Other Ed Wyatt

[0497]

Bit of background.

http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/02042007news100539.cfm

Super Bowl's a g'day for Fort Vancouver grad
Sunday, February 04, 2007
TOM VOGT Columbian staff writer

Thousands of Australian TV viewers expecting to see their Greek, Arabic or Indonesian newscasts today will stumble onto something they might consider really exotic: Ed Wyatt's coverage of the Colts vs. the Bears.

Wyatt, a 1978 graduate of Fort Vancouver High School, is hosting today's Australian telecast of Super Bowl XLI.

Wyatt is a sports reporter for Australia's SBS television network, which bills itself as the world's most diverse broadcast service. As the studio host in Melbourne, Wyatt is part of a global Super Bowl network available to as many as a billion viewers.

SBS will be carrying an international feed sent to English-speaking countries, but that only covers the play-by-play portion of the game.

"We will do the pre-game, the quarter breaks, the halftime and post-game show," Wyatt said. "When it's time to go back to the game, they do the game."

The 46-year-old Wyatt and his broadcasting team also will step in during the commercial breaks. "The Super Bowl is crammed full of ads," Wyatt noted, and sometimes they're more entertaining than the game.

"We can't run American commercials," Wyatt said, but SBS usually gets to offer its viewers a taste of them. "We will most likely have a sampler of the American commercials, which you can't see anywhere else in Australia."

The Super Bowl won't be a weekend event for Wyatt's audience, by the way. In Australia, which lies on the other side of the international dateline, kickoff is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday. Wyatt's coverage will preempt regularly scheduled international news reports from Athens, Dubai and Jakarta.

This will be the sixth year Wyatt has hosted Australian coverage of the National Football League championship, and SBS calls him "Australia's acknowledged expert on American sport."

Getting to both destinations -- first Down Under, and then atop his reporting niche -- took some doing. Wyatt figures he would still be teaching high school right now if, well ? something funny hadn't happened.

After getting an English degree at Stanford University, Wyatt decided to follow his parents' career paths and become a teacher. He earned his teaching credentials at Pacific Lutheran University near Tacoma, and was a student teacher at Tacoma's Bellarmine Prep.

"I student-taught for a guy who was dating a woman in Portland," Wyatt said during a recent visit in Camas with his parents, Hugh and Connie Wyatt.

On Friday afternoons, the teacher often would get a head start on his weekend, and "He'd ask me if I could take the class for the last hour."

When the teacher quit to take a job in Portland the following year, "I took his job," said Wyatt, who also coached boys' basketball and freshman football.

He'd still be at Bellarmine Prep if a television opportunity hadn't popped up. A friend who'd read Wyatt's work in a campus humor magazine told him that a weekly sketch comedy show on Seattle's NBC affiliate needed writers.

"I sent them three pages of material," Wyatt said.

Their response: "Can you send five pages? And can you do it 26 weeks a year?"

The show was "Almost Live!" It was so popular at 11:30 p.m. on Saturdays that KING-TV knocked "Saturday Night Live" back to a midnight slot.

The show won an international award for "best local entertainment" 11 times in its 15-year run, as well as several Emmy awards. Segments were aired on Comedy Central for a couple of years. Alums of "Almost Live!" include Bill Nye the Science Guy.

"Really talented people," Wyatt said.

Yet, for a guy trying to juggle two careers ?

"It was a madhouse," Wyatt said, and he admits to getting four or five speeding tickets dashing back and forth between Tacoma and Seattle.

Wyatt committed to broadcast work. After hosting a Portland evening TV show for a year, he wound up in Los Angeles, where he met an Australian woman who now is his wife. They both worked for a Fox global-sports network. Then Ed and Michelle moved to Australia in 1999.

Wyatt sent a tape of some of his Fox soccer coverage to SBS and got a call. His American accent was no problem, Wyatt said. That's because SBS -- Special Broadcasting Service -- was designed as a multicultural network serving Australia's immigrant population. It broadcasts in more than 60 languages on both radio and TV, more than any other network in the world.

Wyatt filled in for five weeks for another reporter who was covering the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

"That was all that was going on, so I sat on my butt and watched the Olympics, although I did interview some Australian Olympic stars," Wyatt said.

"When the Games were over, "I said, 'Thanks for the opportunity.' They said, 'No, stick around.' That other guy left, and I got the job."

While Wyatt has done the full range of sports reporting for SBS, he has carved out a niche with his knowledge of American sports. He does a weekly NFL report every Monday during football season, and hosts a radio show on Sunday nights that focuses on American sports.

His assignment in today's Super Bowl represents the challenge Wyatt faces in his day-to-day career.

