Longtime Billings sportscaster Scott Breen to sign off this week | 406mtsports

The longtime Billings sportscaster is leaving his career as sports director at KTVQ and said that on Tuesday throughout the 5:30 and 10 p.m. broadcasts he’ll be telling viewers thank you for watching in the course of his 31 yrs in the enterprise.

“I wouldn’t trade a point,” the likable Breen instructed The Billings Gazette and 406mtsports.com Sunday. “If I could sum it up in just one word — rewarding.”

Breen will not be retiring, but rather will be switching gears and heading to operate for Daktronics, an audiovisual technique manufacturing enterprise based mostly in Brookings, South Dakota.

He will be a gross sales rep for Montana and North-central Wyoming and will be marketing scoreboards, shot clocks, movie boards, freeway construction roadside messaging signals, and electronic company symptoms.

Breen and his household will go on to stay in Yellowstone County.

The new job will permit him to devote additional time with his relatives. Breen has been married to his spouse Erin for 19 several years. The few has a 17-12 months-previous daughter, Ella, and a 15-yr-outdated son, Landon.

“I’m enthusiastic, actually psyched,” Breen stated. “First and foremost it’s far more household adaptability, both of those of my youngsters will be in significant college this 12 months with each other, and I can stick to them instead of chasing highlights for a few many years.

“What genuinely excites me about Daktronics, apart from relatives overall flexibility, is I get to continue on all the associations I’ve created with coaches and Advertisements and the schools I lined for so lengthy.”

The 52-calendar year-old Breen, a Billings indigenous and 1988 West Significant graduate, started as an intern for an additional longtime Billings Television set athletics fixture, Chris Byers, at KULR-8 in the summer time of 1991 though a student at the College of Oklahoma.

Breen reported he was grateful to Byers for providing him that possibility and the mentorship, and in the summertime of 1992 he once again was an intern at KULR.

Soon after graduating in December 1992 from Oklahoma, Breen begun as a weekend sport anchor and weekday information reporter for KULR. He still left for a quick time in the mid-1990s to get the job done in Bakersfield, California, but arrived back again to KULR six months later on.

When Breen returned he was a full-time sports reporter. He and Byers ended up recognised in Billings and the encompassing area as the “Sports Men.”

The two were being highlighted on billboards and on a number of commercials on the channel “where fundamentally what we did is we’d appear up with innovative ideas to make fun of ourselves.”

“A good deal of men and women keep in mind that simply because we laughed at ourselves,” said Breen. “We were just attempting to exhibit persons the lighter facet of sports and if you can’t chortle at by yourself, you are going to burn up out in the business really rapidly.”

Breen still left KULR to turn out to be the athletics director at KTVQ in March 2005.

“It was a perfect storm. When my wife and I have been expecting our 1st little one, our daughter, and there was an chance at Q2 to function Monday as a result of Friday, commonly with holidays and weekends off,” Breen mentioned. “I imagined that would be as near to a typical lifestyle as I’d get to in this business — sportscasting.”

Byers, who retired as a complete-time sportscaster at KULR in June of 2021, stated Breen was 1 of the best at his profession.

“He experienced a substantial impression. He coated sports the proper way in my view,” Byers mentioned. “He generally set the youngsters 1st and by no means designed it about himself and occasionally in our business that can take place.”

Byers stated 1 of Breen’s best strengths was his function with element stories.

“Scott is a tremendous tale teller,” Byers reported. “He can go out and not just shoot scores and highlights, but he can convey to fantastic tales. I always considered that was a strength. Essentially, he is Journalism 101 by means of and as a result of. He was really good and excellent at carrying out that.”

Whilst Breen’s tales did illustrate the subject’s athletic abilities, he also hoped those people viewing would get to know the athlete a small better as a man or woman.

“If I was likely to go stop by with a soccer participant I’d want to remain absent from the stats and locate out factors like: what is your beloved type of gum to chew, what do you binge observe on Television, and determine out who the athletes are in addition to what they can do on the area.”

Over the several years, Breen has seen quite a few improvements in the way television journalists do their work opportunities.

1 of the alterations has been in products. He stated that the outdated cameras featured video tape and a equipment bag could weigh 60 pounds. Now, the a great deal lighter cameras do not use video tape and images are recorded digitally or on disk.

“But, overwhelmingly for me our major adjust would be our changeover to electronic and social media,” reported Breen. “We’re not just doing television stories any longer. Our priority is finding tales on the net, then to social media and television pretty much appears to rank third in that get.”

Byers explained Breen has dealt with the alterations in the sector perfectly.

“The business has transformed so a lot in the last 10 years,” explained Byers. “I always assumed Scott did a good position of embracing all those variations in how we existing the news.”

Much like he embraced the variations in the news business, Breen welcomed the opportunity to understand a activity that was new to him in rodeo.

In actuality, Breen took to rodeo so properly that in 2021 he was selected to the Montana Professional Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame for his contributions to rodeo as a sportscaster.

Breen has covered many regional rodeos, but truly produced an effects with his coverage of somewhere around 30 Nationwide Finals Rodeos.

“Chris (Byers) was meant to go to our initial just one in the early 1990s and got sick,” Breen recalled. “He called the night right before, again when you could modify airline tickets and reservations, and said ‘Scott, you are going to cover the NFR for the 7 days.’ And I did not know a point about rodeo.

“Chris claimed to go down and check with for fellas named Deb (Greenough) and Dan (Mortensen) and they’ll acquire treatment of you. Individuals two were being variety ample to babysit me for a 7 days so I’d get protection back home.”

A person of the most essential areas of the position, Breen stated, was to do his homework and make certain he knew how to pronounce peoples’ names so he’d get it proper on the nightly information.

“The toughest part of the career is saying names correctly,” he said. “The large university rosters do not occur with pronunciation guides and there are some one of a kind spellings. When you make a mistake announcing names, it starts off to hurt your trustworthiness. I usually attempted really hard to get that proper.”

Whilst Breen is stating goodbye to telling the tales of athletes and teams to group customers and viewers through the area, sports activities lovers will continue to occasionally see him at a match.

But, this time he’ll be there as a fan, rooting and cheering, and if he’s packing a camera it will be to consider private pictures.

“I can go as a lover and cheer for groups now,” Breen claimed with a smile.