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Born to broadcast
Terrier sportscaster is game for national collegiate audience
By Brian Fitzgerald
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WTBU sports director Noah Coslov (COM'04) never met a microphone he didn't like. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Noah Coslov used to announce NBA basketball games when he was a child.
He would tape a televised game, rewind it, play the videotape, press the mute button, and tape himself delivering a play-by-play account of the action. Then he'd watch the game again and listen to his own coverage. Is this a guy destined to be a sports broadcaster or what?
Coslov (COM'04) thinks so. In fact, it's all he's ever wanted to do in life. And as sports director of BU's student-run radio station WTBU (89.3 FM, 640 AM), Coslov is living his dream, announcing Terrier men's hockey and women's basketball games. He's even managed to produce a television segment — a story on his quest to be a sportscaster — for the 24-hour sports network College Sports Television (CSTV).
“Let me make this clear,” says Coslov. “At first I didn't want to do a story about me.” When he heard about CSTV's First Person contest, which was seeking unique, personal, and engaging college sports stories, Coslov pitched the idea of a segment on a behind-the-scenes look at BU hockey broadcasting. But after talking to Coslov and discovering his obsession with sports and his lifelong ambition, the CSTV producer told him that a better idea would be to produce a story on, well, on Noah Coslov.
“I really wanted to stay away from this kind of thing — a glamor piece on me,” Coslov says, pointing out that whether it's announcing games, or cohosting WTBU's Monday Night Sports Block and Terrier Talk on Wednesday evenings, he is part of a radio team. But after thinking it over, he took the producer's advice. It seemed that she knew what the network had in mind, and he wants to win the contest: the victor will enjoy a paid job in New York this summer working in CSTV's production department. “That wouldn't be bad at all,” he says.
The five-minute tape, entitled Living a Dream, consists of interviews with his parents, along with scenes of him announcing hockey and women's basketball games. He also spliced in footage he took this season of the Lady Terriers clowning around in a plane on their way to a game at Stanford. In addition, the piece shows pictures of Coslov as a sports-crazed child, including a shot of a him when he was a four-year-old, wearing all his older brother's Little League catcher's equipment. “The chest protector went down to his feet,” says his father. The catcher's mask was so heavy he had problems keeping his head straight, “like a bobblehead doll,” says his mother.
“When most kids at eight years old want to be firefighters or astronauts,” Coslov narrates, “I wanted to be a sports broadcaster.” Aside from being a professional athlete, is there a better profession for someone who is so fascinated with sports? The Abington, Pa., native used to fall asleep listening to sports talk shows on Philadelphia's WIP-610 AM. When he woke up in the morning, he would grab the Philadelphia Enquirer and head straight to the sports section. “I learned how to read by reading the sports pages,” he says after playing his tape in the WTBU studio. “I learned how to read a box score before I was able to read Dr. Seuss.”
Coslov's Living a Dream segment will air on CSTV on Thursday, April 15, at 8 p.m. CSTV is available on Channel 610 on Direct TV, and the network also plans to show the top contest videos on its Web site at www.cstv.com.
9
April 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations