Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well in the historical time coming up for ESPN that
Speaker 2: we would definitely want to spend some time talking about
Speaker 2: Linda Cone Joints, a sports center anchor for ESPN, retiring
Speaker 2: after thirty four years from ESPN. Linda, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining us. I guess I'd love to just
Speaker 2: get a sense, since you've seen everything in sports television,
Speaker 2: for better or worse, how.
Speaker 1: Has it changed.
Speaker 2: How has sports television changed because ESPN changed everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me. Paul and
Speaker 3: Scarlett really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been a fun time
Speaker 3: for me. The big shows, the final shows or this Friday,
Speaker 3: and so I.
Speaker 1: Have seen everything, and most of it's been for the great.
Speaker 1: You know. I like telling this story. You know, I
Speaker 1: started in.
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety to July nineteen ninety two, for those who
Speaker 3: can do the math, thirty four years and when they
Speaker 3: first instituted the Institute of the bottom line that ticker
Speaker 3: at the bottom before that, you know, telling the scores
Speaker 3: before we gave them the information. I share this story
Speaker 3: because many of us on camera A sports and our
Speaker 3: anchors were horrified about this because we really cared about
Speaker 3: our writing and telling a story, setting up the highlight
Speaker 3: of the game you're about to see, but you're giving
Speaker 3: away the score.
Speaker 1: And this was I don't even know what year this was,
Speaker 1: might have been late nineties or whatever.
Speaker 3: But it was it was like, you know, spidlight zone
Speaker 3: ish for us, you know what I mean. And it
Speaker 3: was like we thought there was a talent meeting and
Speaker 3: all of us like stood up and made our case how.
Speaker 1: Awful this would be.
Speaker 3: Of course we didn't get our way, and then it
Speaker 3: turned out to be again one of these things. If
Speaker 3: we don't see, you know, what's wrong with the TV,
Speaker 3: there's no bottom line that tells us a store before
Speaker 3: we talk about it. So that's always the first thing
Speaker 3: that jumps up. But then technically all the stuff we
Speaker 3: see when we watch live football get any kind of
Speaker 3: sporting event, making it easy to.
Speaker 1: Watch and all this.
Speaker 3: But for Sports Center, ESPN, yes, we were always ahead
Speaker 3: of it. And I'm really proud that I, you know,
Speaker 3: I played a you know, small part of it.
Speaker 1: With my colleagues from the Golden era.
Speaker 4: I feel like you played an instrumental part of it,
Speaker 4: not a small part of it. And the fact that
Speaker 4: Scarlet the fact that you started in radio. That's near
Speaker 4: and dear to our hearts. Of course, because we're talking
Speaker 4: to you on radio right now. Just give us a
Speaker 4: little bit of background about you, because I'm intrigued by
Speaker 4: the fact that you played hockey as a teenager with
Speaker 4: the boys and against the boys. How much did that
Speaker 4: factor into your wanting to go into sports broadcasting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thanks Scarlett for saying that. Yeah. First, I
Speaker 1: don't want to forget to say this.
Speaker 3: How you know young women like yourself, All these women
Speaker 3: have reached out to me that are in the business,
Speaker 3: and that is like, I'm really proud of that professional
Speaker 3: legacy of inspiring all these young women who are in kindergarten,
Speaker 3: first grade, second grade watching the sports in early years
Speaker 3: before they jumped on the boss, realizing that they too
Speaker 3: could do it if they saw a woman up there
Speaker 3: telling them about what happened in the game.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, I'm really professionally a most proud of that the most. So,
Speaker 3: getting back to the hockey thing, I was a kid
Speaker 3: with very low self esteem. I wore very thick glasses.
Speaker 3: Now the glasses are not as thick, thank god.
Speaker 1: But I love sports, watched it with my dad sports.
Speaker 3: Gave me something to look forward to. That's how I
Speaker 3: always phrase it, because I didn't really have a lot
Speaker 3: of friends. I mean, I mean I listened to the
Speaker 3: Carpenters growing up. I love depressing stuff. It was awful,
Speaker 3: It wasn't you know, I don't worry no what you
Speaker 3: email before?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly, Scarlet.
