Jordan Cohen: Thank you everybody for joining us for today’s alumni spotlight with Danny Breslauer. Danny is a Rutgers alumnus, he graduated from the final class of Rutgers College. And he is pretty much everywhere when it comes to Rutgers but I think most people would know him from the podcast that he does with John Newman, The Scarlet Spotlight Sponsored He is absolutely everywhere and we’re really glad to have him as an alumni spotlight. So Danny, thanks so much for joining us!
Danny Breslauer: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. And thanks for the plug for the Scarlet Spotlight.
Jordan Cohen: Of course. We’re actually going to be hosting some of the interviews for Scarlet Spotlight on the RAA’s website as part of our 1766 extras program. Let’s start with your time as a student. So you were the last class of Rutgers college. What was that like, and what brought you to Rutgers??
Danny Breslauer: Yeah, so I can start with what brought me to Rutgers. I basically grew up on campus.
My father, Kenneth Breslauer was the founding Dean of the Division of Life Sciences and has been at Rutgers for 47 years.
Jordan Cohen: Wow.
Danny Breslauer: He’s a university professor. Biophysical chemist, I believe by trade, his lab does cancer research, drug DNA mutations, and binding.
And obviously right now is also focused on COVID research. So, I grew up across the river in Highland Park, but at the same time was essentially raised on campus both academically and athletically. Season ticket holders for Rutgers basketball and football; since I was a little kid always knew it’s where I wanted to go.
Had a brief dalliance with the idea of doing journalism at Northwestern and spent the summer before my senior year of high school out there. But it was a no brainer for me that Rutgers was the only place that I wanted to go. Had all the resources and tools that I needed as well. When I was in high school, I interned.
For Bruce Johnson, who was the voice of Rutgers athletics at the time for WCTC radio and learned a lot about the ins and outs of the industry. And Tim Espar was the broadcast administrator at WRSU at the time. Brought me for a tour of the facilities my senior year. And he’s like, listen, ‘you know, can’t hand you the keys to the car day one, but, but if you learn it I’m sure that you’ll get.
The progression here and have administrative roles’. And that’s what happened. I was a sports staffer, eventually became the sports director my junior year. Then I was the general manager of the entire station in 2009-10, my senior year obviously in conjunction with my classwork and then skills now SC&I with many, many great professors there during my time.
Jordan Cohen: You mentioned WRSU, I believe you ran Knightline?
Danny Breslauer: Knightline was the, the post game show for all of all the games. So the staff in conjunction ran Knightline. I was the host of the Scarlet Pulse with Adam Helfgott and we did a show for three of my four years. Adam was a freshman when I was a sophomore.
Also worked on Sports Night, which was the, the flagship show that the WRSU sports staff did during the day. Really, you know, it’s a 24/7 station with community involvement as well. And I think that’s the cool part for the students that do get involved. In early days, you learn how to deal with folks that are older than you and may have been set in their ways and, need some compromising.
I think for me, certainly as an executive at the station, it was great experience for how to discuss preemptions with people who have had shows for 25 years when sports games may have stamped on their slots every so often. So those were really interesting conversations. The programming of a 24/7 station working with different genres was an incredible experience for me.
Jordan Cohen: Are you still involved with WRSU?
Danny Breslauer: I am! Mike Pavlichko, who I worked with at WCTC and remain close with and doing games at CTC after I graduated as well. When I was a sports broadcaster for the first five to six years after graduation he’s now the broadcast administrator. So I’m involved in the sense of whatever, whatever Pav needs. I’m happy to come back and help. I do talk to the occasional RSU sports director, a staffer via Twitter which makes it very easy to do so. And many of them do keep in touch. I love following the work that they do. You know, RSU and Targum are two of the more unheralded institutions of Rutgers in the sense that I don’t know if everybody knows the amount of work that the staffs at WRSU and the Daily Targum do to provide coverage, not just about athletics, but the university at large for the community. So I’m a huge,supporter in that regard, in terms of their involvement and their continued involvement with the New Brunswick, Piscataway and Rutgers community at large.
