HUNTLEY – When Huntley Area Public Library Communications Assistant and Webmaster Doug Cataldo isn’t laying out Library Links, updating and designing huntleylibrary.org, or doing any number of other media-related library tasks that give the library its “good looks,” he’s talking about cardboard.
Now that’s a contrast, huh?
Not so much when you learn that by “cardboard” we mean baseball cards, other sports trading cards, collectables, and memorabilia, and by “talking” we mean Cardboard Connection Radio, an online radio show Cataldo co-hosts with Russ Cohen and Rob Bertrand.
“I’ve been doing it for ten years. It started off as a hobby, but the show got pretty popular with collectors,” Cataldo said.
Cataldo said that the idea for Cardboard Connection Radio spawned from a conversation he had with longtime friend Russ Cohen while attending an Army Navy football game. The year was late 1999, the Internet was still small and lacking information, especially sports information.
“There really was no dominant force on the Internet for information. So we started a site called Baseballology, which was all about baseball,” Cataldo said. “We went the whole nine yards.”
As technology caught up and places like ESPN gained sports-related Web traction, Cataldo said Baseballology seemed redundant.
“But we kept the sports collectables part of the site going for a long time, and we started podcasting and doing live radio remotes from collectables events,” said Cataldo.
Cataldo explained that the focus was generally always on the athlete and the event.
“We kind of focused on the athlete and the collectable aspect of things. And nobody was doing that at the time,” Cataldo said.
Doors started opening for Cataldo and Cohen after broadcasting live from the Upper Deck Trading Cards booth at the 2001 NHL All-Star Game in Denver, Colorado.
“It was huge for us,” Cataldo said.
From that point, they rode the airwaves to premier events like the NFL Experience at the Superbowl, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NBA Jam Sessions, and more.
“We got involved with all the leagues. It was tremendous,” said Cataldo.
The radio show soon started featuring interviews and talks with “top-notch” athletes and entertainers, and eventually it evolved into a weekly radio show.
“It went from a half hour to an hour to 90 minutes,” Cataldo said.
Around 2007, Cataldo admitted to getting “burned out on the hobby itself,” so he took a break.
“There was a lot of generic stuff and a lot of repetitive sets with just minor updates. It got kind of boring,” Cataldo said. “You want to be challenged. You want something to blow your mind. And sometimes you have to go find [it]. It got to a point where I just wasn’t motivated to find it anymore.”
Then in early 2009, other longtime friend Rob Bertrand motivated Cataldo to revitalize the show.
“We’ve been doing it ever since. Russ [Cohen] rejoined the show, and every week, we try to provide collectors with some insight on the hobby, the new sets, the new products, and the new things that are coming out.”
Cardboard Connection Radio also features guests from all the trading card and collectable companies, like Tops, Upper Deck or even branches out to non-sports-card companies.
“We try to involve everybody, every aspect of that collectables industry,” Cataldo said, adding that they also feature writers, trading card creators, designers, and product managers who create the sets, while still doing interviews with the athletes and entertainers the cards boast or collectables boast.
Cataldo said he and his co-hosts will still occasionally broadcast remotely from major events like the Superbowl or All-Star Games, too.
“It’s kind of like a hobby that turned into a small business,” Cataldo said.
Cardboard Connection Radio broadcasts every Friday night from 10 to 11:30 p.m. Central Standard Time at www.blogtalkradio.com/cardboardconnectionradio
“The cool thing is they [listeners] can call in and talk to us and win prizes. We give away autographs and memorabilia and trading cards,” Cataldo said. “But the good thing is [because it’s online] you can listen 24/7.”