Speaker 3: So anyway, you know, then then I started playing street
Speaker 3: hockey with the boys, and I realized, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: really good at this goalie thing. And what I loved
Speaker 3: about that position is that I could determine here's this girl,
Speaker 3: low self esteem, shy as a wallflower, you know, just
Speaker 3: kind of melted into the wall and playing goalie, realizing
Speaker 3: that I was good at it, and I got contact lenses,
Speaker 3: by the way, that helped my vision, and you know,
Speaker 3: and then I was like, wow, people are noticing me.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't like a you know, conceited kind of way,
Speaker 3: but I felt like I was, Wow, I'm helping people,
Speaker 3: I'm winning games, I'm making the safe at the right time.
Speaker 1: I'm suddenly like somebody. And so I rode that.
Speaker 3: Emotion and I added that to just my love of
Speaker 3: sports and my sports teams and watching the games with
Speaker 3: my dad.
Speaker 1: But being a goalie.
Speaker 3: I liked telling this story too, because I don't think
Speaker 3: I ever would of had this career in broadcasting and
Speaker 3: then onto ESPN, you know, because I start out in radio,
Speaker 3: like you said, in New York, working seven days a week.
Speaker 1: Loved it.
Speaker 3: Then I you know, hosting three hour solo sports talk shows.
Speaker 3: It's it's the best thing people don't get and that
Speaker 3: has made me a better sports center anchor.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the.
Speaker 3: Way, so about getting back to the goalie story quickly.
Speaker 3: You know, when I was playing with the boys when
Speaker 3: I first started, my mom found a league on Long Island.
Speaker 1: That you know, I was fourteen. I wanted to play
Speaker 1: ice hockey.
Speaker 3: I learned to skate with forty pounds of goalie equipment
Speaker 3: on me.
Speaker 1: And I played.
Speaker 3: They didn't let me play with fourteen year old boys.
Speaker 3: That I had to play with eight year old boys back.
Speaker 1: In the day. It was you know, I'm dating myself,
Speaker 1: but you can just google me.
Speaker 3: I mean it was nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy, like mid seventies,
Speaker 3: five seventy six, this kind of time. And so I
Speaker 3: heard the moms like I read the moms whispering well,
Speaker 3: what is that a girl in it? I see a
Speaker 3: ponytail out of behind her mask, all this kind of
Speaker 3: and I had to block out the noise. I had
Speaker 3: to block out the critics. I had to block out
Speaker 3: the people who are like, what is she doing here?
Speaker 3: Type of type of verbiage, type of words that I
Speaker 3: heard and overheard, and man, if that doesn't prepare you for,
Speaker 3: you know, breaking into the boys club like I did.
Speaker 3: And I wrote a book years ago called Conehead, and
Speaker 3: I kind of put that tagline on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what does. Because that I learned to
Speaker 1: block out the noise.
Speaker 3: I had my moments, I had my days, I had
Speaker 3: my crying episodes.
Speaker 1: In ladies rooms, in various workplaces. I'm only human.
Speaker 3: But you know what, you just believe in yourself and
Speaker 3: you get enough validation to keep going right. You know,
Speaker 3: we always need a little extra validation like okay, this that,
Speaker 3: But you you know, it's just when I look back,
Speaker 3: it's been a great, great ride.
Speaker 2: And now, Linda, I mean, your business, the business of
Speaker 2: sports cable TV now it's streaming, it's changing again. But yeah,
Speaker 2: what do you think the future is of ESPN and
Speaker 2: this new world we're in?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't have that crystal ball.
Speaker 3: I just know that, you know, full disclosure, I'm glad
Speaker 3: I'm not starting out on the business now. It would
Speaker 3: be very things have changed, would be very challenging. We
Speaker 3: know about AI, we know about all that. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying they're gonna take the I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna take this, but not gonna see robots and sports
Speaker 3: that or chairs. But I'm not sure what we're gonna see.
