Late-Round Perspectives: James Koh

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

James Koh is a co-owner of Reception Perception, who's done work for NFL Network, Sirius XM, Yahoo Sports, RotoWire and DirecTV, among other spots. He's a sports broadcaster, a professor, a four-time Emmy winner, and some might refer to him as The Sleeper King. These are his late-round perspectives.

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You've been everywhere. You've been everywhere. And last year, I was following your amateur boxing thing that you were doing and stuff.

James Koh (1:40)

Oh, man. That was last year, right? That was two years ago, actually.

JJ Zachariason (1:43)

Two years ago. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was fun to watch. That was fun to see what you were doing.

James Koh (1:47)

Time flies.

JJ Zachariason (1:48)

It really does. Yeah, because we met each other years and years ago.

James Koh (1:53)

Oh, ages ago. This was pre-pandemic, right? Yeah, it had to have been.

JJ Zachariason (1:58)

It was pre-pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. That's insane. I mean, it's been a while. You know, every time that we interact and stuff like that, I'm always excited to see your, you know, your avatar or wherever it may be. But I'm excited, man. I'm really excited to dig in here. Let's talk about that resume and that journey that has gone. I mean, like I said, I was going in, like you're an Emmy winner, a multi-time Emmy winner, because you know, you do the broadcasting stuff, but then you also got into the fantasy stuff. And how did all of this come about for James Koh?

James Koh (2:32)

So yeah, so I've won a bunch of Emmy awards in my previous life as like a, you know, on camera news guy. So I won two Emmys doing hard news. Like when I first started my TV career, I was just covering regular news. I didn't do sports at all. I was covering like, you know, like, you know, Fed rate hikes and like car crashes and like burglaries.

JJ Zachariason (2:57)

I'm assuming, I'm assuming some car chases that you've.

James Koh (2:59)

Yeah, a lot of car chases in there too. A weather report's like, oh, the five freeways got ice on it. We go live to James Koh. What's what's happening over there? I'm getting pelted by ice and rain and stuff. It's like, man, it's crazy. Anyways, yeah, so no, I was doing hard news for a bit. And then I was a local news reporter for like six years. And then when I finally got to LA., I was doing local news. But then my my news director, my boss asked if I want to do sports. I'm like, yeah, of course. And to be clear, I always wanted to do sports. So it's not as if this came out of the blue. I always wanted to do sports, but I also had to pay the bills and to do that. You can move up in the industry a lot faster covering news than you do covering sports. I don't know for anyone who's listening out there. It's like think about your like local sportscaster guy. He's probably been in that seat for like 20 years. So waiting for somebody to like retire or move on, it's not a great career choice or smart career choice. So I wanted to make a career choice where I can like move up the ranks a lot faster and get paid faster and do those things. And finally, when I got to LA, I started doing some weekend sports and stuff like that. That's before I got to NFL Network.

JJ Zachariason (4:13)

Yeah, so then from there, you got to NFL Network and that's where, like was fantasy part of like your repertoire in terms of like what you were interested in or was it the broadcasting that kind of got you into then the door with like NFL Network?