A voice for sports: The D.C. radio host with many talents
March, 2018
There are 10 minutes till show time, but you wouldn’t know it judging by his relaxed demeanor.
Grant Paulsen’s about to go live on his midday radio show “Grant & Danny” on WJFK 106.7 The Fan, where he and his co-host Danny Rouhier catch local listeners up on the latest sports news surrounding the Washington metropolitan area.
Once the show starts at 10, that’s when Paulsen’s exuberant nature kicks in. No longer laid-back, he ratchets up his voice to a distinctive tone that pierces the airwaves with excitement. Even with no cameras around, his body language matches his on-screen appearance.
At 29, the King George County native isn’t content with just entertaining sports enthusiasts through the airwaves. During hockey season, he hosts “Caps FaceOff” and “Caps Overtime” before and after every Washington Capitals game on NBC Sports Washington. He’s a studio analyst at FOX 5 DC on game days for the Washington Redskins on “Redskins Game Time.”
More recently, he became the voice of the Washington Valor, D.C.’s contender in the Arena Football League, when Monumental Sports Network hired him to be the team’s play-by-play announcer.
“All of those jobs provide something a little bit different than the rest,” Paulsen said. “With the FOX job, I get to be a Redskins analyst and do a lot of analytical short segments. The NBC Sports opportunity provides me to talk a lot about the Capitals, which I don’t get to do as much as I’d like on this show.”
Paulsen’s as versatile as they come in sports media, and for good reason. “I like keeping my finger in as many pies as possible. The more versatile you are and the more platforms that you are involved in, the better for your career because everything’s morphing into one,” Paulsen remarked.
Such a hefty workload spreads Paulsen’s schedule thin. His radio duties require him to be at the WJFK studios on 1015 Half Street from 8:30 in the morning to 2 p.m. when the show winds up. The time of year determines his evening schedule. During hockey season, which ranges from October to May, he’ll be at the NBC Sports Washington studios in Bethesda, Md. from 4:30 to midnight at the latest. From April to late July during the Arena Football League season, he is at Capital One Arena from 4 to 11.
“Everyone’s like ‘how do you do that?’ or ‘why do you that?’ It’s because it’s my passion and it’s what I’d be doing anyway, but it’s also my job,” Paulsen noted.
That passion has been there from the start.
At 10-years-old, he began writing published stories in the local newspaper, The King George Journal, and the bug really hit him at that age when he started making TV appearances on the WUSA 9 news in Washington D.C.
His big break came when he was in middle school and received an offer to be on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” One appearance led to Paulsen covering Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans for the “Late Show,” which garnered the attention of ABC Sports. They reached out to him to report on the 2003 and 2004 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.
“Going on Letterman opened a lot of doors that I am still taking advantage of now as a near 30-year-old,” said Paulsen. “I got the chance to host shows at XM and cover major DC sports teams because of those appearances. I worked with ESPN and Sports Illustrated because of my trips to New York to go on the ‘Late Show.’”
One of those teams included the Washington Redskins, who Paulsen covered as a beat reporter for 106.7 starting in 2010.
“Grant has a brilliant sports mind and a tireless work ethic,” said Mike Jones, an NFL columnist at USA Today and former Redskins beat reporter for the Washington Post who worked alongside Paulsen down in Ashburn and at FedEx Field. “The combination of both separates him from other reporters. He also understands that this business is about relationships. He has an ability to connect with people from all kinds of backgrounds, and he constantly works to educate himself. So, it’s no wonder that he’s as good as he is.”
The career advancement he’s achieved in sports media hasn’t come without sacrifices.
“I routinely had deadlines late on Friday night for Sunday stories, and I can’t tell you how many parties or activities I missed out on,” he recalled. “I have been doing weekend radio shows on SiriusXM Radio since I was 13. I have not had weekends off on a constant basis at any point during my adult life. That makes taking trips and vacations very difficult.”
It can sometimes be forgotten that media members are also sports fans, and that fandom must be surrendered in order to maintain their objectivity and professionalism.
“When you’re covering a team or talking about them publicly as a media member, you forfeit your ability to cheer for them,” Paulsen confessed. “You never view the games you are covering like you once did. I miss being able to go to games and tailgate and sit in the crowd and yell things.”
In a hobby that produces crazed fanatics and bizarre superstitions, Paulsen’s content with abandoning some of those rooting causes if it entails being a sports personality for a living.
“I’m glad to have traded those things in for a career in sports broadcasting,” Paulsen noted. “A lot of people work for a living where they do things that they don’t like at all. With my kind of schedule, if you don’t love what you’re doing, it’s impossible.”