Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Carelse to host premier sports slot
SEASONED broadcaster Udo Carelse is about to embark on a new chapter in his already distinguished media career.
The man from Atlantis is set to host one of South Africa’s premier sportscasts, The Ultimate Sports Show.
Carelse will take over the 90- minute sports show on Metro FM. He will take to the airways on Monday at 6pm.
His on-air schedule is Monday to Wednesday and then again on Friday.
Thursdays have now been reserved for a special focus on women’s sport.
That instalment will be hosted by popular SABC Sport commentator, Mpho Maboi.
Carelse is excited about the new challenge.
“What I would like to be able to do is inject my personality and a bit of pace into how we do things across the hour-anda-half,” he said.
“For the very first week, what I really want to do, before we get into boardroom politics, is just celebrating South African success.
“And the obvious entry point to that is us finishing third on the planet at the athletics world championships.
“That really is day one for me, that is critically important,” he said.
Carelse, who grew up in Saxonsea, has earned his stripes in a two-decade media career.
The 39-year-old, who has Bachelor of Arts degree from UCT, started his journey into broadcasting at Cape Town radio station, KFM.
“One night I saw a friend I went school with, she was a news anchor at KFM.
“She said let’s have a chat, and a month later I started working there.”
After three years at KFM, he packed his bags and headed to Johannesburg.
“I got tired of Cape Town and hard news,” he added.
He started his Gauteng media life as a production assistant for the on e.tv.
Two months later he started working at 702.
Then Urban Brew productions came knocking “to start writing scripts for them”.
“They invited me to do a screen test for Woza Weekend and they kind of like what they saw there and they said yo, why don’t you present the show? And that I did for the last three years of that show’s existence,” said Carelse.
“I then moved to SABC as a sports presenter for three years, then did That Sports Show for e.tv after that for Toasty Show about three-and-a-half years,” he said.
Carelse’s CV also includes stints at YFM where he was the news editor and SuperSport.
For the past two years he’s been reporting for duty at SABC.
“That engagement started with the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and since then I have been doing anchoring on the rugby, athletics, cricket and also doing some production work for them in the background.”
Carelse has been involved in rather detailed preparation for his new radio sports show for the past two weeks.
“We’ve been having a look at what the old format was versus sort of what we are trying to do at least starting off with the show. “
The Metro FM slot was made popular by Robert Marawa, who was shown the door by the SABC last month.
Carelse was full of praise for his predecessor: “I think that the strength that Robert has had on that show for more than a decade is being able to bring the most noticeable and iconic sporting figures into a space where they can have very deep and meaningful conversations. “We are aiming to continue in that vein,” he said.“Sport is ever evolving, it is a global thing and I would like to tap into more conversations per hour-and-a-half than one main conversation.”