Steven Leventhal

Co-founder of SRN Broadcasting and InternetFM

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My broadcast career began in 1977 at a 500-watt radio station in Statesville, North Carolina.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I developed a love for college basketball. While in college, I studied creative writing under James Reston, Jr. (Frost/Nixon) and Bland Simpson, currently the head of UNC’s writing program.

After a brief hiatus, I co-founded SRN Broadcasting in 1993. The company began as Sports Radio Nightly, a night time alternative to sports talk radio in Chicago. Not long after, we added a home improvement show and in 1994, music programming, so the name was changed to SRN to encompass these new formats.

In 1998 l developed what were the first of several bold innovations, leveraging the emerging audio technology of RealAudio (this is prior to the emergence of mp3 as the standard in audio) to provide post game interviews to the sports pages on major newspaper websites.

Before then, newspaper content was static, with stories and photos. SRN made deals with every major newspaper chain in America including Gannett, Knight-Ridder, New York Times Company, Tribune Companies, Washington Post, and Advance Publications. We also worked with the Denver Post, Houston Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as two sports teams: the New York Islanders and Carolina Hurricanes. At its peak, the content extended to 38 different newspaper websites, as our SRN reporters and freelancers were covering a hundred sporting events a month.

At one time or another, I covered every pro sports team in Chicago, along with Northwestern University. I have been fortunate to have attended marquee sports events such as The Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup, NCAA Final Four (men and women) and PGA Golf. I was in the right place at the right time and was a member of the media during for three of the Chicago Bulls’ six NBA championships.

In 2006 I conceived one of the very first sports blogs sites, YourSportsFan.com. In order to provide content, we recruited reporters from SRN stable of sports correspondents, as well as providing my own original writing. Even though YSF did not last, I shifted all the written material to the SRN website. That total now exceeds two thousand pieces of creative content.

In my freelance writing career, I contributed articles and chapters for Wrigley Season Ticket (Maple Street Press) Pink Floyd FAQ (Backbeat Books/Hal Leonard), and Inside Carolina Magazine (24/7 Sports). 

One of the highlights of my journalism career has been the opportunity to interview numerous sports celebrities such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant,  Rory McIlroy, John Elway, Julius Peppers, along with music legends like John Fogerty, Edgar Winter, Al Stewart, and Alan Parsons.

My skills as an engineer were honed in the studio as producer for a number of programs such as Diamond Gems Baseball Show, the Bears-Packers Showdown, Home Improvement USA, and Psychedelic Time Warp.

I teamed up with Chicago Cubs play-by-play broadcaster Pat Hughes to serve as studio engineer for his acclaimed series of CD’s. The Baseball Voices audio tributes to Hall of Fame broadcasters now comprises seventeen releases that I have worked on for the Hall of Fame baseball announcer.

2012 saw the online launch of Acid Flashback Radio, fulfilling my lifelong dream of owning and programming my own music radio station. I also produce and syndicate a weekly two-hour radio show to eight markets in the US and Australia.  For rock music fans, I can be heard live every Friday on Acid Flashback Radio from noon to 3 pm ET.

With the help of my son Eric, we developed the mobile app InternetFM in 2018 to provide a platform for Acid Flashback and forty-eight other music stations from the US, Canada, the UK, France, and the Netherlands. 

I also enjoy designing and created websites. That includes the website for my wife’s travel agency, to which I have contributed travelogs from exotic destinations such as Peru, Kenya, Tanzania, Panama, and Costa Rica.

I’ve created a page with numerous writing samples in Entertainment, Sports, and Travel.

I am a member of the US Basketball Writers Association, Football Writers Association of America, Chicago Writers Assiciation, and the Pitch to Published online writers community.

My current writing project is a book about 1982, my senior year at UNC, and Michael Jordan’s freshman year, when Dean Smith won his first NCAA title. My coming-of-age story parallels the beginning of the unheralded, but talented Jordan’s journey to confidence and success. Likewise, I stepped into a leadership role which eventually changed my life and ultimately led to a career in sports broadcasting and feature writing, where our paths would cross again.

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One of the things I enjoy in my spare time is making collages. Here are some examples.