23 Jun Howie Zales – The Emmy Award-Winning TV And Livestream Guru

You would think that in a world where almost everyone has access to social media and keeping their own mementos, the work for camera operators would decrease. Howard Zales, Emmy Award-winning camera operator, begs to differ. In fact, he has turned his passion for television broadcasting into several entrepreneurial endeavors. In this episode, he joins Matthew Sullivan to talk about his journey in the industry and why he thinks there is an ongoing demand for his services. He shares what he thinks about training, why there is a lack of it, and how he is helping solve that by providing it to those who want to get inside the industry. As a livestream guru, Matthew then tells us how the changes in technology have impacted livestreaming and what they are doing to adapt. 

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Howie Zales – The Emmy Award-Winning TV And Livestream Guru

Howie Zales is an Emmy Award-winning Camera Operator who turned his passion for television broadcasting into several entrepreneurial endeavors.

Howie Zales, welcome to the show. How are you?

It’s great to be here.

Let’s talk about New York because you’re outside New York. We were saying that the traffic is beginning to come back. It’s funny. People were like, “We were quite lucky when it was quiet.”

Where you go on the roads, there’s no one there.

 

People have forgotten how to drive. Do you think that is the danger?

Absolutely.

I remember this thing. You sit behind the wheel and press the button. There’s going to be like Death Race 2000 or something.

The traffic in New York is crazy.

Even there’s only that one car, that one car is the crazy driver. Who do you think they’ll let on first? Who do you think is going to come back? Is it going to be the crazy cab drivers?

They’re less and less because Uber has changed the industry, especially in New York.

Has there been a fightback from the crazy cab drivers’ union or something?

Yes, there has been. They made it difficult to operate or more expensive to operate. You need a license to operate an Uber and you have to be licensed for New York City. If you’re in New Jersey and you don’t have a license, you can’t pick someone up that is in New York City. You can drop them off.

You get to walk to New Jersey and then you can pick them up there. Anyway, we’re here to talk about your fascinating background behind the camera. I want to know about some of the things that you’ve seen. You must have some stories to tell.

I’ve had a 25-year career so far with tons of stories to tell. First, I’ll start off with the injuries. It’s always the best. People are like, “That’s horrible. You’re so unlucky.” I’m like, “I’m lucky to be alive. It’s all good.” I did a lot of baseball in my early years. I was doing a camera on the third-base side where the Mets play and that was Shea Stadium at that time. You’re always taught to watch the pitch. My responsibility was to shoot the runner on second. I was watching the pitch, so I’m like that. The next thing I know, I’m in the hospital. I had got hit in the head.

Joe McEwing from New York Mets went out in front of the pitch because it was an off-speed pitch. This was told to me after the fact. He line-drove right into my head. I fell six feet into the Colorado Rockies dugout and I had a massive concussion. The funny part of that story is I was on the lead runner like I’ve said, but when I got hit and fell, my camera jerked to the pitcher’s mound. The pitcher was walking around the pitcher’s mound on the dirt and they take my camera three times. On the fourth time, the pitcher walked off the dirt onto the grass and because I was six feet below, I was not panning with him. I was getting yelled at by the director. By the time that fourth time happened, they were yelling at me and it reached the TV truck that it was me that I was hit.

Being able to put yourself in the right place at the right time is more than half the battle.

It was like a mosh pit experience where you jumped the six feet. Were you caught by the Colorado tea or did they wonder what was going on?

I fell onto the concrete into the dugout.

I imagined there were people there that caught you and went, “Hurrah.”

This was all told to me that. I was there. The Colorado Rockies’ training staff attended to me and then they took me out in a stretcher. On my way in an ambulance, I literally woke up. The first memory I had was in the hospital.

I suppose the next question you asked was, “Did I get it?”

Joe McEwing signed the ball and it was brought to me afterward.

Is it mainly sporting events? How did you start your career?

