John Kelly on Funny You Should Ask
No one wanted the early 6 a.m. shift on student radio station 90.3 KRNU.
By Grace Fitzgibbon
No one but Jon Kelley ('88) — broadcasting student by morning, Husker running back by afternoon practice. Kelley signed up to disc jockey every day — evidence of his college obsession with the industry — leading to an extensive career as a sports journalist, television host and producer.
"I love human nature," Kelley said. "I love storytelling; I love communicating; I like making people laugh; I like making people think. This is a job where you can do all that. We get to be the pilots; we get to be the master of that domain."
It all started with his professors in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications — in particular, Kelley said broadcasting associate professor Rick Alloway was a cheerleader.
"If you wanted to put the work in — they'd give it back to you," Kelley said.
Kelley was finishing up his degree when he was offered a sportscaster position at KTIV-TV in Sioux City. The college waived his last few credits so he could nab that first job. He would later sign as a free agent with the Denver Broncos; the station covered him as their very own sportscaster headed to trial camp.
But he was ultimately meant to stay with the mic — bouncing around the Midwest with news jobs in Omaha and Kansas City until April of 1991 when he landed a spot as weekend backup sportscaster in the Windy City.
"I was there covering the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan — biggest superstar on the planet — at 25 years old, thinking 'you're paying me to do this,' " Kelley said.
He hit the national scene at Fox Sports, anchoring a Sunday night show alongside NBA star Dennis Rodman, and then transitioned from covering the greatest athletes of our time to reporting on the greatest artists with his next job at celebrity news program Extra.
"I was able to learn and ask questions and watch what they do to make great narratives, storytelling, arcs, how they did this, what tricks they would use to pull you in and then lead you into something and there's a surprise," Kelley said. "Ways to get people's attention."
Other notable gigs include hosting the revival of reality show The Mole, anchoring morning shows in San Francisco and Chicago, and his current position with Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios. He hosts the revival of comedy game show Funny You Should Ask, which features a panel of six comics — from Tiffany Haddish to Jon Lovitz.
"It's some of the most fun I've had in TV, simply because I get paid to laugh for six to eight hours," Kelley said. "For me, the biggest thing is the diversity. The new challenge is something different. It's almost like being an athlete going to the gym and working new muscles, growing and learning — some pain here and there, but then you grow from it. You learn by jumping off that cliff."
It's a long tale of career success, but Kelley says the best chapter of his life has been off camera with his wife and five kids. After growing up as an only child with a single mom, this "madhouse full of love" was all new.
Early on "I was just job focused," Kelley said. "I was just personal. It was just me and 'I'm going to conquer the broadcast world.' Now I see it from a different perspective."
Kelley carved his own path and is intensely interested in other people's trajectories. And he's not done yet. He's been collecting tools. Something else, something bigger is brewing in his head for the next step.
"I'd like to be that creator and put something into the universe that harnesses all this experience that I've had, my perspective," Kelley said. "I feel very comfortable in what I do, but now it's a chance to take that even next level versus show-at-a-time, story-at-a-time. Create an ecosystem that really brings it together."
He extends this advice to all creators, and that goes for students still logging hours at the radio station: Expand your idea of success.
"You don't have to just wait for that job to be a cog in the machine. " Kelley said. "You can now create your own machine."
Source: https://www.huskeralum.org/s/1620/magazine/interior.aspx?sid=1620&gid=1&pgid=2557
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