Kevin Barnett
If you met Kevin Barnett as he was growing up in St. Bernard, you knew he would find a career in sports.
At 6’5” Barnett was a four-sport athlete at St. Bernard/Elmwood Place High School — soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis. He’s in the school’s Hall of Fame.
A self-proclaimed statistics nerd, he devoured box scores of games and collected baseball cards to check out the numbers.
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn he did television news in high school all four years.
Then it was off to Rio Grande University to play soccer and major in broadcast communications. The school didn’t have a lot of electronic media, but it did have connections to Cincinnati television stations. Barnett interned at WKRC-TV in 1990.
The rest is history.
“Ken Broo hired me for the station,” Barnett said, relating how he won a competition with another intern to produce a sports segment for the 11:00 p.m. News. It was a one-time opportunity for $7.85 in pay with a part-time position on the line.
“I would have worked for free, but Broo called the next day and said I got the job,” Barnett recalled.
It was 1991 and Barnett was now the part-time sports producer for Local 12. To make ends meet, he worked a landscaping job during the day and clocked in at WKRC for afternoon and evening sports. It didn’t take long for WKRC news managers to recognize Barnett’s talent and he was hired full-time in 1992.
As Executive Sports Producer, Barnett worked with Broo producing the Boos and Bravos segment. He also did some reporting doing sidebar stories on the Cincinnati Bengals since WKRC was the Bengals station at the time.
“We tried to be different,” he said. “I owe everything to that man.”
In the past 30-years virtually all of WKRC-TV’s sports coverage had Barnett’s fingerprints on it.
He’s credited with being the creative mind behind Local 12 legends Broo, Walt Maher, Ken Anderson, Brad Johansen and ESPN’s Gary Miller.
Barnett created Friday Night Final, the first extended high school sports show in the Cincinnati market — seven minutes and 55-seconds of scores and highlights.
A show called Sports Locker debuted with Broo as host, but was shelved when Broo left to work in Washington, D.C. Barnett and Johansen later revived it.
The Barnett/Johansen partnership continued with Sports Authority, one of Cincinnati’s longest running Sunday night sports shows.
And Bengals Nation was Cincinnati’s only weekly Bengals show taped in front of a live audience.
That’s quite a list, but there’s more.
He’s been Executive Producer on the Reds Opening Day Show, the Bengals preseason, playoff and Super Bowl specials, Luke Fickell’s UC Coach Show, FC Cincinnati preseason special and the Jim Beam Turfway Park specials. He’s covered a Super Bowl, MLB Playoffs, NCAA Basketball Championships, the Kentucky Derby, NASCAR, ATP Tennis and more.
Those efforts have won multiple Emmy nominations and Emmys plus regional and national awards.
Barnett says he’s very proud “Bengals Nation” won a Bronze Telly award this year, coming in behind “Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli Manning” and the “Olympic Channel.”
The one experience Barnett considers the most memorable of his career came the day Xavier’s Musketeers won their first Big East regular season championship in 2018. Coach Chris Mack was at the helm and Barnett says he got tears in his eyes as he watched Mack help cut down the nets after the victory.
That’s because from 1992 through 1996 he and the Xavier, Louisville and now College of Charleston Head Basketball coach were roommates. They became best friends and still keep in touch to this day.
Barnett was understandably excited to be chosen for the Greater Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame.
“Every day I am lucky to be doing this — doing what I love,” Barnett said. “This is the pinnacle,” This is special to me.”
HIs mother was in tears at hearing the news, having raised him as a single parent.
His wife added, “This makes up for all the times you were away on assignment.”