I wanted to play professional baseball. I knew in high school I needed a backup. I needed one class to round out my schedule. There was an elective, a TV Production class. Part of the description was a trip to NBC Studios in New York and a tour and to see a TV show being taped. I was like, “How bad can that be?” I fell in love with television. My other love was sports and baseball, specifically. I knew right away, I had to somehow jive these two things together.

I remember going to the NBC Studios when I was nine. I can tell you that was a long time ago. I think they were filming I Love Lucy there or something. It is inspiring and otherworldly. How did you start?

I only applied to colleges that had Television Programs. Being in New York, we have great state schools. I went to Plattsburgh State University. At the college, the TV Department had setups in the hockey and basketball arenas. I was shooting and directing hockey and basketball games before I was even a sophomore in college. I was getting great experience and it was such a high. I was like, “That’s solidified.” I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t know how to get into it.

Have you stayed with the sport? I would imagine as a sportsman yourself, you would have that sixth sense of what’s going to happen next. Do you find yourself that you were always in the right place at the right time?

You can’t teach that. That makes camera operators better than the others because it’s, like you said, placing yourself in the right position at the right time. Whether you’re doing football and you put yourself in the right spot of the end zone and get the pass coming or you would be doing a horse race and you position yourself in the right spot to get the horse in the paddock coming around that everyone wants to get a shot of. It’s being able to put yourself in the right place at the right time is like more than half the battle.

I’ve always wondered as well how people managed to track those golf shots when you watch The Opens with Tiger Woods or someone who hits the ball at about 8,000 miles an hour.

In my career, I haven’t done a lot of golf. In the viewfinder, there are red, green and blue. They call them guns. You can turn the colors off, so the white ball pops out at you. In professional golf, they’re all hitting it pretty much in the same spot. It’s how far.

I suppose that the golf cameramen are pretty boring because they know where it’s going to end up. That’s not like football. At least it wasn’t cricket back then. At least it wasn’t a baseball bat that had been launched. Many years later, you’ve got this huge amount of experience that you’ve set up HJZ Productions, which was many years ago.

A good friend of mine who I went from elementary school through college was working at MSNBC at that time in New Jersey. Imus was doing his radio show. Once in a while, they would take his radio show on the road. They were doing it from somewhere local in New York. I forget where. He called me and said, “Howie, are you busy on this day? Can you shoot a camera for us?” I was like, “Sure. Why not?” He was like, “Do you have any friends?” I called up 3 or 4 camera friends of mine and got them the job. That turned into another show and it snowballed. I started HJZ Productions. It became a staffing company for television sports and entertainment events nationwide.

Are you now much more focused on that side of the business or do you get out with a camera every now and then to keep your skills honed?

The last event I did was the Kentucky Derby, which was in early May 2021. Before then was September 2020. I’m slowing down the camera work. Twenty-five years takes a toll on your back and neck.

Everything has changed. If you go back to 2000 when you set up your production company, that was pretty much the beginning of the internet. I think that was the beginning of broadband, but this whole idea of being able to push video. Where we are now, we have YouTube and TikTok. We have all of the self-publishing. Has that diluted the art form, do you think? What’s the impact of that been?

Of the internet or on television?

No, just the feeling that everyone feels that they can be a cameraman. Has that made your business more in demand? What impact does that have?

I’m more in demand and I’ll explain the reason why. Especially for big-time events like Super Bowls and Kentucky Derby’s, the director wants their camera people his or her group of people. I traveled with one of the directors from NBC Sports, John Gonzalez, for years. I would direct the show from the sideline of a football field. My camera number for years is camera seven. He knows that if I said, “Take seven or look at seven,” he could blindly take the camera because he knows I wouldn’t say that without knowing that I had the shot. It’s that type of relationship. The director becomes a shot selector instead of directing the crew on what to do because he or she knows that they have people on the crew that think like them and know what they want.

Is your industry not so much suffering, but is it getting harder and harder to find people like you with your level of expertise?

