Today’s Media Monday comes to us from Bruce Jacobs, who’s on the air in Phoenix at 1580 AM, 95.9 FM or 99.3 FM “The Fanatic” from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. each weekday, cohosting with former Dallas Cowboys lineman Dale Hellestrae, whose #MediaMonday post can be seen here.

Bruce, time to share:

Growing up, all I cared about was being a baseball player.  But if you can’t hit a curve, you can’t play baseball.  Then I thought about being a professional golfer.  But if you can’t hit a fairway, you don’t make it as a golf pro.  Broadcasting was the next option…

On our show we try to look at sports form a simplistic, fun standpoint.  Sometimes we get in the weeds but our goal is to make people to think a little, make them laugh a little and emote.

I love Phoenix so much I have moved here three times!

In 1993 I started working in radio at KGME 1360 AM as an overnight and weekend board operator.  To make ends meet, I was also working my “real job” at Silo Appliances.  Seriously, my radio career may never have never happened if I had just dusted the tops of the refrigerators at Silo.  I thought, “I don’t dust the top of the refrigerator at my own house – I’m not dusting them in the store.”  So, the day after I was fired from there, I got an emergency call from Arnie Spanier at the station and because I was now available, I made my on-air radio debut.  It was through luck, hard work, more luck and being at right place at right time, I got my first opportunity to be on air at KGME.

I left Phoenix for a job in Chicago in 1999, but that didn’t work out and I was fired the only time in my broadcasting career.  In 2000, I returned to the Valley to do nights on Sports Extra.  Within three months I was doing mornings again.  I segued that gig out of sports and into KFYI on the news/talk side.  That ended in 2009 and I later moved for a job back to New York.

I was in private business and filled in at various radio stations before returning to Phoenix again in 2019 to work for The Fanatic, where I am today.

I am one of less than two handfuls of broadcasters in the country who not only has done both dominant talk formats, sports and news, but excelled at both. I am also among the world’s biggest Dolphins and Yankee haters.  That’s interesting when I think about my three all-time favorite interviews.

1. Miami Dolphins Hall of Fame football coach Don Shula, who I absolutely hated.  He called me stupid and an idiot on the air.

2/3.  Lute Olson and Jerry Colangelo.  What I like(d) about both is that they always give you something, never just a standard cliché answer.  If they don’t agree with the tone or the nature of the question, they don’t have a problem pushing back.  You have to be on your game, be ready to talk to them.

Radio has presented many opportunities.  One of the things I’m most proud of is having raised over seven figures for Arizona Special Olympics via radio-thons.  I’ve never worked harder on a project.  Nothing required so much of my time.   And nothing has given me more satisfaction than the radio-thons for Arizona Special Olympics.  It will always give me a source of pride — even more so than any great ratings

I also love pro-military causes.

I have a wonderful family, including my wife Melanie. Life is great and I am blessed.  I’m also sort of a “husky whisperer.”  Since I was about 10 years old, I’ve always had huskies.  I think I love dogs more than I love most people.  My new puppy, Moose, is named after Mark Messier, the former captain of the New York Rangers, who was known as “Moose.”

I also golf a little and read a lot.  I am a vociferous reader.  With that said, I am always in prep mode.  It’s 24/7.  My prep never starts because it never ends.

You can follow The Fanatic on Facebook here and on Twitter, here.