Sports jobs: East Meadow's Ed Berman loves TV sports production
Ed Berman works at his station in a television truck before a game between the Mets and the San Diego Padres at Citi Field on Sep. 18. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Sports Jobs is a Newsday series exploring jobs Long Islanders have in the world of sports.
Ed Berman’s favorite work-related memory was made during his first year on the job.
“I was in the locker room in 1986 when the Mets clinched,” he said. “Getting doused by champagne by Roger McDowell and others, while Ralph Kiner was trying to interview everybody in the old Met locker room at Shea Stadium. So that kind of stands out.”
Berman, a 35-year East Meadow resident who grew up a Mets fan in Queens, was “living a fantasy” working for Channel 9 at Shea Stadium then. It has yet to get old.
He has been part of TV productions for Mets games ever since, and also for Yankees games for 37 years. Berman currently works for Program Productions as one of the people responsible for video replays on visiting team broadcasts, and the 66-year-old’s source of motivation is simple.
“I love it,” he said. “This is my business. This is my industry. Changes come along. You have to adapt with the changes. This is what I do. I'm a TV guy. Adapt or die. I love the business and I love my job, and that's just what it comes down to.”
Berman attended John Bowne High School in Queens, which he said was the only high school that had a TV program at the time. His teacher Harris Greenfield was the one who “lit the candle” for the start of his career.
He graduated from the New York Institute of Technology, where he majored in television and broadcasting, and has been a freelancer in the business since.
He was hired by Channel 11 as a teleprompter operator in 1985, transitioned to videotape and moved to Channel 9 in 1986.
Berman said he works “in the neighborhood of 100” games in a baseball season.
For a typical 7 p.m. series opener, he arrives at the park at 1 p.m. He has to set up the equipment in the truck, check that the settings are correct, confirm the audio is working properly and show his machines to the technical director. Then comes the pre-production work, which could include building a package for that day’s starting pitcher or compiling highlights from the night before.
During the game inside the truck, he is working through all the different buttons and camera angles to play his role in making sure the broadcast goes smoothly.
But the biggest challenge of the job?
“You have to know the game,” Berman said. “If you don't know the game, you can't do the job. No matter what chair you sit in for that game and no matter what game you do, you may be doing different angles . . . You have to know the game, and it doesn't matter what the game is. You have to understand the nuances of baseball. You have to understand the nuances of football and basketball and hockey and everything else.
“If you don't understand it, you really can't do a good job.”
In the baseball offseason, Berman helps produce the visiting team broadcast for Islanders games, and he will work Devils and Nets games when available.
Berman also is a Jets, Nets and Islanders fan. Being part of the big moments for his teams is “very cool,” he said, but the time to enjoy them has to wait.
“You have to temper your excitement, though, because you still have to do your job,” he said. “You can reflect back on it 20 minutes later, a half-hour later, but in the moment, you have to pay attention to what you're doing and know what you’re doing.”
In the past, Berman worked for CBS doing football, basketball and figure skating. He also worked on hockey games for NBC and football and basketball for ESPN.
He primarily stays local now, and trust has played a huge role in his success.
“He's one of the best in the city, probably around the country, so the teams love him,” said Robert Anderson, who has known Berman for decades and is Program Productions’ stage manager for visiting team broadcasts for Mets games.
“We love him here. There's probably no one else around that knows the visiting teams as much as he does.”
The technology certainly has changed, from reel-to-reel videotapes when he first started to the all-digital EVS system today, but Berman’s drive has not.
Next year will bring a significant milestone of 40 years since his first Mets season.
“Pretty cool,” Berman said. “It means I’ve been around for a while. It means people actually think that I do a pretty good job at what I do, and they like working with me, and I like working with probably 99% of the teams. They're good people. They understand the limitations of what they have or what they can use, and they're really good people.”
Ben Dickson is Newsday Sports' general assignment reporter. He joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
