for KPUA radio in Hilo, Hawaii.
On the Big Island of Hawaii, Bob had been one of the key radio broadcasters for the Hilo Vulcan Volleyball program in 1989 for KPUA and attended the US Open Volleyball championships in Salt Lake City that summer. While he was in Utah receiving an award, Bob had heard from some of his island friends that BYU was going to move their Volleyball program from club level to NCAA. Bob had recently applied for a graduate program at BYU and was looking forward to acceptance into that program.
Bob left the station's employment at the end of the Vulcan's Fall 1988 Volleyball season. After he returned from Utah and while his application for acceptance into the BYU Master’s Communications program was pending, he decided to go ahead and sell his Hawaii holdings and move to Utah. Bob had completed a deal with a condo property to take a unit with them in December, and figured that Christmas would be as good a time as any to move. So by the time the Vulcan Volleyball season was over, Bob was ready to make his move. After the holidays, and having not yet received any type of response from BYU regarding his Master’s admission, Bob drove down to Provo in early January to see what was happening with his application. He introduced himself to Carl McGowan, whom he had never met but heard a lot about from his stint at BYU-Hawaii and his involvement with Bob’s father, who was active in coaching the BYU Hawaii Volleyball programs.
Bob had run several exhibitions at BYU Hawaii and had raised substantial funds for the Volleyball programs at the institution. But his father had passed seven years before, and was not certain as to whether Coach McGowan would remember his family, let alone Bob himself.
When that fateful day arrived when he was to meet McGown, about two to three weeks prior to the opening night match, Bob quickly dispensed with his planned visit to the BYU Admissions Office, still being told that no action had been taken regarding his application. So with great trepidation, Bob headed off to the Fieldhouse to find Carl McGown.
After getting lost at least three times, Bob finally found McGown’s small office on the second floor of the Fieldhouse. When he introduced himself, it seemed that McGown did recall Bob’s family, and was somewhat interested in utilizing his broadcasting talents. But to Bob’s surprise, McGown picked up the phone and made a telephone call, and after a short conversation, Bob found myself talking to a guy he had only met perhaps once while I was a student at BYU Hawaii in the 1980's. Of course that individual was myself and I wanted to know of Bob’s background in media and he told me of my radio experience in both live and TV simulcasting.
Bob gave me his references and thought nothing more would come of it. After the phone conversation, Bob thought that was going to be the end of things between us. McGown had given Bob a couple of comp tickets to the opening night and the first three matches which he readily accepted.
Bob was surprised that I had called his references and they both recommended him for any type of broadcasting opportunities … for you see, Bob was the only person in the United States of America that had actually broadcast the sport of Volleyball on radio.
Yes, you heard me right. Play by play sports radio broadcasting of Volleyball. Not Basketball, not Football … but Volleyball on radio. And apparently Bob was pretty good at it and his comments to me were effusive. We can do this; we can do that. He just went on and on. Then he got me thinking that we could actually do it.
Together, we were a dangerous combination.
Well, we exchanged telephone numbers; “my secretary will call yours” type of talk. I still had two more home Volleyball matches to promote – BYU hosting UCLA and USC – which kept me in Utah Valley for another three weeks. Even with the Cougars losing all three matches, the team drew about 14,000 spectators for three nights in a 5,000 seat arena. I went back to southern California with $5,000 in my pocket and attendance for BYU Volleyball, with all of the marketing and promotion now stopped, dropped to about 200 fans a match.
No more searchlights, no more music.
No fun.
This is typical of most university sports programs that I’ve seen over the decades. Creating an exciting, thrilling sporting event does not necessarily take a lot of time but it does take a focused effort and I was an army of one. Just give me a staff of motivated people and I could be dangerous!
As the months passed by, I would get an occasional telephone call from Bob, asking me what I thought about his ideas of putting Volleyball at BYU on commercial radio. The he went further, asking me come to Provo and help him negotiate the radio contract with a Utah Valley radio station, KSRR Radio and then to return to Provo in mid-January 1991 as his color commentator for all of the home matches that he intended to broadcast.
Generally radio stations are categorized by the power it has approved to send out its signal. In America, its listed in watts. Radio stations may be in the 1,000 watt range; 5,000 watt or 50,000 powerhouse stations that can be heard in nearly ¼ of the USA. In the case of KSRR, it was a small 1,000 watt station but it had a clean and clear signal throughout Utah Valley. When your targeted market lives within a 40 mile radius from the BYU Campus, you really didn’t need much more.
Cutting the deal with the radio station was right up my alley – but what did I know about broadcasting Volleyball? In fact, what did anyone know about broadcasting this sport on radio? No one in the world had broadcast it, unless it was during the Summer Olympic Games.
In America, there are only four sports that get any attention by either TV or radio and they are in this order:
•Football
•Men’s Basketball
•Baseball
•Ice Hockey
You may be a fan of Women’s Basketball or Rugby, but you are totally out of luck to hear any of these sports or your favorite Volleyball team on the radio. It simply doesn’t happen because there is no sponsor/advertising money attached to it. If there was millions of dollars flowing into radio stations to do live play-by-play radio of NCAA Men’s or Women’s Volleyball, you know everything would be different. But the simple fact is that no one cares about these sports in the media and since the dozen or so US West Coast universities that field a NCAA Division I men’s Volleyball teams do so more out of tradition more than as a revenue source, the sport is regulated to minor or “Olympic Sport” status. But then, there was Bob McGregor, who used his own personal money to fund this live radio programming at Brigham Young University. Bob personally paid KSRR Radio 1400 AM in Utah Valley to broadcast all of the 1991 BYU Men’s Volleyball home matches and paid for my airline tickets (round trip) from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. Bob just didn’t dream about something, he brought it to life. A lot of people talk a good “game” in this world but Bob put his money on the table. He showed me the possibilities of a sport like Volleyball that everyone had overlooked. I mean, look, Volleyball is an Olympic sport and the United States of America crushed all opponents to win back to back Olympic Gold Medals in 1984 and 1988, yet on the Men’s NCAA level it was about as popular as competitive chess.
And I like chess.
Bob’s plan to broadcast all of the BYU home matches in 1991 and if by virtue of putting the matches on live commercial radio station in Utah Valley, he believed that he could generate enough corporate support from the local business community and pay himself back from his initial investment.
***
The first NCAA Men’s Volleyball match ever broadcast on commercial radio was Brigham Young University hosting the USC Trojans on January 16, 1991.
Bob was going to call the action and I was his color man, which basically is someone who goes on the
