Just make the call.

I was in my second year of Radio & Television Arts at Ryerson University in 2007. About a month into the school year, I had this stupid idea to make a YouTube video after every single Leafs game.

Why not? My marks were mediocre at best, I didn’t have anything I really excelled at in school, and like most 19-year-olds, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

As the popularity of the videos began to skyrocket into the double-digits as a result of the savvy marketing of my videos in my MSN status, I started to think that maybe I could get into sports broadcasting. I literally used the same logic George Costanza did.

“I like sports. I could do something in sports.”

You know what? As I watch that scene again, that’s almost exactly what happened. And just like George did, I recruited my friend Nate for help.

You see, Nate had an internship at a sports radio station in Toronto called The Fan 590. That sounded good to me. I mean the only thing on my resume at the time was selling tickets for camel rides at the Toronto Zoo. Nate gave me the number of his boss, “The Deacon” Doug Farraway, and so it was just up to me to make the call.

After several months of either calling at the wrong time of day or being too chicken to call at all, Doug finally answered. I went in for an interview and was given a huge opportunity. I walked from the studios at 333 Bloor St. East back to Ryerson at Yonge and Gould, some school friends and I celebrated with a meal at Mr. Green Jeans in the Eaton Centre, and my girlfriend – now wife – made me a cake and wrote “I’m your biggest Fan… 590” on it.

The Fan 590, now Sportsnet 590 The FAN, was my first “mainstream” foray into the world of sports media. I got to cut highlights from different sports, grab clips from interviews on Prime Time Sports, and fetch Tim Horton’s orders from Jim Kelly (large tea with cream and sugar) and Bob McCown (large tea with milk and two sugars).

I was essentially this guy.

The point of this whole trip down memory lane is that my podcast, The Steve Dangle Podcast, will be airing on Sportsnet 590 the Fan very soon! We haven’t quite hammered down specifics just yet but it’s coming. It will likely be broadcasted a few hours after we record it, sometime in the night-owl hours. There are more specifics to sort out too but we’ll address those on the podcast itself once we’ve planned everything out for sure.

So what’s the big deal? We’ll be on the radio a couple times a week in a night slot. It’s not like we’re Brady & Walker over here.

Well it’s a big deal to me. It’s a big deal to us.

Getting on the air on The Fan 590 was what I strived for when I was an intern. Even before that, when my co-host Adam Wylde and I were in high school we used to talk about having our own sports show one day. Now it’s happening. It’s actually happening.

I’m excited to make the show better than ever. Adam is a radio pro. Jesse Blake, our show’s producer, is a tremendously gifted person who loves to make fun of Adam and I – and now he gets to do it on the radio!

Is everybody going to love us? No. Emphatically no. We talk about hockey but at the same time we also talk about Pokemon, Taylor Swift, and Edmonton Oilers fans named Shane. Those things don’t exactly fit the typical sports radio demographic. Hopefully though, hopefully, enough people find us tolerable that we can stay on the air.

We said so on our latest podcast but again – thank you. If you’ve ever listened, even just once, thank you so much.

We’re here, we’re happy, and now it’s time to prove our worth.

Let’s have some fun.