At the Jackson-Madison County School Board work session on June 12, board member Jason Compton, who’s a member of the athletic committee, updated the board that football and basketball games will be broadcast on radio and streamed online this year.
Forever Communications has put together the broadcast crew of Madison County natives Jordan Taylor and Alex Northcut to broadcast a game of the week during football and basketball seasons, focusing on JMCSS high schools.
Northcut is a graduate of Trinity Christian Academy and Union University who is a former sports director at local TV station WBBJ. He moved to Sioux Falls, S.D., in late 2021 to take a similar job there but moved home earlier this year after the station he worked for was shut down by its corporate owner.
“We were ready to get back home anyway and had planned to when my contract expired at the end of this year,” said Northcut, whose wife is expecting their first child in September. “I was not looking forward to having an infant and trying to pack up and move back south with him, so this was better timing than we’d planned.
“And the winters in the Midwest are something else. I know we think it gets cold here in wintertime, but we have it easy here compared to there.”
Taylor is a South Side graduate who also went to UT Martin. During his college years, he worked as a sideline reporter on high school football broadcasts on E+TV6 before getting a job with Forever Communications.
For the past three years, he’s been a part of the broadcast crew covering Union City High School sports for the Forever station there, and he cohosts a podcast with Union City play-by-play announcer John Thornton.
“I enjoyed getting to do color commentary and watching Union City sports,” Taylor said. “But I’m glad Forever set this up to do JMCSS sports and I get to come home and broadcast games here.”
This fall won’t actually be the first time for the duo to work together. When Northcut was a Union and Taylor was a senior at South Side in 2015-16, then-South Side broadcasting teacher Greg Hammond and then-Union broadcasting professor Steve Beverly worked out an agreement where some of Hammond’s students would help Beverly’s students broadcasting Union basketball games.
“We covered a couple of games on air together, and he was part of the crew helping for a few more, so we got to know each other working together then and stayed in touch when I was at WBBJ and he was working with E+TV6,” Northcut said. “So when I found myself preparing to move my family back home, I reached out to him and said I was looking for a job in the South hoping he’d let me know if they had anything for me or if he knew of anything else open.”
Both Taylor and Northcut said they’re excited to shine a spotlight on JMCSS athletes.
“We’ve got our game schedule put together that we’ll put out there later in the summer,” Taylor said. “But our plan is to cover each of the four high school football teams as equally as possible, including getting all inner-city games.”
Taylor said the schedule worked out most weeks that there is usually one team playing at home each week.
“So that made picking out the game each week a little easier,” Taylor said.
“Look at the athletes this city has and the time coaches put in to working with them,” Northcut said. “These teams deserve to have more coverage, and we’re glad to do that because there are some talented athletes that come through Jackson.”
Radio broadcasts will be on 97.7 FM and streamed online at radio731.com. The video stream will be at sports731.com and at the Sports 731 YouTube page.
“This isn’t the first time Forever Communications is doing this,” Taylor said. “In fact, Jackson is one of the last markets for us to start this in.
“So the good thing about that is we’ve had a chance to see what works and what doesn’t and really put together a good product for fans wanting to watch the games that can’t get there and for the sponsors. We’re looking forward to bringing the coverage for the kids on Friday nights.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