"You want to educate them without offending them," Wyatt said. Many of today's viewers don't have a clue about a safety blitz or a trips-left formation (which actually isn't that different from many U.S. viewers, who just show up for the party). Still, "There is a big crowd that really knows the game."

One of them is Wyatt's broadcasting partner, Colin Scotts, the first Australian drafted by an NFL team out of a U.S. college football program. The former rugby player played football at Hawaii and was drafted in the third round by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1987. He played several years as an NFL defensive lineman.

Wyatt estimates his audience for today's Chicago Bears-Indianapolis Colts game at "a few hundred thousand," he said. "There are only 20 million in the country."

An event with a huge international following, like World Cup soccer, might draw 2 million Australian viewers.

His network is not a giant in the Australian media system. But SBS broadcasts to the entire country, which gives Wyatt more national visibility than a reporter who works for a local TV station.

In this country, it's like being a personality on a cable network show.

"If people know you at all," Wyatt said, "they know you all across the country."

Tom Vogt is a reporter for The Columbian. Contact him at 360-759-8008 or tom.vogt@columbian.com.

Did you know?

Fifty four international broadcasters will televise today's Super bowl XLI to 232 countries and territories in 34 languages.

The Game will be available to an estimated worldwide audience of 750 million to 1 billion people.

NFL International has a feed going around the world English speaking countries will hear Spero dedes (Los Angeles Lakers play by play man) and Sterling Sharpe (former Green Bay packers reciever) call the action.

 

[CONS_SS]

He does a weekly NFL report every Monday during football season, and hosts a radio show on Sunday nights that focuses on American sports.

Is this still talking about SBS? I didnt know they had an NFL report program.

 

[Brasher]

Is this still talking about SBS? I didnt know they had an NFL report program.

I think it is on SEN radio.

 

[Lenny Briscoe]

I think it is on SEN radio.

correct

 

[Woodson]

I think it is on SEN radio.

Called Born In The U.S.A. which starts late...10pm Sunday nights...tend to yada yada yada too much on thier bias opinions. Ed's a Bronco's fan.

 

[handy point]

Ed's a Bronco's fan.

Makes him only that little more bearable for mine.

Speaking of commentators, how hopeless was Sterling Sharpe on Fox's international feed?

 

[exe ex machina]

Makes him only that little more bearable for mine.

Speaking of commentators, how hopeless was Sterling Sharpe on Fox's international feed?

It was lunacy! Not only the constant gibbering of edge of a cliff, but he kept interrupting and cutting off Spiro to babble some more. He commented too much like a 'homie' as well.

 

[Broken]

Agree on the Sterling Sharpe call.
If that was the feed that most of the world got there were a lot of references that that casual viewer would have missed....not to mention repeating phrases and quotes too many times.

 

[Woodson]

Re: SBS feed

Agree on the Sterling Sharpe call.
If that was the feed that most of the world got there were a lot of references that that casual viewer would have missed....not to mention repeating phrases and quotes too many times.

co-incidentially on a NFL video promo I have, Sterling Sharpe has his own spotlight segment and he says 'I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record' ....then with a cheesy grin follows up..... 'THAT's BECAUSE I DID BREAK SOME RECORDS'....... nothing has changed it seems.

was that him that said something about 'playing Aussie Rules' when Grossman fumbled the snap??? (caught this quip on the late night SBS edited replay)

 

[Jock Clark 2]

COULD be worse who Ed Wyatt barracks for.
Could be the Steelers. Bluuuuurgh !
And yeah. I knew it was Sharpe who mentioned the Bears "being on the dge of the cliff" umpteen times.
A tool on another thread said it was the main caller. Thanks guys for backing up the Sharpe comment and the "edge of the cliff" scenario.

 

[zakster]

ta, g.g. and jock
i also knew it was sharpe who kept mentioning the 'edge of the cliff' and how the bears were going to fall off it
dave letterman on the US Late Show said the award for indy's best player should go to grossman

ha ha ha ha

didn't letterman grow up in indianapolis or gary, indiana or somewhere in that state b4 moving to new york city

 

[Woodson]

COULD be worse who Ed Wyatt barracks for.
Could be the Steelers. Bluuuuurgh !

Thanx J Clark. Keep shooting blanks. Unlike folk in Denver.

 

[Woodson]

Re: Compelling vieweing

didn't letterman grow up in indianapolis or gary, indiana or somewhere in that state b4 moving to new york city

correct zakster. Was born in Indiana.

Saw a snippett of Dave in his Indy guernsey sitting on a cosy sofa with Opera Winfrey in her Bears top... how easy was it for Dave to rip Grossman apart on every gag?