Jordan Cohen: And you were involved with RVision on campus right?
Danny Breslauer: So that’s a really cool story. It was probably April my junior year. So let’s say April of 2009, I got a call from then lead sports input director, Jason Baum, who was the deputy to Tim Pernetti who was the AD at the time saying, ‘listen, we’re going to launch this direct to consumer television product called Knight Vision, which is what it originally launched as. We want you to be the first broadcaster. We can’t pay you in the first year, so do it for the tape. And then, you know, maybe after graduation we’ll, do something with money’ and that’s what happened. I eventually used RVision as it became rebranded in 2011 as the tent pole freelance gig for me after graduation and built a sports broadcasting freelance portfolio around doing games for RVision Colin Osborne, and his crew in Rutgers athletics, do an unreal job. I mean, in the immense amount of improvement of the product that occurred over time with student run camera ops, student run truck ops and Colin being the staff advisor to all that, and the director of RVision, they’ve had many more resources now that Rutgers has been in the Big 10 that have allowed the broadcast to now be in my opinion, the industry standard for BTN+ broadcasts around the league. It’s not even close Rutgers puts on the best broadcast.
So I have obviously a lot of pride in having been a part of the start of that 12 years ago and they continue to improve it day by day. But yeah, that was just unreal experience for me. I wouldn’t say I was the greatest TV announcer on earth. I hope that I gave a good product to everybody that saw it.
I would call myself an above average TV announcer where I was a little bit better on the radio. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it was great to have that as, as a temple item to build around with CTC and IMG and Verizon Fios and the Northeast conference and all the other broadcasts that I did in the, in the five plus years that I was doing.
Jordan Cohen: Any particularly notable experiences. I noticed you overlapped with some pretty interesting years at Rutgers athletics.
Danny Breslauer: So are we talking at RSU? I mean, obviously the most notable experience would be the Louisville game my freshman year that that would have got the Pandemonium in Piscataway poster. Right, right over here behind me.
I was doing per game in the stadium, did post game as well. There won’t be a night like that again, no matter how good Rutgers gets in the Big 10 east, you just can’t, you cannot simulate the novelty. That was the first time that everyone got a taste of what it felt like for national coverage, for camping out for tickets.
Rutgers could literally play for a national championship someday and I’m not sure I could bottle up sort of the emotions that were on campus that week, the special feeling that it was of “Wow. Everyone cares about us. You know, state university of New Jersey is no longer a moniker of making fun of you. It was a, it was a pride thing.”
For me, that was an amazing experience and had a bunch of really cool moments. Being around C. Vivian Stringer’s program. I was the voice of Rutgers women’s basketball. After I graduated from the IMG network as a part of her 800 and 900th wins and got to call games both in WNIT final where they won down in El Paso as well as NCAA tournament games for them. I would say those were very special experiences.
Jordan Cohen: You’re essentially on a career path of TV radio broadcasting, WFAN, WCTC, Fox, that’s the career path you’re on. And then in 2016, you take a step back from what I can tell, and you go and you start pivoting into more of a business and consultancy type role.
Tell us a little bit about what that looks like. What, what was the decision-making process behind that?
Danny Breslauer: Yeah, I’d say the pivot even started a little earlier, probably summer of ’14. I came back from doing the WNIT final and El Paso and you know, everyone has these like life audit moments in their late twenties.
I was 26 years old. I, I felt I was doing really well in my profession. You know, I was a division one play by play broadcaster. At that age, I was getting more looks. I knew that it would be time to hire an agent and go on the road more than I was already on the road. And I don’t know, I didn’t think I was learning.
Right? I had learned in a trade. I was good at what I did. But I wasn’t necessarily understanding the industry at large or, or where it was heading next. So I think that scared me a little bit. I was a good enough standardized test or to get me into the 2006 version of the Rutgers college honors program.
