Three weeks from today, the Traverse City Central High School Trojan football team will officially kick off their 2023 season with a game against Plymouth at Thirlby Field. Beyond just commencing a new sports season, though, the game will mark another notable milestone: a first-time-in-a-generation passing of the baton for the local radio broadcasting of Trojan football games.

This week, local radio company MacDonald Garber Broadcasting announced that one of its radio stations, 104.5 BOB FM, would be the new home of Trojan football broadcasts starting this fall. The news marks a major shift in local radio reporting on high school athletics. For 82 years, WTCM has provided play-by-play coverage of Traverse City Central football games. The past 25 years of that coverage has been handled by the broadcasting duo of Joel Franck, WTCM’s former news director, and Tim Brick, founder and former owner of Traverse City’s Brick Wheels bicycle shop. But 2022 marked the end of an era for that duo, with Franck retiring from his 50-year radio career in December and Brick selling Brick Wheels after 48 years of family ownership.

The retirements of Franck and Brick left an opening in local football broadcasting, and raised the question of whether WTCM – or any other local radio station, for that matter – would jump in to continue the long tradition. Now, the news is out that a new radio duo – that of Andrew MacDonald (pictured, left) and Mark Mattson (pictured, right) – will be taking up the mantle and offering play-by-play coverage of Trojan football games on the BOB FM airwaves this coming season. Their first game reporting from the sidelines will be the Friday, August 25 season opener between TC Central and Plymouth High, set to begin at 7pm at Thirlby Field.

MacDonald’s name and voice may be familiar to some local high school sports fans: For the past two seasons, he’s been providing play-by-play coverage of Trojan basketball games for BOB FM. Mattson, meanwhile, is a former athletic director who worked stints at both Traverse City Central and Glen Lake Community Schools. MacDonald will take on Franck’s role of primary play-by-play announcer, while Mattson will step into Brick’s shoes to provide color commentary.

Speaking to The Ticker, MacDonald dubs play-by-play sportscasting his “first love.” These days, most of his time is taken up running his business, MacDonald Audio, which “offers professional on-hold-messaging, in-store-messaging, and streaming music services to customers throughout the United States.” Looking back over his career, though, MacDonald points to his time doing sports broadcasting as some of his fondest memories.

“I used to manage WATT radio [in Cadillac] back in the ‘80s,” MacDonald recalls. “And what happened was, the gentleman who did the play-by-play [for local high school sports] was sick for a couple of games, and we had no one to do it. So that's why I got started, and I just loved it.”

A few days filling in for the play-by-play guy turned into a regular gig, and MacDonald subsequently spent years commentating on local Cadillac sports – both for radio and TV. At one point, the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) even tapped MacDonald to do play-by-play on the MHSAA Network for state championship games. When his son was born, MacDonald says he took a lengthy break from any kind of live sports broadcasting. But doing play-by-play for Trojan basketball these past two seasons brought him back into the fold, and he's excited to expand into football.

“There's just something about it,” MacDonald says of the play-by-play role. “When I put those headphones on and there’s the game and the crowd, there’s just something about that that I really love. I love the challenge of trying to convey what's happening on the field or on the court to the audience.”

MacDonald also recognizes that he has big shoes to fill, praising Franck for his “rock solid” ability to “paint a picture for the audience of what’s happening on the field,” and giving Brick kudos for his football insight and expertise (Brick spent his college years playing football at the University of Montana). MacDonald says he’s learned a lot over the years just by listening to Franck and Brick on Trojan football broadcasts, and promises to bring those lessons to the airwaves with him this season.

Additionally, MacDonald tells The Ticker that he and Mattson are will be in full prep mode over the next three weeks, chatting with coaches and athletic directors, poring over team lineups, and memorizing player statistics. “You don’t just walk in and throw on your headphones at kickoff and roll,” he laughs. “If you’ve not done any preparation, you’re going to have issues.”

“These play-by-play positions don't open up all that often,” MacDonald adds. “And when they do, often, there are many people who want to fill that void. So, I just feel extremely fortunate to be able to take on that position and, and I'm going to do everything I can to put my best foot forward for the team, the school, and myself.”

Trojan football coming to BOB FM also marks a broader shakeup in terms of where locals can hear high school sports on the radio. According to Peter Garber, VP of programming for MacDonald Garber Broadcasting, Kingsley football broadcasts will be moving from BOB FM to 93.7 FM The Ticket, a “sister station” also under the MacDonald Garber umbrella. “The third and final domino is Lake City football moving to News Talk 106.1 WATT in Cadillac,” Garber adds.

As for the Trojans’ crosstown rivals at Traverse City West Senior High, Sheryl Coyne – owner/operator of Blarney Stone Broadcasting – confirms that her company “will be broadcasting all Traverse City West Titan football, [boys] basketball, and some of the girls basketball games not only with audio, but also with live video for the 2023-2024 season on upnorthsportsradio.com.” Blarney Stone brought Titan football games back to the airwaves in 2021 after many years of West not having a radio partner, and that partnership remains intact two years later.

While Trojan football broadcasting is leaving WTCM, likely for good, Chris Warren – general manager of station parent company Midwestern Broadcasting – assures that there are no hard feelings about a new radio station giving it a go. “We lost to retirement one of the area’s great sportscasting duos in Joel Franck and Tim Brick, but we are so glad that BOB FM could secure the veteran play-by-play sportscaster Andy MacDonald to continue the coverage of Trojan football this fall,” Warren says.