We recently connected with Mike Lucas and have shared our conversation below.

Mike , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Moving to Cleveland, a city I’ve never been to in a state I’ve never lived in before, to launch a brand-new type of show definitely counts as a risk in my book. The show only had funding for 9 months at first so there was a chance I was going to pack up my life, move to a new city, and then have to do the exact same thing less than a year later. Luckily, the show has taken off, we’ve been extended, I’ve grown to love & appreciate Cleveland and it’s all worked out for the better, but there’s an alternate universe where this all goes terribly wrong and I’m not working in media anymore.

Mike , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Mike Lucas, aka Mikey McNuggets, the lead producer of the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show. I come from a traditional TV background but left a sports anchoring job in Texas to launch Tegna’s new digital sports project. After doing this for a little over a year now, I can’t see any scenario where I’d want to go back to traditional, linear TV. I love being able to give stories and topics the full time it deserves…not just squeezing something into 90 seconds because that’s all that fits in the rundown.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Consistency & timeliness are key. We built up a pretty big following right off the bat when we launched the show, but then saw it plateau for a bit. We’re on 5 days a week, at the same time every day, and now we have a dedicated base that comes back because they know exactly what and when they’re going to get the best Cleveland sports content in town. The topics and panel change, but the product itself is as consistent as can be. We’ve also learned that we need to be able to adapt on the fly to make sure what we’re discussing every day is what the audience wants to hear. We can have the greatest debate in the world but if it’s on a topic no one cares about, no one will ever hear it but us. Learning and understanding our audience has been key to growing our base.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I always wanted to work in sports, but my first TV job was as an overnight producer in Bristol, VA. The news director who hired me told me if I wanted to do sports, I had to work my way up the ladder to get there. Mind you, I had zero interest in ever being a news producer, especially one who works vampire hours. My goal was to be an on-air sports personality though and this is what I had to do to get my foot in the door, so I sucked it up, produced the 6 am show for a year, helped make it the #1 6 am newscast in the market, and eventually got a chance to do sports. Once I got my first taste of being an on-air sports person, there was a 0.0% chance I was ever going back to working news.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Mlukes14
• Twitter: @mikelucasTV