And at least two other people are excited; they are my confirmed guests for the opening show. They are Tina Cervasio and Dan Rosen. We’re still efforting to lock down two other guests, and hope to have more about that when it becomes official (or not) next week.
So, a little bit about our guests:
Ladies first – Tina Cervasio is currently an anchor and reporter working for MSG Network in New York. She covers the New York Knicks and the Red Bull New York soccer team for the network, and also handles studio hosting duties as well. The pride of Nutley, New Jersey, Tina graduated from the University of Maryland in 1996, and has been working ever since then with various sports television and radio networks.
She is best known around the country for her three seasons as a sideline reporter on NESN for Boston Red Sox baseball. She spent three seasons in that assignment, including the team’s 2007 World Series championship campaign. She also previously worked for such entities as NFL Sunday Ticket, ESPN2, Sunshine Network, WFAN, and the CBS affiliate in New York.
In the interest of full disclosure, we’ve been friends for six years now. We first met when I was writing and producing a pilot for a weekly sports television series in northern New Jersey. She had just started providing sports updates on Imus in the Morning, and couldn’t have been more energetic about what we were doing.
We then worked on several projects together, including her writing a feature piece for That’s Life magazine on Jason Kidd in 2004, hosting a red-carpet movie premiere I helped organize that spring for the Jon Doscher film Remedy, and again in a ‘special correspondent’ role for that TV show which went from pilot to series, North Jersey Sports Showcase. Someday soon, I’ll dust some of those segments from that show from off the shelves and post some clips for posterity.
Anyways, Tina is very knowledgeable on a variety of sports topics, and I am very pleased that she will be one of my first guests on the show.
Meanwhile, I’m also pleased that Dan Rosen is going to jump on-board with us on the first show. I’ve known Dan for the same amount of time, and ironically the relationship started through North Jersey Sports Showcase.
The primary sponsor of that show was the Bergen Record newspaper, located in Hackensack. As part of their title sponsorship role, they provided our show with access to their high school writing staff. This meant not only getting the chance to get to know Dan, who was covering high school football for the paper at the time, but other great writers from that paper such as Mark Czerwinski and Art Stapleton.
Dan was always very well prepared for any on-air segment we did with him, and also very knowledgeable about which games we should cover each week. Dan was also very easy going ‘off camera’ and could talk about any number of sports. This included hockey, for which he also covered the high school variety for the paper.
Today, he’s a staff writer for NHL.com, and his work continues to be top-notch, filled with the right touch of opinion and fact, and delivered in as smooth a style as watching Wayne Gretzky skate with a puck in the good old days. With the Stanley Cup playoffs now reaching the conference finals stage, Dan will be able to help us get a better understanding of which teams will play for the Stanley Cup and why, as well as maybe a peek ahead to the draft.
As I said, we’ve got a couple of guests that we’re hoping will be able to join us for the first show, in the hopes of making it one to remember for a long time. Nevertheless, if Tina and Dan are the only two guests, it will still allow the show to be memorable in its own right.
Next week, I’ll post more info about the show, including official profiles of all of us working on the show. I’m also being told by our network that I will be making a few promotional guest appearances to hype our launch for next Sunday. Exciting times to be sure, and I look forward to sharing them with you.
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