Yes. There’s no training ground. Years and years ago, the training ground was the networks. The networks train their people on how to do things. They went out and on the weekends, they did sports. Eventually, those people went freelance or became independent contractors, but there’s no real training ground on how to do it. In 2020, I started

The Broadcast Sports Course. It became a training ground on how to get new and younger people into the television sports and entertainment field because there was no way to break in and learn. This is a type of industry where you need to do it, learn on the job and get true on-the-job experience.

That’s an interesting thing what you’ve got. It’s not so much of a decline because the demand for your services must be increasing because more and more people are accessing sports. If you’re looking at Prime, Netflix and Hulu, you’ve got more networks. Why is there that strange anomaly where you’ve potentially got more sporting events and more demand for camera operators or camera gurus, but there’s no training?

There’s a lot of people in the industry that don’t want to train other people because they’re scared, they’re going to be replaced, but that’s small-minded thinking. If you train someone that is good as you, then you could use them as a replacement when you need to get out of work. That’s a good question because most of the industry is freelance. Meaning you only work when you get paid. There are no real employees. Anyone that’s a camera operator, an audio person or a replay person, they’re not employees. Everyone is freelance. There’s no employer to train the people.

As you said, that was different years ago when like the NBC’s or at the big networks, they would train you. Do you find that the wheel has turned full circle now? Now, rather than you going to college, you are the college effectively. Are you taking people in at a very young age? What level of experience do they need to have before they can start with you?

Just a love to learn. You don’t need to go to college to get into the industry. If you have gone to college and you do have TV experience, that’s great too. Anyone that’s out of high school that wants to learn the industry or at a college that has some experience and wants to get into the industry. The thing is, we offer a hands-on experience. Before COVID, our model was we would teach people in a two-day boot camp and then follow up for six months with on-the-job intern training. COVID came and we were shut down for a while. We’re hopefully going to start the in-person training back up in the fall of 2021 when things level up.

Is this something that is New York-based or is this something that you can see spreading across the US?

Our first goal was to make it work in New York and I would take it across the country.

What’s the number of people? It sounds to me that if these are the options that are no longer available because I haven’t come across anything like the business that you have. It’s such a specialized place. You must have a handful of competitors, if any, I would have thought.

 

In the teaching space of this, there’s nobody that we’re aware of that does this.

Not even the colleges? Can you not do that same course that you did years ago?

The thing is, at colleges, the professors are great and everything, but never once when I went to college did I hear the word freelance, freelancer and independent contractor. That’s what the whole industry is. Most college professors haven’t been on the job site in years and technology is changing so rapidly. We wrote a book on how to act in every position on the TV crew and what your responsibilities were. That’s part of the course and how to shoot baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey and boxing from every single camera position. Every director has his or her way to do things, but we provide the general way to do it in all those sports.

Does that extend to editing as well if you think of all of the other industries or the cogs that are within that switch wires that create the finished product?

I specifically don’t teach editing. I’ve developed such a great network that I have plenty of editors that I can send people to. If they come to me and that’s their passion or what they want to do, my network is big enough to help with that as well.

This a real departure from what you were doing before, where you were recruiting people for specific jobs. Is this a much more challenging position do you feel?

Yes. One, I never thought of myself as a teacher. Two, I never thought I would write a book or a manual on how to do this. It’s going out, finding people to take the course, teaching the course, following up with people month-to-month, making sure they get the right education on how to do things and how to operate in the industry and helping them get clients and maintain the clients. These are all the things that we teach in the course, how to speak on the phone to a new client, how to write them an email and what to put in the email.

That’s like the business sizes, all of the things that they learn to do. It’s how to create a business out of it.

Ultimately, as a freelancer, you’re an independent contractor. You’re your salesperson. No one is going out and selling you. You’re part camera person, audio person or whatever your job function is, but mostly a salesperson. You’re only as good as your last performance.

It’s funny. I was talking to someone that specializes in providing marketing services for dentists. It’s similar because it’s a profession. You spend all of your time learning to become a great dentist. When you set up your practice, you realize that, “This is a business here. I’ve got to be good not at the dental work, but I’ve got to learn how to recruit people, market and get patients through the door.” Is that part of the package? You’re effectively teaching people a profession. It must be described as a profession.

