OMC: TV sports news has evolved and changed a lot since you started. The ESPN factor, the Chris Berman factor, they must have been huge. How has the job transformed from then to now?

DN: I started in Wausau in 1987, and I was there for two and a half years. I went from one Saturday night where I had eight minutes of sports. When I came to Channel 12, I think it was three and four, or something. Now at 6 p.m., I get two minutes and 15 seconds. At 10 p.m., I get three minutes. It's much more concise. Everything in television is so much about click points and commercials at exactly this time. You can't ramble on like you used to. There were fewer games available to show highlights of. The Brewers are going to be on TV every game this year, and baseball is hard to go out and shoot yourself. We used to put scoreboards up, now you have the crawl at the bottom of the screen. You don't have a reporter ripping through 20 scores. The biggest change has been with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, the way they injected humor and sarcasm and everything else. A lot of people lightened up with the way they delivered sports.

OMC: Have you found yourself emulating those guys? Who were your role models as you developed your own style?

DN: You can't help but pick up some of that stuff. It's really hard not to copy somebody that you really like when you're 22 and watching someone on ESPN. There are times when I've caught myself doing exactly that. I'm not here to do a bad impression of Keith Olbermann. Growing up in Milwaukee, I watched Channel 12 because they had sports on before weather. I really liked Rod Luck, who was completely different as a sportscaster than anyone else at the time. Then Ron Swoboda, and Tom Sutton, and I ended up working with Tom. It's interesting that I wound up working for the station that I grew up watching, because they were always a little bit different.

OMC: It's a little unusual that you could rise to this level in your own hometown, isn't it?

DN: It's a huge blessing. Most of the people I work with, there are quite a few from Wisconsin, but maybe not from Milwaukee. They haven't been able to be here as long. We're seeing more and more people from Wisconsin getting the chance to work in Milwaukee -- younger people. It used to be that if you started, it would be in small market like I did in Wausau or Rhinelander or La Crosse. You'd have to work up to a medium market. Now people are going from the small market right to Milwaukee.

OMC: I'm not sure that's a good thing.

DN: If they're good, why not? There's a lot better training now in colleges. That was the best part of working in a small market. I loved working in Wausau, there were people my own age. I made a lot of mistakes, but I was able to make them without a ton of people watching. As soon as I got to Milwaukee, I was at a live broadcast at Luke's Sports Spectacular talking about a boxing match and I was trying to say, "It's been a whale of a fight," but I said, "It's been a whale of a fart." It made the "Sports Hall of Shame" calendar.

OMC: Did you grow up as a fan of our local teams?

DN: Yes.

OMC: Have you been able to turn that off and report objectively?

DN: I've lived in Wisconsin my whole life, and it's hard to turn that off. And I don't even want to. I think the viewers appreciate if you're a fan of that team. I'm certainly not Pollyannaish. I've been ripped by some of the teams for being too much of a critic. But I grew up in the vast wasteland of the Packers, and I'm still a huge fan. When they lost the championship game to New York, I winced a little bit. It made life easier, because I would have a day off after a three-week stretch. But I loved doing it, and I don't think it would be the same if I was covering the Bears or White Sox. I hate Chicago.

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