The team who edits ESPN’s SportsCenter earned an Emmy® Award for Outstanding Daily Studio Sports Show at the 44th Annual Sports Emmy® Awards earlier this year. Alumni from Connecticut State Community College Middlesex (formerly Middlesex Community College) worked as video editors for the show and credit their achievement to their learning experiences at the college and its Center for New Media. They include Nils Toledo, lead video editor, and Tyler Greenbacker, post-production editor.
Nils Toledo
“These were dedicated students who, when they attended Middlesex, took advantage of the real-world, hands-on learning that our programs, faculty and the Center for New Media provided. There are hundreds of top four-year colleges teaching sports broadcasting and production, making competition for jobs very difficult. The fact these graduates were hired by the leading sports broadcaster in the world—some right out of college—and received the highest honor in broadcast television, says a lot about the quality of education they received at Middlesex,” said Rich Lenoce, former professor and program coordinator, Digital Media Production and Communication programs at Middlesex.
Toledo, who received an associate degree in communication from Middlesex in 2012, said he enrolled in cinema and media classes with communication professor John Shafer and Lenoce, and worked with Peter Galgano, former media associate at the Center for New Media.
“My classes gave me practical experience with media production and how shows are created. I learned about every aspect of production, especially from Rich and Pete. These are skills that I’ve carried with me and continued to build upon even years later,” said Toledo.
“Today, I edit video for SportsCenter daily, ranging from game highlights that are edited live, to pre-produced segments, interviews, essays, montages and everything in between,” Toledo explained about his job at ESPN. “The majority of the team who works on content for SportsCenter was recognized, but this is the first year that editors have been added as eligible roles for entry for the Outstanding Studio Show category, which is what we won.”
After Middlesex, Toledo transferred to Central Connecticut State University and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Media Production in 2013. He worked as a video editor at Fox61 in Hartford before joining ESPN in 2015.
Tyler Greenbacker
Greenbacker, who graduated from Middlesex with a broadcast-cinema degree in 2013, said he contributed to the show by editing a range of content from highlights to features.
“SportsCenter is our daily sports and news show, so it really encompasses many different aspects of creative editing for the show to go on air,” said Greenbacker.
“I truly wouldn’t be where I am right now in my professional career if it wasn’t for my time at Middlesex. I knew that I wanted to work in film or TV. At the time, I thought the only real way to have a career in that field was to be on camera—which is the last thing I wanted to do—but I did like using a camera and playing with iMovie,” Greenbacker added.
Greenbacker mentioned that a professor provided him with an opportunity immediately after graduating to assume the role of a photographer/editor at WFSB Channel 3 Eyewitness News in 2013. He began working as a video editor for ESPN in 2017.
“Middlesex is truly blessed with the team they have in the Center of New Media, because they all have experience in the business. They’re able to take what they’ve experienced in their careers and pass on that knowledge to me and so many other students who have moved onto bigger and better things,” Greenbacker said.
Toledo noted that alum Joe Frady (1998 Broadcast Communications) and Mike Carbone, who attended Middlesex and Tunxis in 2003, also received an Emmy for the working on the show.
The 44th Annual Sports Emmy® Awards were announced by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in May 2023. SportsCenter was nominated along with the shows MLB Tonight, Pardon the Interruption and NFL Live.
The Center for New Media offers innovative applied associate of science degrees in new media production, with concentrations in film and video; multimedia design and digital arts; news and sports; corporate video production; web design and development, and audio and music production, as well as a transfer associate of arts degree in communication studies.
December 2023