Speaker 3: On one hand, streaming is exciting. On one hand, AI
Speaker 3: is exciting. But you know, kudos to ESPN and with
Speaker 3: all these super in the last five six, seven years,
Speaker 3: as you guys have witnessed, it's really jumped leaps and
Speaker 3: bounds with all these technical changes and adjustments you have
Speaker 3: to make, and the competition what I love about when
Speaker 3: I broke in and then, you know, probably the first
Speaker 3: twenty five of the thirty four years, maybe the first
Speaker 3: twenty eight of the thirty four years, you know, there
Speaker 3: wasn't a lot of super competition to ESPN, right and
Speaker 3: especially the early days. That was a big thrill for
Speaker 3: all of us that we were the only game in town,
Speaker 3: like meaning that's all you could turn to to see
Speaker 3: anything there was, you know, no internet, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So how all of.
Speaker 3: These changes going to affect ESPN? Honestly, guys, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I will be watching.
Speaker 4: They'll be watching as well.
Speaker 1: We all be as will all be.
Speaker 4: One question I do have for you, Linda, is that
Speaker 4: you have always said you approach your job as a
Speaker 4: fan first, because you are not a professional athlete who
Speaker 4: then transitioned into becoming an on air talent. Now that
Speaker 4: most of the commentators on live sports are former athletes themselves,
Speaker 4: what do normal people like a Linda Cohne offer that
Speaker 4: you know, a Charles Barkley doesn't. I mean, what can
Speaker 4: you say? What can you bring to the table to audio?
Speaker 4: Is that former athletes can't and don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're right about your observation with a lot
Speaker 3: of former athletes have become analysts and that's great. And
Speaker 3: you know, being in a very lower level a college athlete,
Speaker 3: you know, I get that, and I always I always
Speaker 3: been athlete friendly, player friendly, that type of thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, the young people.
Speaker 3: The young men and women coming out of college still
Speaker 3: want to be in the business. There's so many great
Speaker 3: things that can hone their skills, whether it's YouTube, whether
Speaker 3: it's TikTok, all these things you know that I didn't
Speaker 3: have that many of us didn't have. So there are
Speaker 3: I would I would really concentrate, even though you know
Speaker 3: AI is there and all that and it's all about
Speaker 3: videos now.
Speaker 1: But the writing, I mean, that is something. The journalistic skill.
Speaker 3: The writing, you can you can be way ahead of
Speaker 3: the former athletes.
Speaker 1: You can guide them.
Speaker 3: And the way you speak, you know, the one thing
Speaker 3: I really had to learn, and thank God goodness for
Speaker 3: radio guys, because I learned to communicate naturally right, not
Speaker 3: feel like I was reading something, you know, because I
Speaker 3: start out doing updates and then I started hosting radio
Speaker 3: shows and then you have suddenly like, okay, be conversational
Speaker 3: and so that that was.
Speaker 1: Great and that helped me in TV and that helped
Speaker 1: me for thirty four years on the Sports Center set.
Speaker 3: So back to your original question, yes, I mean that's
Speaker 3: where you could bring it, being conversational. Connecting to the fans. Yes,
Speaker 3: I say I'm a fan first, because I am. I'm
Speaker 3: just as nuts about my teams than they are the
Speaker 3: people watching me, and I tried to show that. But
Speaker 3: you can also channel that into Okay, you be smart,
Speaker 3: you know what you're talking about. Be prepared. You have
Speaker 3: to be prepared. When I'm prepared, man, my confidence boost
Speaker 3: when I'm not prepared, right, I mean when I'm not prepared,
Speaker 3: I'm doing something like I don't know about this assignment.
Speaker 3: I'm getting nervous about it, you know, right, Linda, exactly
Speaker 3: Swallow it.
Speaker 4: Such a pleasure speaking with you. Congratulations to you thirty
Speaker 4: four years at ESPN, Lindacne SportsCenter anchor joining us. Really
Speaker 4: really appreciate it. Good luck to you and hope to
Speaker 4: talk to you again soon. Linda Cone there from Sports Center.
Speaker 4: Incredible career. Awesome