We teach people. As I said, we tell them who the clients are, how to communicate to the clients, how often they should communicate to the clients, even their fellow freelancers. Other camera people, if we talk about camera people, they could be your clients too. If Joe Blow needs to get out of a day of work because he’s sick or she has a family event that they didn’t realize that they had, the rule is they need to call and find a replacement. They’re as much of a client as the client is because you want to get called by other people to be their replacement.

Have you seen this film called Stringer?

No.

There’s this amazing film called Stringer. It has got a pretty good cast. It’s about these guys that video all of the stuff that happens at night on the freeways. They had these police scanners and they’re constantly listening in for stuff that’s happening. They drive at breakneck speed to try and get the first shots of the inferno or the car that was flipped on the freeway. I’m not suggesting that could be a subdivision, but it is an incredibly exciting world it can be, aside from the occasional blows to the head.

I’ve had three concussions. The other two were on the football field.

How many clients are there? Give us some idea about the size of the industry. Presumably, it’s not dominated by three people from your network.

You have your major networks like NBC, ABC/ESPN, CBS and FOX. Those are the major networks. There are the local and we’ll take New York for example. The local networks, MSG, Madison Square Garden Network, where the Yankees, Rangers and Knicks air. There’s SNY, where the Mets and New York Nets air. It’s the New York Nets now. MSG also has soccer. That’s the New York area. There are other clients like my company that do big one-off events. We do big horse races. Big boxing events, there is Showtime, the zone that comes in that we do a lot of stuff for. We subsequently have a lot of clients that bring their shows to New York. They call us to do whatever events there are. We do a lot of track and field. We hire crews for boxing, soccer or whatever comes in.

This is not at the professional level. Presumably, there’s a demand for this at the high and amateur levels. I’m not talking about shooting local weddings or anything. This is happening all over the country at lots of different levels, different sports and different days of the week.

In the Midwest, college football and basketball are huge. The Big Ten Network is a huge network that airs all those schools that make up the Big Ten, those networks and schools. They probably air all of their sports. We don’t have a lot of colleges in New York and New Jersey because we have a lot of professional teams. College sports is popular, but not as popular.

It sounds like this is a great opportunity because if the number of people that are moving into this industry is declining yet the demand is increasing, then you’ve got that mismatch. I remember years ago I always wished that I would become a plumber or an electrician because you know that you could actually work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Is that positioned with what you’re doing because there’s such a shortage, it seems?

Yes. To your point, the age of the freelancers is getting up there where people are starting to retire or should retire, but there’s no one below to come up that is good enough to take those people’s spot. With live streaming, that is a whole other avenue of sporting events to get televised or live-streamed that normally wouldn’t have gotten any airtime because you can do a live stream of a smaller event that requires less money that wouldn’t have gotten televised. It’s a whole other crew of people that are needed to work. It’s not that you want to have someone that’s not qualified or not good enough, but it’s a good training ground also with the live stream side of things.

It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more people you have, the more popular the live stream becomes. Is there a crossover? If we draw out Venn diagrams and we’ve got the sporting camera guys and the Hollywood guys as it were, are there common elements there? Are you part of the same pool or is it two very different skillsets?

It’s two very different skillsets. The Hollywood-type people are doing a lot of commercials, films and TV shows. The sportspeople are doing mainly sporting events, lower-type

events and concerts. It’s two separate avenues.

I can imagine there’s probably a little bit of rivalry between the teams there, once I probably claim that the other guys don’t know one end of the camera from the other.

To your point, at the Super Bowl, it’s like whichever network is airing. The sportspeople are doing the actual game and the pregame. The entertainment crews are doing the halftime show.

Did you have your own set of particular ways of insulting the entertainment guy? You probably got your own language. You don’t have to explain it here, but I’m sure there’s this unmentioned way of referring.

We call them the White Glovers.

