Joe Towns is the director of the Cardiff Met Sport Broadcast Program and a senior lecturer at the university.
From covering the Six Nations to the Olympics, Towns stepped away from his career at the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2017 to start Britain’s first ever course in sports broadcasting at Cardiff Met.
“What we are doing is fairly unique in Britain, and the fairly obvious place to look was the American colleges,” Towns said. “I was looking around for courses similar to what we were trying to create, a live sports broadcast production degree, and there are not many in Britain, those are more journalism based.
“That is how our relationship started with Ball State. Now we do virtual lectures back and forth, their students watch our live streams, and our students watch theirs and they give feedback to each other and collaborate globally.”
After graduating from Loughbourough in Mumbles and working as a journalist with the South Wales Evening Post, Towns spent 2001 to 2016 as a TV Sports producer in the broadcast industry.
Primarily working at Sky Sports (2001-2007) and BBC Sport (2007-2016), his career also included Eurosport, IMG and BTSport.
His experience includes producing live coverage of the Olympic Games 2012 & 2016, Commonwealth Games 2010 & 2014, Wimbledon 2008-2016, Open Golf, Six Nations Rugby & FA Cup Football.
Towns was also a series producer of ScrumV 2010-2016, responsible for ScrumVLive, ScrumV Sunday and Scrum V Six Nations Special. He also created, launched and produced BBC Wales TV programs Sports Wales and the annual Welsh Sports Review.
“The sporting revolution won’t just be televised,” Towns said. “It will be tweeted and streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, viewed through VR glasses and then carved in to short-form content and shared, liked, packaged-up and podcasted. Technology is driving the change, 4K, 3D, HD cameras and hugely improved connectivity at stadiums. The whole experience of a sport broadcast is changing every season. That’s why we’ve created this new academic course to try and satisfy and serve a rapidly changing job market.”
Towns perspective on the Welsh culture, plus the impact of sport in Wales and at Cardiff Met, provides important context to our Transatlantic Storytelling documentary.
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