by Ray Sanchez © 01.17.16
Lou Romano is so talented and so much sought after in the broadcasting business it seems
he’s held more positions than snowflakes have fallen in El Paso the past month. I mean, since he first picked up a microphone as a freshman at Mesa State University in Colorado he’s been a sports director, weekend news anchor, weekday news reporter, sports show creator, producer, writer, news director, freelance reporter/anchor, morning news anchor, ad salesman …
Whew. You get the idea.
AND NOW, El Paso is lucky to have him back. I say “back” because, as most sports fans know, he was lured here by KVIA-TV way back in 1990. He arrived in El Paso in December of that year as a 22-year-old to be weekend sportscaster/weekday reporter under legendary sports director Fred Albers.
He was an instant hit and was promoted to sports director in 1993. As such, he created El Paso’s first Friday night high school football TV show, The Borderland Blitz, which is still airing on KVIA-TV.
THEN TRAGEDY struck. Romano lost his mother to cancer in 1996. The next year, he suffered a life threatening blood clot. And in 1998 he lost his father to cancer.
“It was then when I began to look at life differently because I had done nothing but work in radio/TV sports since I was a freshman in college,” he says. “I chose to leave KVIA and the TV industry in May of 2000 and moved back to my hometown of New York City to enjoy family and friends.”
But it wasn’t long before he was back in the business. He found work anchoring sports for News12 in Long Island, the same company that owns Madison Square Garden and the Madison Garden TV network.
A FEW YEARS later he accepted a job as a producer for a new cable channel owned by Comcast. “I didn’t like it,” he says. “It was then when I realized my passion was being on the air and not behind the scenes. I resigned.
“That same weekend I went to Phoenix to visit some friends and to clear my head. While in Phoenix, I ran into a friend who was the sportscaster at the CBS station in Phoenix. He hired me to be a freelance reporter/anchor but only had enough money to use me a few days out of the week.”
But then, Romano got a call from KDBC in El Paso with a job offer to be co-anchor of the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts. “My co-anchor was to be Nichole Ayoub,” he says. “I accepted thinking it would be fun to anchor news instead of sports.”
BUT BEFORE he could take over as male co-anchor for news he had to wait for the current anchor’s contract to expire. So they put him on the KDBC morning show.
It didn’t work out. So he began to work for KLAQ doing primarily sales. Then Phoenix beckoned again and he accepted a position there as part time news anchor.
He says, “I did that for a few years and then the ‘new’ KDBC in El Paso called to say they were wiping out the old KDBC.
“The company that owns KFOX had purchased KDBC and renamed it CBS4. Since there was no sportscaster at either station they decided they needed one. They asked me if I was interested and I jumped at the chance. We launched in mid-October of 2014.
“So here I am.”
It’s been quite a journey, but welcome back, Lou. You make our already excellent local sports media even better with your experience and never-ending enthusiasm.