Trailblazer. Pioneer. Groundbreaker. Throughout Andrea Berry\u2019s decades-long career in sports broadcasting, these descriptors have beenattributed to her time and time again, each with excellent reason. Berry blazed a trail as one of the first female tech managers at CBS in the mid \u201980s, pioneered field operations for Fox Sports in the \u201990s and 2000s, and continually broke new ground as an African-American woman in a predominantly male industry. And through it all, she has remained one of the most humble, well-liked, and respected people in the business.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was steady, locked in, and she always understood that whatever we did was a collaboration,\u201d says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Jerry Steinberg, who worked with Berry at CBS and Fox Sports. \u201cShe somehow knew how to put the right moving parts in the right place at the right time, and that\u2019s what production\u2019s all about. … It\u2019s a testament to her strength and fortitude: she was always just Andrea. Besides her unique talents, she\u2019s a pioneer. She\u2019s a pioneer by how she does her job. She cracked the glass ceiling in the television business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly, Berry did not initially pursue a career in sports broadcasting but, rather, through a series of fortuitous circumstances, discovered her passion for live television. A native of Chicago, she attended middle and high school in her mother\u2019s native Jamaica before returning the U.S. for her senior year, during which she wanted to be an architect and interior designer. After her father encouraged her to pursue engineering instead, Berry decided to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she found an outlet for her love of music and art at the college radio station. She also found a work-study position broadcasting night classes to local companies like Bell Labs and Motorola via satellite.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would be in a studio at school, and we would just pretty much follow the instructor,\u201d Berry recalls. \u201cLittle did we know at that time that we were doing live TV, little did we know that we were doing microwave transmission, little did we know that we had to be perfect with the audio and the recording. I was just going for it to make the most money for work-study.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she was hooked. At a college fair during her freshman year, she interviewed for a summer-relief position with NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV Chicago and was offered the job. Over the next four years, she immersed herself in studio operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew right there that I wanted to be in TV. I had gotten the bug, and there was no turning back,\u201d she says. \u201cThe radio did it for me because I was doing live radio \u2014 radio really started the live experience and the high \u2014 and, to me, there\u2019s nothing better than the high of being on live TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she prepared to graduate, Berry accepted a job with CBS in New York to become a management trainee within its studio system. After completing the trainee program, she became manager of the graphics group supporting both studio and field operations and quickly realized that her calling lay in the latter. At 24, she embarked on a 10-year career in the field for CBS in New York, taking on such roles as NFL coordinator and MLB co-coordinator and even scoring a trip to the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cool thing about CBS is that I created a family,\u201d says Berry. \u201cI grew up there, and the people that I spent time with were masters in this business, and so I learned from the masters on the production side and on the technical side.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a decade in New York, she was asked to return to Illinois to become the director of technical operations for the CBS affiliate in Chicago. Soon, however, she was recruited to join the nascent Fox Sports and, in 1996, left Chicago for Los Angeles, becoming part of the team that launched Fox Sports Net (FSN).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work of broadcasting sports is [as much] a team endeavor as many of the competitions we cover. Leadership of those teams is something that very few have done with the [same] grace, competence, compassion, and enthusiasm as Andrea,\u201d says Jerry Gepner, formerly of CBS Sports and Fox, who recruited her to the West Coast. \u201cShe inspires those who work for her to go beyond their own preconceived limits, which is the ultimate job of a leader. Her management style is based on walking the walk, not just talking the talk. People like Andrea are rare, and I count myself as very fortunate to know her and to have worked with her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berry is perhaps best-known in the industry for her 20 years at Fox, during which time she served as VP of field operations, FSN, overseeing operations for NFL, NASCAR, MLB, boxing, NCAA, and much more; SVP of broadcast media services, Fox Networks Group, responsible for all broadcast operations and transmission supporting both the Fox broadcast network and the cable entities; and SVP of broadcast media services, Fox Networks Group, managing all aspects of digital-media management for Fox, the Fox Sports Media Group, and the Fox Networks Group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great thing about Andrea is, she brings this essence of calm and confidence to any production,\u201d says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer David Hill. \u201cThere\u2019s a line in Rudyard Kipling: \u2018If you can keep your head when all about you, are losing theirs, and blaming it on you.\u2019 Andrea, despite whatever was going on, always kept her head. The ultimate professional, she understands the pressures on everyone. She gets the philosophy of what a production is, how it should be done; she\u2019s unbelievably creative \u2026 she\u2019s a perfectionist. And working with her was one of the great joys of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite retiring from Fox, Berry remains as busy as ever, focusing on her philanthropic work with African-American boys and girls in the Los Angeles area; her consulting firm, The G.A.P. Media Group; and her latest endeavor as a life coach and wealth-management professional. Most important, Berry cherishes the time spent with her family: husband D. Channsin Berry and sons Brandon (12) and Aaron (10).<\/p>\n
And she looks to mentor the next generation of sports-broadcasting professionals, serving as chair for the Alumni Board of Directors for her alma mater and as a member of its Board of Trustees and advocating for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education, particularly with young women through her Middle School Girls Computer Discovery camp in Chicago.<\/p>\n
After all, sports broadcasting and the rush of live TV will always be a part of her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love live television because it\u2019s instant gratification. You literally start out with an empty parking lot, you set up, you do your show, you tear down, and you go to the next one,\u201d says Berry. \u201cIf it\u2019s a great show, it gives you instant gratification. A bad show makes you say, OK, next week I can do better. There\u2019s always a chance to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":749,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[30],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees\/555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inductees"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/inductees"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsbroadcastinghalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}