I do not think I would have gotten into today’s honors college considering the high-end academics from an SAT perspective that they require for that entry. I was a great student. But never a standardized tester so I put a lot of time into studying for the GMAT. Specifically with a tutor. I knew I wanted to get an MBA just to have like a more holistic understanding of business, media, tech, sports. They were my passions, and that would be where I would stay.
But I didn’t see myself 30 years later as Joe Buck or whomever was in those roles and I think that scared me at 26. I was like, ‘all right, well then you’d have to go learn something else. You know, you know that you have interpersonal abilities, you can communicate you can work in business development.You can work in partnerships. Now, go find out how’ and I was fortunate enough to get in NYU stern for my MBA and, and developed a new network there in addition to my Rutgers network, which was incredibly useful.
You noted I did three MBA internships in 2016 to really pivot, because who’s going to hire the sports broadcaster to do business development for them? That was what I had to do. Work for NBC Universal, Wasserman, and Brave Ventures, which was acquired by Turner and had a really interesting experience at Fusion Media Group, right out of business school, working for a subsidiary of Univision, doing audience development for marketing. And when that was reorganized, I ended up at In-Demand where I’ve been for the last three and a half years, a subsidiary of Comcast. I’m working on licensing and content delivery deals, which has been an unreal experience and I’m going to be moving on to a company called Frequency which is about 10 year old startup that works in the free ad-supported streaming television space, helping content providers launch what’s called fast channels.
That’s the acronym on various connected devices. I think any of the free content that lives on your Samsung TV+ your Roku channel and the like.
So really excited for that. And, I think it’s adding a tertiary skillset to my resume that, you know, down the line will be useful to me. It was a life pivot in many respects. I had lived in New Jersey for 27 years, albeit traveling before I moved into the city and I’ve been here for six and a half now in New York and I mean, I’m obsessed although I still commute down to Piscataway very regularly.
Jordan Cohen: I want to dig a little deeper into something you mentioned about having the Stern community, along with the Rutgers community. A big part of what we do is trying to create those lifelong communities and create those lifelong connections between both students and alumni.
Can you talk a little bit about how some of those connections have helped you? Especially as a Rutgers alumnus and the Rutgers community, but just overall and maybe a specific mentor that you’ve had?
Danny Breslauer: Yeah, so many. Jon Newman obviously has been amazing to me and meeting him through his donation to Knight Vision back in 2009.
Through our time and launching the Scarlet Spotlight when I was just coming out of business school, because I wanted to keep my toe in this. And how could I not, when I knew that we could put on some really cool shows as we have for nearly a hundred episodes now and right around when this drops, I’m sure we’ll be prepping for episode 100 at the top of 2022, which we’re, which we’re really excited about.
I’ve been introduced by Jon and by others to so many really interesting people in the Rutgers community. You know, I think Mark Beals is top of mind, somebody who’s worked in public relations and taught at Rutgers for many years and showed me to many people in the alumni community. Mike Finkelstein, who I took at Rutgers, Bruce Reynolds, Steve Miller; just incredible professors that have continued to share their network throughout time.
And, and when you go into the media space and you meet all the Rutgers people, like the Mike Pavlichkos of the world, who’ve done this for years. You get onto the business side too, and you realize they’re everywhere. Right? And that was great when I was at Stern. What’s great about grad school is that nobody will be afraid to talk to you, right?
You can reach out to anyone and ask for coffee, the building of community and the building of networks to me is more underrated than anything. If you can do it and you can do it skillfully and you don’t make any conversation feel like it has to have something at the end for you, but rather just you taking something from the conversation or you get an intro. To me, those are the most authentic relationships you can develop.
