While chasing an ambulance through three red lights as a backup cop beat up the reporter, Rich Eisen had an epiphany.
“I’m just an ambulance chaser right now, and I should probably try to hook up and follow a dream,” Eisen recalled in an interview. luck.
Eisen was once a crime reporter, but is now a famous sports broadcaster and podcaster with his own brand. In 2022, the Emmy-nominated “The Rich Eisen Show” made the jump to NBCUniversal’s Peacock. the yearcementing its reputation among sports and entertainment fans.
After breaking free from major sports broadcasting networks like ESPN and the NFL Network, Eisen has forged his own path and turned the sports caster upside down. “The Rich Eisen Show” combines two popular interests – sports and entertainment – to balance the power rankings of professional sports leagues with unexpected guests such as Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Mila Kunis and even Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz.
But it took some time for Eisen to develop his own vision and brand, and become a six-time Sports Emmy nominee in the Outstanding Studio Host category.
Eisen’s first days
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, Eisen always loved sports, but realized he was better suited to stay on the sidelines.
“I couldn’t hit a curveball, I didn’t really have a jump shot, so to get to a certain point in the sports world, I probably had to talk more than anything else,” he said. .
Eisen grew up emulating sports broadcasts, calling pickup game action on the street. By the time he got to the University of Michigan, where he wrote for the student newspaper, he knew he wanted to be a sportscaster, late night talk show host or game show host. Any of these careers would make him happy.
After graduation, Eisen worked at his hometown newspaper, Staten Island Advancebehind the wheel of a car chasing an ambulance for about two years before he had his epiphany. At that moment he decided to follow his dream of sports broadcasting. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, “which means I’m just shy of being a television doctor if I can get a doctorate. one day,” Eisen said.
Breaking into sports
After graduating from Northwestern, Eisen took a summer internship CBS Evening News During the summer of the OJ Simpson pretrial in the mid-90s. He then took a job doing sports broadcasts for the ABC affiliate in Redding, California, before deciding in 1995 that it was time to send his reel and resume to headhunters. ESPN noticed him and he was hired to be on SportsCenter, the company’s flagship program, at the age of 26.
“And I went,” he said. “I felt like I won the lottery.”
Eisen began working at ESPN in what was considered the network’s golden age between 1996 and 2003, when “the Internet hadn’t taken off yet,” he said. Eisen worked with sportscaster Stuart Scott, who died of appendicitis cancer in 2015, at 2 a.m. But despite the early hours, Eisen said he got the most exposure of his career, appearing in more than 100 million households, as ESPN renewed . – He broadcasted his program seven times every morning.
“Today, I’ll have people coming up at the airports with their kids saying they’re going to see me and Stu in the morning and then they’re going to go to school on the school bus,” Eisen said. “I’m fortunate to have had that monster early in my career and to have been chosen by ESPN to help lead a charge in a time period that was just starting to become very popular.”
Eisen left ESPN in 2003 to plant his flag at NFL Network, but he still thinks fondly of his time at Disney’s sports giant.
Getty Images—Cooper Neill
“People still talk about SportsCenter when I walk through airports. I love it,” Eisen said. “I like having that part of my career. I met my wife there in the newsroom there. All three of my children are technically ESPN babies. It changed my life.”
Eisen’s wife, Suzy Shuster, is also a sports commentator who hosts her own podcast, “What football” with former Las Vegas Raiders manager Amy Trask.
Building his brand
It’s one thing to get into sports broadcasting; building your brand and show is a whole other beast. But Eisen did both.
Although he was the first on-air talent to join NFL Network’s roster in June 2003, five months before the network’s launch in November 2003, NFL—Eisen had another epiphany several years later.
“Covering the Super Bowl, I realized that our biggest export in terms of sports in North America and our biggest event, the Super Bowl, stops in the middle of a rock concert,” he said. “And no one bats an eyelash. In fact, more people will talk about the break than the actual game, how the game is played.”
That made the NFL take notice of Eisen is like pop culture, movies, TV shows, books and music albums.
“Why not make a show about it?” Eisen asked himself.
So, midway through his NFL Network tenure, Eisen started his own podcast, which eventually became a television show, where he interviewed celebrities, movie stars, TV stars and musicians. From there, Eisen got a call from DirecTV in 2013 after Audience Network’s “The Dan Patrick Show” asking him to simulcast his podcast on TV and radio.
Eisen took the idea all the way around, eventually bringing in the NFL Network. He nurtured the show for about five years, but then the Audience Network suddenly shut down, which meant “The Rich Eisen Show” needed a new home.
“I was told that news two days before Christmas 2019. I’ll never forget it,” Eisen said. “I settled down with a reality: either I take it on, own it and operate it and host it, or I lose it. And losing was not an option.
“It’s not the way I wanted this show to end. This is not how I thought it would end,” said Eisen. “I don’t think it deserves to end like this.”
Fortunately, Eisen had a team for the ride, she said, including her agent, media relations team and producers, but it was still difficult to transition from a major network to building her own brand with her own staff, all of it. while the pandemic was just beginning.
“Suddenly I went from simulcasting television and radio seen by millions of homes and heard on over 100 radio stations to being on Sirius XM. YouTube” Eisen said. “Man, it was a very troubling time where life was crazy in general, and then professionally, figuring out how to own this.”
But Eisen held on, eventually landing a deal with Peacock in 2022 before jumping to Roku, which had 63.1 million active accounts in the second quarter of this year.
Eisen is “the real deal.” Charlie Colliersaid the president of Roku Media luck. “He is an all-star talent. It’s ridiculous. It has a large knowledge base, not only in sports, but also in popular culture. And he is one of those people who is passionate about everything he does.”
The future of Rich Eisen
Eisen says he’s more than “done” — he’s “living a childhood dream.”
“I wanted to be a sports reporter or a talk show host, and I’m doing both every day in a studio with my name and my logo on it,” he said. In October, “The Rich Eisen Show” celebrated 10 years.
Eisen has also taken to social media to market his show. Although he never thought of becoming a YouTube or TikTok influencer, his YouTube page currently has 850,000 subscribers, and he has amassed 250,000 followers on TikTok.
“I love when people stop me and say, ‘I watch your show every day on TikTok,’ and I’m just like, wow, these are words I never thought I’d hear,” Eisen said. “I’m glad to hear that, because in this day and age, obviously you want to have a live show and obviously you want to have an on-demand audience.”
Although Eisen has achieved many of his dreams, he still has his eyes on a couple of dream roles. A longtime fan of Bob Barker and “The Price is Right,” Eisen could see himself hosting a game show. Eisen even met Barker once, and told him, “how I grew up watching him, and in college I used to skip class every now and then watching him.”
“As someone who talks to people for a living as a broadcaster, I emulate (Barker’s) style,” Eisen said.
Eisen said she also wants to host a dog show one day. (He has two rescue golden retrievers, Halo and Dylan).
“I think I finished sixth at home in front of my wife. There are the three kids and two dogs, and then I finished sixth,” said Eisen. “But I understand that. I understand my role in life. I love it”.
