Zachary Hiser has always been driven by two passions, race car driving and radio broadcasting. The storied course of Zach’s life served to bring these passions together into a career, and Zach now works positions both as the midday host for Radio Hillsdale WCSR and as the media director for Motor City Racing Promotions.
Zach grew up loving the thrill of motor sports, so much so that in 2005, at the age of 10, he made quite the splash when he began driving race cars himself. His youth and exceptional talent made a stir in the industry as his story was picked up by local news stations and reaching so far as the Chicago Tribune. Eventually the waters calmed around the story, but media attention or not Zach continued to race. Unfortunately, in 2010, he and his race team experienced a tragedy when a huge garage fire sent them back to essentially zero on years of work. Still Zach continued to race, yet despite the best efforts of him and his team, they never managed to build back to the caliber of equipment they had been at prior to the fire. In 2014, after blowing up two engines over the course of four races, Zach decided it was time to put the steering wheel aside and find another way to build off his love for racing.
Zach’s life off of the race track had already started him down the path of broadcasting. He had a received an entry level position as a board operator with Radio Hillsdale WCSR. It was there that his managers, believing he had the talent to be an on-air personality given some training, pointed him the direction of the Specs Howard School of Media Arts. Zach enrolled in our broadcast media arts program and while attending the program was made aware of the fact that his local race track, Butler Motor Speedway, needed an additional announcer from time to time. Citing his previous radio experience and on-going training to further his broadcasting talents, Zach was readily accepted into the position. From there, filling in every couple weeks at the track turned into running the announcements every week. Additionally, upon his graduation from Specs Howard in 2015, Zach was given a weekend on-air shift by WCSR as well as various other on-air opportunities.
Over the next couple years, Zach continued to put his all into combining his passions for racing and broadcast into an even more ideal situation, and in 2017 he accepted his position as media director for Motor City Racing Promotions. Zach has a number of duties in this role, first and foremost being to travel with the two tours they’re contracted to work for, those being the American Ethanol Late Model Tour and the American Ethanol Modified Tour. These dirt track racing tours travel all around not just Michigan, but Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio as well. Zach travels with them, performing lead announcer and broadcaster duties. He also manages many online, written media outputs for the company, including social media postings and press releases. Additionally, Zach hosts the company’s podcast, Horsepower Happenings.
Zach has also used his media training to bring a number of innovations and advancements to the company he works for. Part of his role as lead broadcaster involves a live internet broadcast, one that Zach himself pioneered for them when he started his position. After launching these internet broadcasts, Zach found himself unsatisfied with the broadcast and announcing style being utilized by the team. Often times there was a lot of dead air, which Zach found unappealing. He took his training, split the track between him and his co-announcer, and began broadcasting in a more active, informational way than was previously being used.
Zach considers himself blessed to have been able to so successfully merge his two major passions into a career. Monday through Thursday he hosts midday on WSCR, and over the weekend he helps bring his favorite sport to fans and aficionados everywhere. Looking towards the future, Zach hopes to continue to put race fans more in touch with the events they can’t attend themselves. He looks forward to continue improving the way the races are broadcast, both from a stylistic and technical prospective. A big, ongoing goal for Zach is to one day incorporate live video broadcasting along with the live audio broadcasting they already provide.
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