I continue to meet people, I feel like month to month, that I never knew were a part of the network. Greg Brown CEO of Motorola solutions. We both, we share both the Highland Park High School and the Rutgers University community in that regard, which it was just amazing. And I played junior varsity baseball for his late father-in-law so it’s unreal.
He was former chair of the (Rutgers) Board of Governors and now runs the athletic committee for the Board of Governors. The networks run deep. They’re everywhere. They’re CEOs of S&P 500 companies. And you should continue whether you’re a student, undergrad, grad at Rutgers to reach out to those people there.
And especially now with zoom they’ll give you even if it’s 15 minutes they’ll give you time. And that could create a lifelong connection.
Jordan Cohen: Is that your advice to alumni and students?
Danny Breslauer: Every day of the week. I mean, I would say, do your job first, whether that’s being a student or living your life, but carve out an hour a week.
Sit down, go through LinkedIn, send a couple of cold emails, try to get warm intros. Those are always the best. You have somebody who you think can, can provide you with a warm intro. It’s, easier for the person that you’re reaching out to as well to say, ‘Hey, you know, maybe a couple months from now, it’s a better time’ but yeah, I mean even if you’re a young alumnus go out and do it.
I don’t like anyone that’s threatened by someone reaching out to them. Even if they’re in industry, I feel like we should information share that that’s how things get done in this world. Generally, if you share networks, being an undergrad or a grad Alma mater it makes the conversation so much easier.
“I really believe there’s a ton of alumni out there that want to talk to you. It’s just that people have to be proactive. They’re not going to look for you. You’ve got to find them.”
Jordan Cohen: Let’s talk about a little bit of how that networking’s come into play. I mean, you mentioned Jon Newman and obviously you’ve mentioned the Scarlet Spotlight a little bit for those who don’t know what is the Scarlet Spotlight?
Danny Breslauer: Sure. We launched it back in early 2018. Scarlet spotlight is a bi-weekly podcast.
You know, we’ll sometimes get off of script in terms of how often we release. Sometimes three in a month, sometimes one, depending on our, our own work schedules, John runs his own PR company. So that, that comes into play too. It’s an interview based show. So about 25 to 30 minute interview with the particular guests or guests for that show all from the Rutgers community current, former coaches, athletes and administrators, and then John and I will do, you know, sort of what we call the Scarlet Six never is really six topics, but the news and notes of the week around Rutgers athletics and the community in sort of a debate segment.
It really ends up being an awesome experience to keep the voice in the Rutgers community and continue to have those conversations and meet new people, right? Dr. Holloway was on a few weeks back which was a really great conversation. We had Governor Murphy on during the height of COVID last July, which was amazing. Dr. Jay Tischfield, who I’ve known for decades from the genetics department back as they were launching the initial COVID test. It’s been a wild ride. Never really expected we’d go through a pandemic with it obviously.
But here we are I think now something that the Rutgers community really looks forward to, and we just announced we’ve had a hundred thousand unique downloads since March of 2018.
Jordan Cohen: Congratulations! What was the impetus for starting it?
Danny Breslauer: Good question. I, you know, I think Jon knew that there was like a hole in content for, for Rutgers fans.
He knew that I had the broadcasting chops to be able to make it work and the connections within the Rutgers Athletics department for us to get guests. But at the same time, I think he was a little concerned that we would be seen as this state media in some ways. And so we wanted to make sure that we had an understanding with the athletic department that well, we’ll do these great interviews, but we want at the same time to have some level of independence, to have more interesting conversations. I think for me, it was, as much as I know that I made the right decision moving away from full-time broadcasting, I still wanted to keep a toe in it. So for me, I think that was part of part of the rationale was, ‘Hey we need to still do this passion project and make sure that we, that we can have a good time and create some good content for Rutgers fans.’
Jordan Cohen: That’s awesome. And it’s a really great podcast. I recommend anyone who’s you know, listening or watching this to check it out. We’ve talked about a lot of the work you’ve done that have been really successful. What’s something that didn’t go so well. And what’d you learn from it?
