports talk with John and Jimmy.
And here I am 16 years later, still in that 12-3 slot leading into the afternoon drive.
You know, we all, we all, I don't know of anybody in our building that did not look at you and go,
man, we love this guy.
But it was your work ethic.
You kept your head down.
I've never heard of you in the middle of any office politics, any scuttle butt.
You know, we used to tease you about being John Ward's love child,
but you always had a good sense of humor, very deliberate about your work and your preparation.
You had the benefit of being around some people who are very dedicated to their craft and their profession.
But you and Swain have come into your own.
So I want to commend you because you walk in at 16.
It reminded me a lot of my journey in radio because I kind of got started in the same way.
But there is, there's something that I've noticed about you.
You don't have any verbal ticks.
The way you broadcast and the way you present yourself is very crisp, very professional,
which for me, this has been my profession, this is what I do, right?
To me, that says you worked on that.
I would say I am a product of practice.
I'm not naturally gifted with talking.
I'm an introvert.
With that comes confidence issues.
Probably, hey, if I'm not comfortable in a talking setting,
I've chosen here that I'm going to talk to people every day, hours at a time.
I better get better at it, right?
So one of the ways to do that is talking to yourself.
You can see yourself in the mirror.
There's somebody there.
He's probably not going to judge you too much.
Or if he does, you're the only one that's going to know about it, right?
So I would say that it is time.
If I'm going to talk about work ethic, if I'm going to talk about being dedicated to showing
that I'm up for the challenge, that I'm available, that I'm going to do anything,
that also carries over to, hey, if I want to talk about sports every day,
if I want to win, which is what it is in a competitive field,
because there are a lot of people that would like to host this show.
I know this, or host a show, that it's going to take some work to get better at it.
So I still don't have incredible confidence in that setting,
sitting down, conversation, delivery, all of that.
I'll bet if you were able to go back and ask John, Jimmy, Dave at the time,
hey, is Josh going to be a sports talk host every day?
Is he going to sit here and do this at the time?
They probably thought, well, he has the drive.
He has the passion for it.
There's no doubt about that.
But is it going to come out of him?
When I was a kid, at whatever point I decided, you know, I'm not going to be a professional athlete,
but I want to host a sports talk show someday.
I remember my dad saying, that's great, that's wonderful.
You might want to have a plan B, because you don't really talk.
Okay?
So being an introvert and being shy and not having a big personality, natural talent,
to get up in front of people and talk every day behind a microphone on the radio,
now in front of a screen, that is not my natural ability.
It's taking work.
Throughout the Southeast and America, you guys are on fire right now.
Talk a little bit about the show, YouTube, its reach and what has happened.
So what we do every day is we get on the air and we talk about sports.
But what Jason Swain and I really try to do, I think, is we try to make a connection as much as we can.
We know that people listen every day.
Some people listen every once in a while.
But if they tune in, they want to connect with us.
They want to connect through the conversation of UT sports or whatever is topical that day.
But they come back because they've made a connection with us, we hope.
So one way to do that is through the radio airwaves and that is what drives what we do every single day.
But now with the advancement of technology, we have people streaming everywhere.
We have people streaming locally.
They put in their earbuds if they're at the office in Knoxville or East Tennessee.
But if you're a Tennessee fan and you're in Cincinnati, Ohio or Seattle, Washington or Germany
and you want to connect with University of Tennessee, you can do that more easily now.
You can stream through audio.
And then you mentioned the online YouTube aspect.
The credit here goes to Swain for what he's built previously through the Swain event
and understanding the digital world of what can be created.
We've brought that to Josh and Swain.
So people can watch the show and people can chat with us.
There's a YouTube chat so people can connect with us that way and they can go back and watch.
And there are ways to grow the show too.
There are benefits to us.
We can take short clips of that, share it online.
If Swain says something that I think is really noteworthy with the Tennessee football team, fans want to see that.
Social media has all kinds of negatives that we can come up with, but my belief with social media is to use it.
Don't allow social media to use you.
So we try to use it to create all different kinds of connections with our listeners and now with our viewers.
I remember I would come past your studio and you had, I think you were using something called Tweet Deck or something like that.
And I was watching this young broadcaster on the rise melding the worlds of terrestrial, traditional broadcasting with this new reach over social media and these other streaming platforms.
And you guys are hitting it out of the park. What is your ultimate aspiration in the business?
That is a good question. I've been in the business a while. I think I have a while to go. That's my hope.
So I don't know. At one point it's probably, hey, I want to be program director of our sports radio station someday.
Maybe that still is something that can happen.
But what I think about right now is that connection that I talk about. Swain and I have done the show for a little more than two years.
I would love to continue to grow what he and I are doing.
I'm jealous when I look at the 16 now to 25 year olds that are so young and they have all of this technology of what they can do.
I'm jealous of what they're able to do now, what they can build with that.
We can still do some of that too, but the amount of time and access that they have, things that you can create instantly.
Man, I wish I had more time with that.
So my answer is not, okay, this is what my position, I want my position to be.
This is not about how much money can I make or what accolades.
It's about, okay, I'm from Knoxville. I do a show in Knoxville every day.
I have an opportunity, I'm blessed to be able to connect with fans of the University of Tennessee.
We have people that they're Alabama fans, they're Georgia fans.
Swain will go at them, which is good for the show, but they come to us for either the information or the entertainment.
And having people that I meet say, hey, you help me get through the day.
I'm in my car doing sales, doing whatever, or you're my connections, fans that will come in for a game during the weekend.
When they're out of town and say, hey, I wouldn't be able to connect with Tennessee football without you.
Keeping that going, creating more of those relationships, that's what it's about.
So our dad, you have three kids and you're married, and to watch you go from, hey, I've got my coutillion coming up.
And now you're a father of three and you've got a successful career.
I'm so proud of you, Josh Ward.
Thank you. My wife, Kelly, she's a University of Tennessee grad, two degrees.
So she's more advanced than me, photojournalism as a master's degree.
So she's passed me up in the communications building as well.
And then Owen Maxon Norris, six, four, and two, we're in the thick of it now.
They are a wild crew, but I'm blessed beyond description.
Thank you for being here today.
Thank you.