"I didn't break the Penn State story," points out Jimmy Church. The credit goes to 24 year old Sara Ganim, a reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot News."
But it was the JimmyChurchRadio YouTube video that stopped the sports world in its tracks.
JimmyChurchRadio has enjoyed a successful 3 year run. With 10,000 loyal listeners, Jimmy Church considers himself a self taught sports radio talk show host.
"After reading the report a few times I turned to Charlie and said 'roll camera'...'we're gonna run this story".
Jimmy Church does not consider himself a Journalist. He has enjoyed a successful 3 year run as a sports radio talk show host.
"My format is entertainment."
But the enthusiastic response from Jimmy's listeners and the sports world in general proves otherwise.
"The original video wound up on probably hundreds of news sites around the world."
Jimmy remembers,
"We started the show late on that Friday...normally we start at 6am. We got together around noon and it was great that we did because if we did the show at our normal time we would have missed the Grand Jury report and would have waited until Monday, the 7th like everyone else!"
The staff that day were:
"After reading the report a few times I turned to Charlie and said 'roll camera'...'we're gonna run this story".
Watch Jimmy's hands shake as he reads the Grand Jury report. You can see for yourself how nervous he is!
Days later, in a private convesation, Jimmy told me that the producers decided to preserve the original video and not do a second take. Uhms and Ahs included!
"The only other video on Jerry Sandusky on YouTube at the time was Jerry talking about 'tailgating' at Penn State by WHVL which was four years old."
"For three days if you searched 'Sandusky' on Youtube my face popped up first."
"Syndicatednews.net was the only media outlet that contacted us about doing an interview about Sandusky and Ray Gricar...which we did on Saturday, the 5th live from our studio in Burbank, CA."
"On Sunday morning we woke up to over 10,000 hits on YouTube and still the only video from any news outlet."
"The original video wound up on probably hundreds of news sites around the world...everywhere except CNN or ESPN and I still find that very strange."
"One of the first things I said on Monday's show on the 7th was something like 'I don't understand why ESPN and CNN waited so long to cover this story."
"By Sunday nite the coverage was getting into the mainstream media and all of the hate mail and negative comments stopped right in their tracks and finally I realized we did the right thing."
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