That’s probably the PG version. The other interesting thing is that it is a factory. It is not a franchise. Presumably, these can be people of any age who want to learn a professional trade that is exciting, that is never going to be the same and allows them to tap into their passion. People are passionate about sports.

I’ve been to some of the greatest places on the planet shooting sports. I’ve done 6 or 7 Olympics. I’ve been to Beijing, London, Greece and Italy, to name a few.

You’re in the middle of it as well. You haven’t got the cheap seats up in the nosebleeds. You’re in the middle.

I’ve had the fortune to do either gymnastics or swimming in the summer and figure skating in the Winter Olympics. I did figure skating in Salt Lake City in the Salt Lake City Olympics. I’ve done plenty of Super Bowls. I’ve done NHL Finals and twenty Kentucky Derby’s. I’ve had the good fortune to travel the world to shoot sports.

The fact that there’s demand for it and you provide the business side of it as well. The critical thing I think most people will ask is, “Let’s say you teach me how to tap into my inner psyche so I can get the shot. Who’s going to hire me if I’m a freelancer?” Do you solve that problem for them as well? Do you help them get the clients and get started?

You’re only as good as your last performance.

We provide them a list of clients, names, phone numbers and email addresses. We tell our students, “This is how you go about doing it. Contact them once a month, send them your availability and follow up.” We give them a script of what to say on the phone and a script of what to write in an email. I’m the client to a lot of freelancers, so I know what works.

Are you combining your previous business like HJZ with this? Now, you’ve got your guys. When a job comes in, you can hand that over almost.

It’s not necessarily because we deal with a union. I can’t necessarily hire people directly from our course, but I can definitely use them. I can’t 100% guarantee them work.

I’m sure there are regulations around who you choose. It means that you’re right in the epicenter of where the deal comes in. I can’t think of anything that would be better positioned. I’m like, “Give this a go at.” It sounds great, particularly if you want to get out of the, “Get out and do things,” and have something where every day is different.

Every day is different and it’s sports.

Who knows what’s going to happen next? That is great. It’s like a Renaissance almost where the old team has gone. The old method has disappeared and the old training. Now, this is new. I was also always fascinated about this instant reporting, where people see things and this is more news as opposed to sports. Do you see yourself moving into other areas like all sorts of opportunities in picking up? Do you know what I mean where someone will see an incident, they’ll film it on their mobile phone and zap it across and that then gets syndicated?

With how technology has changed everything, that can completely be done. You can live stream to anywhere, from anywhere. That’s how our second business started, VES. Viridity Entertainment Services is a live streaming business. We’ve done talk shows, cooking shows, sporting events and concerts all live-streamed. We are all remote. Our crew is not on-site at all.

You can set up a lot of this stuff with green screens and stuff that you can buy from Best Buy, presumably?

We have 25 computers that are high-end gaming laptops with high-def cameras and USB microphones. We send out these camera kits with ethernet cables and ring lights. We send them to whoever is in our show. We’ve done shows with Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley, where we sent them our computers. Over the internet, we can dial into the computer from my office. I can zoom the camera, focus the camera and then bring them into our production fully remote without ever seeing them in person.

That in itself is probably going to give rise to a whole new type of TV show because at the moment, the live streaming is reacting. You’ve got these TV shows where you can choose the outcome. You’ve got the ability to create so much more content. It sounds like you’ve got a tiger by the tail there.

As you said, clients want to get their content out there. This technology was maybe five years down the road. With COVID and everything, it came so much quicker. One of the companies that we work with, NewTek NDI, is making a huge announcement about the advance of their technology, which is going to change the game.

Is that a video card?

NDI is a transport method for video and audio to getting a source from one location to another.

It’s like you do compression and the ability to put a lot more data, so you get much richer images, TV-quality images through a live stream.

You can take sources from anywhere in the world.

I think no one is going to leave their home ever again. For your training, what’s your major focus? Is it the training school?

