Tinley Park’s Jon Zaghloul: ‘It’s been a whirlwind’
There are broadcasters who have not accomplished this much in 20 years in the business.
Tinley Park’s Jon Zaghloul just turned 20 in February and his broadcasting career is in its infancy, but the Andrew High School graduate and rising junior at the University of Chicago has already make some remarkable strides. His career highlights include:
■ Starting an internet radio show, in which his guests have included George Lopez, Anthony Scaramucci, Sean Spicer, Jon Stossel, Roger Clemens and a host of big-name sports figures.
■ Becoming the Windy City ThunderBolts’ PA announcer for a year.
■ Getting a segment on ESPN. Last year in his role as the internet announcer for the Crestwood Panthers summer baseball team for college athletes, Zaghloul was in the booth for the last game of the season and manager Isaac Valdez summoned him to pitch the final inning of the game. ESPN took notice, and Zaghloul became a feature story.
■ Working with SB Nation Radio doing features at the NBA All-Star game in Chicago.
■ Getting an over-the-air radio gig at WCKG-AM 1530, in which his one-hour show is broadcast at 2 p.m. weekdays.
That is a lot to look back on. Zaghloul, however, is not doing that.
“There is not a lot of time to look back and say ‘Oh, this was pretty cool,’ ” Zaghloul said. “I’m constantly moving forward at a really quick pace. You don’t get a lot of time to look back. But I am very grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way. It’s been a whirlwind.”
He started a blog at age 13 that generated 500 views and that turned into a website, Sportstalkchicago.com, with written articles and that morphed into podcasts.
“It was just me talking,” he said. “They are still on the site. They are atrocious. They are horrible.”
The 13th podcast, however, was a game changer. In January 2016, Cubs TV announcer Len Kasper became the first guest of the podcast, and it took off.
“He was on LinkedIn and I had been on LinkedIn since I was 13,” Zaghloul said. “I connected with him and, for some reason, Len said yes and came on and from then on, the guest list continued to build and build.”
Zaghloul has hit some homers by booking some big-time guests in sports and politics to a show hardly anyone had heard of, but he has also struck out a few times. The key, he said, is that he kept trying and at times had to make multiple attempts before getting responses. He has a hard time taking ‘no’ for an answer.
With the WCKG slot, things figure to open up more for Zaghloul with the help of General Manager Matt Dubiel.
“I’m going to do this as long as they let me do it,” Zaghloul said. “Matt reached out to me at the beginning of this pandemic fiasco and they were looking for some local time to fill. Everybody is winning out. He’s winning out because he has local content on his station. I’m winning out because it’s another platform for my content. I can tell potential guests that this is Fox Sports Radio in Chicago and they want to come on board because it’s an expanded audience.”
Dubiel said is happy to have the Tinley Park resident on board.
“Jon is not sitting around waiting for someone to give him a job reaching an audience,” Dubiel said. “Zags built his own platform and is building an audience on his own. That’s what it takes today. Jon’s a champ and this is just the beginning for him.”
Dubiel said he encounters a lot of “wannabe broadcasters” who spend time focused on hot takes and Twitter, and others who don’t know social media at all.
But Zaghloul has a solid grasp of both broadcasting and social media, he said.
Zaghloul’s radio show has also appeared on WHPK, the University of Chicago’s student-run station, and for two years he has done color commentary and play-by-play for the school’s athletic teams.
He is majoring in economics. While his broadcasting career is off to a big start and his ultimate goal is to announce for a professional sports team or have a national sports talk show, he is going to stick with his major.
“I got through the most gut-wrenching courses this year,” he said. “At this point, I’m pretty much going to stay with it. It opens up a lot of other fields.”
Zaghloul said he has made some connections in the sports economics world.
“Some people may not seeing economics relating,” he said. “But this is another avenue where you can intersect sports and economics and broadcasting and put it all together and talk to some pretty cool people whom I wouldn’t either seek out or know about.”