Announcing Development Committee
Now Seeking Committee Members
Since 2020 there has been a real growth in the amount of roller derby that is broadcast every weekend. With the WFTDA Regional and Global Championship tournaments in 2024, there is an opportunity to kick-start development, support, education, and resources to increase and improve roller derby announcers across the world.
Announcing should be treated in the same way as officiating in that there are clear paths and support structures for development and improvement. We do not have enough good, experienced announcers, and we could all learn more from each other.
In an effort to support the development of roller derby announcing, the WFTDA is creating the Announcing Development Committee (ADC), with the ambition to develop and share experience, guidance, advice, information, and best practice for announcers and leagues. The intention is for ADC to work with announcers and with the Roller Derby Announcers Association to develop and create educational resources which can be shared across organisations and announcers.
The other driving factor for the ADC is to provide support for Regional and Global Championship host leagues with announcing and broadcast for 2024 and future tournaments.
Our ambition is to recruit a group of announcers from a range of experiences, countries, and languages who will develop the ADC and work plan. We want to take the knowledge and experience across our announcer community to help define standards and examples of what good announcing is. We are not an easy sport to understand and to address the barriers in attracting new people to watch our content—and to reach wider distribution channels than we currently do—we need to improve how we explain the sport to other people. And there is also so much more that can be done in developing resources for those more remote or less able to travel announcers—and developed in multiple languages.
Job Description for ADC Members
Applications to join the ADC are now open. We are looking for announcers with experience in in-house, broadcast, and production, but also want to hear from newer announcers who have ideas about what resources would support their development. We are keen for applications from announcers who work in languages other than English or parts of the world less visible on WFTDA.tv.
To ensure a wide variety of experience and spread, we expect to create the ADC with 8-10 people, depending on the applications received.
The role of ADC members isn’t fully defined at this stage, as we believe that the initial responsibility of the ADC is to work with the announcing community to develop a work plan designed to address the needs identified. We are also expecting ADC to be able to give advice and guidance to host leagues for the 2024 Regional and Global Championship as required or requested.
With these expectations we are expecting ADC members to give a significant time commitment, especially in the first few months to establish the community’s needs and develop the work plan, alongside supporting the needs of host leagues with Regional or Global Championships in 2024.
Timeline
Application deadline: May 10
Acceptances emailed out by: May 27
First meeting w/c: June 10
If you have any questions please contact announcers@wftda.com.