Our major focus is the live stream company and then the training school. Because of COVID, things changed and the TV business is slowly coming back. We put the training school on hold to probably early fall of 2021. We didn’t want to train people for an industry that we weren’t sure of where it was going. Now, we pretty much have a good idea that things should come back the way they were in the fall. We’re going to start that up again. I’m helping companies get their content out there with the use of our equipment.

Who’s your major client for that?

We’ve done live streams for T-Mobile, Capital One and Verizon. We’ve done concerts at West Point. We’ve done concerts for Salt-N-Pepa and all different avenues.

You manage all the processes. It’s not the provision of the equipment, but it’s pulling everything together, the networking, mixing and changing from camera one to camera two, even though they’re in remote places.

It’s interesting how it works. I have a team of four people, including myself. We work on all of the projects together. I’m in my house and I’m looking at four different computer screens. My director is in his house in New Jersey. My audio person is in his house in New Jersey. We have another tech guy who’s in his house in Brooklyn. We’re all simultaneously working on the same project but all remote.

I’ve seen this with bands that play, where you’ve got the guitarist here and you’ve got the drummer here. They’re all connected and it’s all seamless. They’re all playing and it sounds like they’re in the same studio. Is that the thing that you can manage so you can create the impression of a whole company? Is this important to think for companies to bring people together and have virtual events when there is no office anymore?

Yes. The day of the big conferences is over. You no longer are going to see 500 to 1,000 people travel to a location to a conference because maybe you’ll get 200 people and the conference could be live streamed. With technology, it can be live-streamed. You can have people in different meetup rooms. You can still over the internet network and you would never have to leave your house. You can be productive at your job because you’re not flying. You’re not staying in a hotel room. You’re not away from your family, but you can still take advantage of the conference. It’s what we call the hybrid.

If you take something like Zoom, for example. People naturally assume Zoom is okay. You might get 30 people on the same, but the channel is very crowded. The quality is very low. What you’re able to do is create these virtual separated booths, where people from the comfort of their own homes can have these one-on-one conversations with people. They can network and do all the things that they wanted to do, but without having to jump on a plane, travel and all those extra expenses.

We can do the in-person set up with lights and staging and provide the cameras to shoot people, so you see them on the screens. We also take care of the streaming part so people don’t have to leave and the quality could air on TV because it’s all hi-def.

That’s the most important thing. When you do conferences, there’s a lot of money that’s spent on that initial image. That initial fee that you get when you walk in is huge. If you can deliver that same production quality on a virtual live-stream basis, then again, why would anyone go to all the expense? You don’t know how many seats are going to turn up. You never know with conferences how many people. This presumably removes all that risk in terms of booking huge rooms when fewer people than expected turn up.

We do these live streams. As I said, some of the biggest names we’ve done were Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson. They were in two separate places across the country from each other, talking on the same show. You would never know they were not in the same room. They interacted as if they were together. It’s wherever they were.

It’s that quality. It’s the feeling. You don’t have to sacrifice quality to get that reminder. That’s exciting because I know that one of the biggest impacts that COVID has had in terms of our working practice is the fact that everyone is now much more comfortable working from home. It’s no longer the second choice now. With what you’re doing, do you think more and more of these types of meetings that traditionally would happen in central locations like conferences? Do you think that’s all going to move to your types of platform?

Yes, I honestly do. I still think we’ll have them. They’ll exist, but not to the extent or with the amount of people. No way.

I don’t think it’s to do with sole safety. I think it’s much more efficient. People can spend more time with the people they want to.

Working from home, you’re so much more productive. Take the New York area, for example. If you were driving into New York City, that’s two hours out of your day with no traffic. If there’s no traffic, it’s two hours every day that you have back and then you can be productive without traveling. If you’re going to a conference, you’re away for a few days. You’re away from your family. You can still get work done, attend a conference and you’re more productive.

The great thing is that everyone is in the same boat. Everyone is now used to this and embraces this. Whereas before, it was a case of, “What do you mean you’re not going to be at the conference?” That must be very exciting for you in terms of both the combination of bringing the people in training them up and having this business, particularly with the change in technology that’s coming that’s going to massively improve the quality, speed and accessibility.