Danny Breslauer: Yeah, I think initially there’ve been a lot, lots of things that I’ve done, that, that haven’t been successful. The early decisions that I made in my post MBA career were, were certainly maybe rushed because of timing.
A lot of the hiring and media is done on an as needed basis as opposed to investment banking or management consulting or some of the more traditional fields that happened post MBA. So I think that the approach to job searching has sometimes been less formulaic than I would like. Undergrad, I think developing relationships early on that are authentic.
You know, I was different as a freshman in college, I was hard charging. I really, wasn’t great at taking feedback. And I think all my friends who are now some of my best friends from that WRSU sports staff would tell you that freshman year Danny was kind of the worst. And I think that, you know, in so many ways, 18 year old self, you can learn a ton by what your friends tell you years later were some real character deficiencies or some things that you needed to read the room a little better about. I learned so much about myself in those four years of college, just in terms of the emotional intelligence and how to deal with people that are going through so many different things in life.
I’ve become a lot more aware of mental health in recent years, my mom’s a mental health professional, and I probably should have been more cognizant of that at a younger age. And I think to me that that was a key mistake that I made early on was not having that level of empathy sometimes for others that I had for myself or those that are really close to me.
So that’s what I would recommend to any student or young alumnus trying to break into professional life. At NYU, they use the phrase IQ plus ETU. And that’s really, to me, the equation that works you know, you can get out of your intellect all you want, but if you don’t have the emotional quotient then no one’s going to want to work with you.
Jordan Cohen: When you’re talking as a Rutgers alumnus let’s talk about staying connected to Rutgers in more than just athletics. Because a lot of the folks we speak to, you know, it’s always the sports to bring them in and then there’s other parts that bring them back. So let’s talk about that. What other parts of Rutgers are you connected to?
Danny Breslauer: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I could start by saying, you know, at the dinner table, I’m as connected to the research side of Rutgers is as pretty much anyone can be.
My father was one of the highest grant getters in university history and continues to be published. I would say I, and I grew up as part of the Rutgers community, way more than just athletics, look into what kind of research this university does. It’s not just sciences.
The School of Communication and Information, as I’ve said, is a diamond in the rough. Even though WRSU isn’t directly affiliated so many of the staff, assist and the folks that are at Targum that are at RSU understand, of all these incredible resources that are there. It’s such a bifurcated university in the sense that it’s so big, it’s spread out.
There are distinctions some of the old school broken up colleges feel now that it’s amalgamated in the School of Arts and Sciences, that they still exist and they still have their own brand identity. Cook and Douglas and Livingston. They have their own field, even though Livingston now feels like a city more than it was when I was there.
Have a better understanding of the history, better understanding as to why there’s a bit of a unique identity for each department and each segment. It’s an amazing place. I had gone, you know, as I’ve said to a private institution now. I’ve lived in the greatest city on earth, but nothing will ever feel like home more than Highland Park, New Brunswick Piscataway to me and that’s because of the university at large.
So I think as an alumnus yes, of course, a winning football and a winning basketball team will help you come back and be more engaged with a weekend event, tailgating and the ability to see friends and family do contribute to be a part of other aspects of the community too, because that is so much a larger piece of the university budget and, and the university focus than the athletic department, even though it’s obviously got a near and dear part in my heart.
Jordan Cohen: Any last-minute thoughts you want to share? What’s next? What’s the next big thing?
Danny Breslauer: I would say as an alumnus, I love that the alumni association is doing things like this. I think it’s incredible value. I hope that students and young alumni do reach out because I really believe there’s a ton of alumni out there that want to talk to you. It’s just that people have to be proactive. They’re not going to look for you. You’ve got to find them
Jordan Cohen: Danny. Thanks so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Go RU!
Danny Breslauer: Thanks Jordan. Go RU!
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA’s Young Alumni Committee is pleased to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys recent Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the
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