Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Lucas.
Alright, thank you for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I always wanted to work in sports, but I didn’t have a sports offer coming out of college. My only job offer was to be an overnight producer at WCYB in Bristol, VA but it was a way to get a foot in the door so I took the job. A year later, I helped elevate the 6 a.m. newscast to #1 in the market and was promoted to an on-air reporter. Spent two years as a reporter there doing both sports and news, but knew my next gig had to be as a full-time sports reporter.
I got an offer in Bryan/College Station, Texas to do just that & next thing I knew, I was living in Texas. I spent three years as an on-air sports guy in Texas before this opportunity came up. I truly believe streaming & digital content is the wave of the future and the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show provided a chance to do something completely new in this realm. I couldn’t pass it up, so I packed up again and moved to Cleveland to help launch this project. I’d never been to Ohio before in my life.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It’s never a smooth road. I never wanted to do news, but I had to do news to get to doing sports. I never envisioned living in a tiny town in Virginia/Tennessee away from all my friends and family, but it’s what I needed to do to get to his position. I left a salaried, on-air job to try and launch a pilot project in a city I’ve never been to. It’s all about risk assessment, but it’s never smooth. If it was, it wouldn’t be as fun or rewarding.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
At the end of the day, regardless of what my official title is, I consider myself a storyteller. It’s what I did as a reporter and it’s what I do now as a producer in my new role. I’m not necessarily the one telling the story anymore, but I’m putting my panelists in a position to paint the picture of what happened to our audience. I think I’m known for my creative thinking.
There are only so many ways to talk about the same game or story every day, so I think I excel at finding different angles to look at something specific. If everyone is focusing on this part of the story, let’s focus on it so we’ve given our audience something they can’t find anywhere else. In my opinion, some of the best segments we’ve done on the show have been the wild, out-of-the-box games we came up with that are still on topic, but certainly don’t fit the mold of “traditional media.”
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I came to Cleveland with literally no expectations. Hadn’t ever visited and all I had ever heard was no free agents wanted to sign with the teams here. I’ve been BLOWN AWAY by the number of things there are to do downtown and the variety of restaurants are bars in the area. It’s been fun exploring the city through food. My least favorite part? I’m from New Jersey but hate the cold after living in Texas. It’s getting way too cold and too fast here.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mlukes14/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MikeLucasTV
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/UltimateClevelandSportsShow