To give you an example, I had this one kid, Brandon, in my course in the fall. The TV business was slowed down tremendously. My live stream business amped up. I needed help, so I was able to retrain him in the live stream business. He has been working with us on our last few shows.

To all the companies out there that are looking for ways of engaging customers online, conferences, people that have always thought about putting a conference together but never quite did it because of all the cost and the risk, this is a great way. I presume you need to start with something small and test it.

The thing with our company is we work with such a great team that we can handle it all because I have teams of people that can do different things. I have a staging and lighting team that can handle lighting and staging at the location if there’s one in person. We have a team that handles the live stream portion of it. We have a person that works on if there are hotels and food needed. Whatever is needed, we have great teams of people available to handle those sorts of things.

I’m going to switch gears now. I’m going to take you through the Hooked On Startups quick-fire questionnaire. I know you can’t control your enthusiasm. Howie Zales, question number one. What is your favorite word?

My favorite word is yes. I was always taught never to say no.

On the next question, I think I can guess what it is. What is your least favorite word?

No.

What are you most excited about right now?

The live stream technology, the internet and the way it’s changing so rapidly.

Question number four, what turns you off right now?

Air travel. I traveled for twenty-something years four times a week.

Question number five, what sound or noise do you love?

The engines of my boat starting.

That was, “Yes, it started. Fantastic.” The next best sound is the sound of the transmission engaging, “Yes, that works, too.”

It’s summer in New York and we don’t get a lot of weekends.

That’s a major achievement, just the fact that it starts. Boats are the best way of converting money into noise. Question number six, again, I probably guessed this one. What sound or noise do you hate?

My dog’s barking.

I was going to imagine it’s the sound of the starter on the boat not engaging. Number seven, what is your favorite curse word? You can plead the fifth if you like.

Fuck. I love it. It’s my favorite.

It’s a monumental word. It’s such a small word. It’s so powerful. It’s the foundation of society. Question number eight, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I have to say a baseball player.

What profession would you not like to attempt?

With how technology has changed everything, you can live stream to anywhere from anywhere.

I would not like to be a surgeon.

I was going to say neurosurgeon, having to open up people’s heads and extract baseballs from them. Question number ten, the final question. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Well done, Howie.

Howie, thank you so much for coming on. Final-final question, how do people find out more about you? How do they find out how to contact you about the live streaming? In particular, I think that’s the most exciting thing that you’re working on, as you were saying. How do people get a hold of you?

Our website is ViridityEntertainment.com. I’m available on all social media, Howard Zales at LinkedIn, Howard Zales on Facebook, Instagram @HowieZales.

Howie, thank you so much for coming on. It has been an absolute pleasure. I can’t wait to stay in touch and see how it develops. Thank you once again.

I’m very grateful. Thank you.

Important Links:

• Howard Zales – LinkedIn
• HJZ Productions
• The Broadcast Sports Course
• Viridity Entertainment Services
• Howard Zales – Facebook
• @HowieZales – Instagram
• @VESLivestreams – Facebook
• @HJZProd – Instagram
• @HJZProdInc – Instagram
• @ViridityEntert1 – Twitter
• [email protected]

About Howie Zales

Howie Zales is an Emmy Award-winning Camera Operator who turned his passion for television broadcasting into several entrepreneurial endeavors.

Howie created HJZ Productions, Inc in 2000 to address the need for professional-level sports crewing/staffing in the New York market. Under his leadership, HJZ Productions grew to a multi-million dollar nationwide provider of top talent in the broadcasting field. In 2019, Howie and his team founded Viridity Entertainment Services, Inc. (VES) which initially focused on staffing in non-union markets.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, they quickly pivoted to offering best in class, broadcast-quality livestreams of professional sports shows and interviews, corporate interviews and meetings, and religious services. In addition, Howie took his love of the television production business and created The TV Sports Course, a hands-on training boot camp for the next generation of television crew professionals.

Howie is a graduate of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh’s Mass Communication program.