Bowl week a stage for Disability Channel
Tom Brady has exited stage left and taken a lifetime of NFL records with him. So as gridiron enters its new era of records, five in a row sounds like a pretty nice place to start for Jay Stoyan.
The Toronto native doesn’t strike you as someone who often breaks for a rest. But the founder and CEO of The Disability Channel, a TV production and content company by and for people with disabilities, took a break this week. He stopped to marvel at the growth TDC has made since it launched in 2014, and nowhere is that progress more noticeable than on Radio Row of Super Bowl week.
For the fifth year in a row, TDC is on site at the grandest sporting event in North America to chart the buildup to Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams, playing in their home stadium SoFi Stadium.
The weeklong buildup to football’s biggest night has long since moved into a very social media era version of pomp and pageantry. But it’s the prestige of being there, in the thick of the carnival of chaos, that is most pleasing to Stoyan.
“I’m a sports guy — that’s how I got into the business. Sports runs through the blood,” he told the Star. “The Super Bowl is an amazing opportunity to showcase what we do and the opportunities we provide, around one of the biggest events in the world. We’re very grateful and lucky that we get to do it.
“My whole goal was to get us mainstream. To help people with disabilities have the same opportunities and make it mainstream. We just want an opportunity like everyone else.”
Although continued COVID-19 complications have kept Stoyan’s Canadian staff on this side of the border this year, Dave Stevens, the first person born without legs to play both college football and professional baseball, is on site for TDC and reporting back all week, along with production assistants from the class Stevens teaches at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University. Stevens is a longtime ESPN editor and has reported on NFL seasons from training camps through the Super Bowl for many seasons.
The pandemic hasn’t just caused staff scheduling headaches, of course. The outsized impact it has had on people with disabilities has too often been an afterthought. As restrictions and disruptions grew tiresome for many, too often nondisabled voices were the ones being heard rather than the community most affected. Stoyan’s decision to establish TDC in 2014 has been particularly justified over these past two years.
“Obviously everyone I work with are among the people most affected by the implications of COVID. They are among the most potentially vulnerable,” he said. “But the No. 1 hardship for my community is loneliness. We were behind the eight-ball before the pandemic … bring in the pandemic and it’s just brutal. I know people who haven’t spoken to another person face to face for two years now. It’s about trying to communicate with everyone and get that voice out there, that perspective.
The Disability Channel employs around 25 people in full and parttime roles and can have upward of 40 more enrolled in its educational and training programs, which it runs with the support of the Ontario government. It has a cross-border presence, too, and has made a big impact with the veteran community in the U.S.
It’s a production house that creates original news, sports, music, gaming and kids content for online, streaming and digital broadcast platforms, including the Today Show Toronto on Bell Fibe TV. All of the content is produced by TDC’s graduates which, Stoyan said, helps the channel act as a springboard for opportunities elsewhere.