On Monday, Nov. 18, Pizza with the Pros welcomed the senior vice president of content and live programming for NBC Sports Regional Networks, Jon Slobotkin.

Slobotkin grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, about 45 minutes away from Rowan University. He has been a Philadelphia sports fan his entire life.

“[I’m] a child of the 70’s when the teams in Philadelphia started to get really good again and I have an older brother who is a big sports fan and I just think sports was a major piece of my life,” Slobotkin said.

Slobotkin chose to attend Temple University and study communications, wanting to become a broadcaster just like his idols Harry Kalas and Gene Hart who were both play-by-play announcers for Philadelphia sports. However, due to social media not being available, Slobotkin didn’t know that there was more to do in communications for sports than just broadcasting at first.

“When you went to school for communications, you thought ‘I want to be a broadcaster’ right? That’s what you think there is. When you watched sports on television you didn’t realize there was a whole machine of people behind the scenes, but you knew who was calling the game or in the studio before the game,” said Slobotkin.

At Temple, Slobotkin did play-by-play for the student radio station, getting the honor to call John Cheney’s first NCAA win against St. John’s University. While doing these games, he slowly realized that he didn’t like the way he looked or sounded and wanted to find something else to do in communications. This is when he found out that there were other opportunities that didn’t require you to be in front of the camera.

“There was behind the scenes, there was the ability to affect things in a very meaningful way without being somebody that was necessarily on camera or on microphone and I gravitated towards that,” Slobotkin said. “I had jobs when I was in school, and those jobs were behind-the-scenes jobs, and I got really comfortable in that role.”

Slobotkin spent three years in college, and afterward worked for PRISM, SportsChannel Philadelphia, and Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia. He produced Philadelphia Phillies Baseball for 16 years and Flyers Hockey for three years. He also produced and directed Philadelphia 76ers Basketball for five years, Atlantic 10 Conference Basketball & Football for 12 years, and Big Five College Basketball for 19 years.

In 2005, Slobotkin moved to NBC Sports Regional Networks, starting off as the Vice President and Executive Producer of live events, supervising all aspects of live event coverage. Fifteen years later in 2017, Slobotkin secured his current position as the senior vice president of content and live programming, holding the responsibility of all content.

In his long and illustrious career, Slobotkin has made outstanding contributions to sports production and programming. His career success has been recognized in the past, being named to the Temple University Alumni Hall of Fame in 2004, but it was recognized again a couple of months ago, as he was inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Next week, Pizza with the Pros will welcome PHL Sports Executive Director Larry Needle for one of the last events of the semester.

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