The big guy behind the microphone is about to become a legend.
He sits inside the broadcast booth atop Max Finley Stadium, minutes away from announcing the James Madison football program’s first national championship. Mike Schikman has anticipated this moment since high school typing class, back when he used to crank out play-by-play and impersonate Marv Albert.
Back then Schikman was a wannabe sportscaster. Now, Dec. 17, 2004, on a clear, 30-degree night in Chattanooga, Tenn., the longtime “Voice of the JMU Dukes” is about to hammer his stamp on a championship season.
As the seconds melt off the clock, JMU students spill over the 8-foot wall at the base of the stadium grandstands. Across the country listeners await Schikman’s final call:
“The Dukes come onto the field, the fans come out of the stands. The 34-year-old dream comes true. The Dukes are national champions!”
ASK ANY RADIO personality what makes a good broadcaster. Chances are, the answer will come back to the same characteristic, something so simple it seems trivial, but in reality, it’s what separates the best from everyone else.
You gotta be real.
So settle in and ask Mike Schikman any question you’d like. But be sure to bring something comfortable to sit on. News, politics, sports, pop culture — it doesn’t matter what topic; he’ll talk forever. He can because he’s well-read; has been since childhood. But he chooses to for another reason.
He talks to you because, well, he’s a talker. Behind Coke-bottle glasses, a stubbly gray goatee and a jovial smile,
Schikman has been a Valley staple at
WSVA AM 550 since 1979, doing
everything from afternoon talk radio to
promos for the Green Valley Book Fair.
The longtime broadcaster jokes he’s never met a stranger, and that describes his personality. He goes out and connects to people, finds a common thread. That’s Mike Schikman’s way of being real. “I always try to look for a commonality, to get to know people,” Schikman says. “The differences between people are so great that you should look for similarities.”
His mom was like that. Gloria Faska was a Holocaust survivor — so was Mike’s dad Charles — but aside from her strength, Gloria also imbued her youngest son with an uncanny ability to read and relate to people. Along with his amiable personality, that’s helped Schikman’s career from the beginning.
The story begins in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Schikman grew up riding his bike to Shea Stadium and worshipping Sandy Koufax. He got his first radio gig as a Queens College student, broadcasting basketball games for the Long Island University Blackbirds at the old Brooklyn Paramount, amidst a haze of marijuana smoke courtesy of the fans.
“By the second half, all you could think about was going across the street to Junior’s and getting some cheesecake,” Schikman says. “It was a contact high.”
For the 20-year-old rookie announcer, broadcasting was about to move into the driver’s
seat. During the next 28 years, Schikman would reach millions of people as a radio personality in Radcliff, Ky., Spartanburg, S.C., and Harrisonburg at WSVA. The Brooklyn kid with the witty sarcasm has learned countless lessons, but the one he’s always carried with him sticks out the most. To make it in this business you gotta connect.
You gotta keep it real.
MIKE SCHIKMAN IS a storyteller by both nature and vocation. He’s always had a knack for relating to people. It’s what lights him up, and it’s become
his hallmark as a successful radio personality.
But it hasn’t been automatic. You can’t waltz into a broadcast booth and expect people to embrace you. There’s a catch. Schikman learned it from Wip Robinson, Arnold Felsher and Homer Quann, WSVA’s dominant trio in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, who taught him that great broadcasters level with the audience. Being yourself is OK, as long as you can connect.
“There’s an old saying, out of every 10 people who listen to you, three will hate you, three will love you and four don’t care as long as the radio works,” Schikman says. “And if you can keep the three people who hate you away from the four who don’t care, you’ll be OK.”
The secret is respect and honesty — not much of a secret at all. But again, acceptance isn’t like building a Learjet from scratch. It’s all about relating to people on a level that transcends boundaries.
“The ability to communicate your thoughts, your ideas and your passion, that ability is crucial,” Schikman says. “You gotta respect your audience, if you want them to respect you.”
