#MediaMonday – Richie Melby
Today’s Media Monday comes to us from Tucson.
I had the chance to meet Richie Melby, sports anchor and reporter at KVOA-TV as part of the “Who is Gym?” book tour. His background is similar to mine – starting in a small market before moving onward and upward.
He’s been with KVOA since February 2014, moving to Tucson from Montana, where he worked at KVOA sister stations KRTV-Great Falls and KTVQ-Billings.
Richie, time to share:
I’m a graduate of Montana State University Billings, where my television journey began as a part-time newscast assistant at KTVQ, editing videos and operating studio cameras. I was soon trained to be a news photographer, but my true passion was sports. I became a member of the Q2 Sports Team and was a photographer, reporter and fill-in anchor for three years.
I then spent five years as sports director at KRTV in Great Falls. Growing up in the viewing area provided me with great relationships with coaches, athletes and fans from North Central Montana. I was fortunate enough to twice win runner-up honors for the Montana Broadcasters Association Awards “Sports Enterprise of the Year” and was also honored to be a part of the “Newscast of the Year” team.
During my short time in Tucson, I have followed the Arizona Wildcats on back-to-back Elite 8 trips in basketball, a Pac-12 South championship in football and met numerous individual award winners from golf to soccer to everything in-between.
But my favorite part of this business isn’t the highlights or championships. It’s the honor of telling stories of everyday viewers in the community: your next-door neighbor who overcame the odds to finish a marathon, or the co-worker down the hall who created the youth baseball league — those are the individuals who truly deserve their story told.
While my job is an incredible experience, there is no place I would rather be than spending time with my wife (Fallon), our Yorkie (Tinker) and our Rhodesian Ridgeback (Rosie). We enjoy hiking the Arizona outdoors and seeing all nature has to offer.
You can follow me on Twitter at or feel free to follow my blog and Photo of the Day on my website: www.richiemelby.weebly.com.
