By Bobby Markos
Winter’s cold weather may be rearing its ugly head, but Dirty Mo Media has a cure for your off-season blues. A a new installation of Next Level with Andrew Kurland. For this upcoming series, it is only fitting that one of the rising stars in the next generation of racing journalism sits down with a pioneer of sports broadcasting, the legendary Ken Squier. Andrew and the Dirty Mo crew traveled to Ken’s home in Waterbury, Vermont for a two-day recording session covering his career, the growth of NASCAR and his life in the Green Mountain State.
Born April 10, 1935, Ken Squier became synonymous with the NASCAR Cup Series as he helped usher in the era of comprehensive television coverage in the 1970s and ‘80s. After initially serving as a pit reporter for ABC’s coverage of the 1971 Greenville 200, NASCAR’s first live “flag-to-flag” broadcast, Squier joined the CBS Sports staff and set out to bring stock car racing’s marathon-style events to television audiences.
Driven by the belief that sports fans would watch an entire 500-mile contest, Squier continued to pitch a live telecast of the Daytona 500 until finally succeeding in 1979, a breakthrough event that would change motorsports’ relationship with television forever. A massive East Coast snow storm left millions of viewers homebound, where they watched Richard Petty triumph in the Great American Race (a term Squier coined, by the way), while Cale Yarborough engaged in a last-lap, backstretch donnybrook with the Allison brothers. Viewers were enthralled by the exciting action, and an incredible return in the ratings department secured NASCAR’s place in television programming from then on.
Listeners can tune in for an intimate conversation with one of motorsports’ greatest voices here, with the video version to follow in January:
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or here on Dirty Mo Media.com
More about Next Level with Andrew Kurland:
Introduced back in June, Next Level sets out to continue Dirty Mo Media’s brand of cutting
edge content, redefining the concept of the deep-dive, long-form interview. The series made quite a splash with its debut, when host Andrew Kurland sat down with seven-time NASCAR Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson on the cusp of his Indianapolis 500 debut. The show’s format features both podcast and video formats, both of which are available here:
More about our host Andrew Kurland:
Making a name as one of the most promising young talents in racing journalism, Andrew Kurland burst on the scene at the age of 12 when he began interviewing NASCAR drivers at the 2014 Daytona 500. His unique style and knack for meaningful lines of questioning gained attention, and soon he became a content partner for the sanctioning body. After graduating from Illinois’ Glenbrook South High School in 2019, Andrew transplanted to the Southwest where he enrolled at Arizona State University in pursuit of a degree in broadcast journalism through their Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. As he puts the finishing touches on his education, he joins Dirty Mo Media’s roster of content creators bringing his years of experience behind the microphone to their already diverse stable.
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