In the Shenandoah Valley, Schikman has used that platform to reach near-iconic status. His late-afternoon talk radio broadcast is a one-man show: just Mike, a telephone and a switchboard full of callers. Some wouldn’t be able to handle it, but Schikman feeds off the chance to interact.
“It’s obvious the area just loves him,” says David Taylor, Schikman’s longtime broadcast partner on the JMU Sports Network. “From kids to politicians to administrators or people you run into on the street or at a ballgame. He’s been able to reach out and connect.”
It started in Radcliff, Ky., in 1977, where Schikman — then a self-described 23-year-old, smart-ass Jewish kid — stood out like an Eskimo in the Sahara. His voice was a few octaves higher back then, and his high-pitched, energetic broadcasting style was straight out of Marv Albert’s playbook. “My mom was afraid because the only thing she knew about Kentucky was from Daniel Boone,” Schikman jokes. “She thought I was going to get scalped.”
Far from it. The town loved the big guy, treated him like one of their own, because there’s a comfort in knowing that with Schikman, what you see is what you get. The day after Schikman observed his first high holy days in Radcliff, the high-school football team celebrated by throwing confetti on him and yelling “Happy New Year.” Schikman says it was one of the sweetest things that ever happened to him because it was total acceptance.
But the Radcliff story isn’t the exception. It seems the vibrant broadcaster encounters similar situations wherever he goes. In 1986, Schikman left WSVA and returned to New York, convinced he was burned out. His hiatus from the broadcast booth lasted nine months before he accepted a sports director position in Spartanburg, S.C. The job lasted one year before Schikman returned to WSVA, but his impact was still clear. Minutes after Schikman’s last Friday-night football game, the Spartanburg coach summoned him to the field and presented the teary-eyed broadcaster with the game ball, signed by all the players as a going-away present.
“He’s well-respected because he respects others,” Schikman’s wife Carol says. “He’s very good at reading people, seeing into people and knowing what they’re all about, and that helps him relate. You can’t fake that.”
It’s evident at JMU, where Schikman’s been embraced as part of the family. Monday mornings during football season, he rolls into the weekly film sessions with a couple dozen bagels and watches game tape with the coaches to hone his craft. He was presented with a national championship ring after the 2004 season, a true sign of being part of the program. He’s been accepted by athletes, who embrace his sometimes zany behavior and honesty. The veterans tell the rookies that the man behind the microphone can be trusted.
“I know he tries to bring out a personal touch with the athletes,” says Curt Dudley, Schikman’s football broadcast partner on the JMU Sports Network. “He gets to know them well. He likes that part.”
Sure there are certain basics for broadcasting: you have to read well and speak well. You should be distinctive. But what’s most important is how your personality and style interact with your audience, and Schikman, through his outgoing personality, has been successful. His ability to reach people has made all the difference.
“I don’t think he would have been able to have the same impact had he stayed home as he’s had in this community,” Dudley says. “He’s been able to connect with people effectively. He’s found his niche.”
As a sportscaster, Mike Schikman has been fortunate. He’s broadcasted NCAA basketball tournaments, high-school football state title games and a Division I-AA national championship. But most important, he’s been accepted. Broadcasters don’t receive game balls or championship rings. This one does.
DAVID TAYLOR RECLINES and swivels in his office chair as he talks about Mike Schikman’s game-winning call at Chattanooga. “If there was anybody in our history of broadcasters who should have made that call, it was Mike,” Taylor says. “It’s part of his identity.”
In the days following the national title, JMU Athletic Director Jeff Bourne received a letter from 13-time Virginia Sportscaster of the Year Tony Mercurio, praising Schikman and Curt Dudley for a job well done, and although it’s been less than two years since the national championship, Schikman’s final call is already imbedded in university folklore, especially among his peers.
“The hardest thing in broadcasting is to handle that line in that moment, and Mike nailed it,” Taylor says. “It was perfect.”
Maybe even legendary.
