Wes Durham Biography
Wes Durham (born January 25, 1966, in Greensboro, North Carolina) is an American sportscaster. He is a play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports coverage of college football. He works telecasts of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) on Fox Sports Networks due to his experience broadcasting in the conference.
He served as the radio play-by-play announcer for the Georgia Tech football and men’s basketball teams from the start of the 1995-1996 season through 2010, and continued to announce the basketball games through 2013.” He was also Georgia Tech’s Director of Broadcasting and is the radio play-by-play announcer for the Atlanta Falcons.
Wes Durham Age
Durham was born on January 25, 1966, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Wes Durham Family | Father
Durham’s father, Woody Durham, was the “Voice of the Tar Heels” for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for forty years. Growing up in that environment gave Wes the opportunity to see behind the scenes of sports and sports broadcasting.
Wes Durham Marriage | Wife
Durham is a married man. He is married to Vicky. On 3 February 2016, he wishes his wife a very Happy Birthday on Facebook. ”Her Spirit, support and love is such a blessing to me, her family and friends.”
Wes Durham Education
Wes worked as a disc jockey for a roller rink and for a radio station during high school. Wes Durham attended Apex High School. He then went to Elon College and learned about broadcasting while working as an undergraduate assistant on the Elon Sports Network.
After graduating in 1988, he had stints as the radio announcer for the athletic teams at Marshall University and Radford University. He then spent three years at Vanderbilt.
Wes Durham And Mark Packer
Durham, who once served as the radio voice of Radford University basketball, is one of the stars of the new ACC Network. Durham and Mark Packer will be the co-hosts of the new television channel’s “Packer and Durham” talk show, which debuts at 7 a.m. Friday. The program will air weekdays from 7-10 a.m.
“I’m just glad to be a part of [the ACC Network],” Durham said. “It was cool to be asked to be a part of this and for them to hand Pack and I the keys to do the show, which will be fun to do.
Durham will also serve as a football and men’s basketball play-by-play announcer for the ESPN-owned ACC Network. He will work for a different employer on Sundays. He is keeping his job as the radio play-by-play voice of the Atlanta Falcons.
Durham and Packer are already used to working together. They have co-hosted “ACC Central” from 7-10 a.m. on Sirius XM ACC Radio (Ch. 371) since last year. Sirius XM ACC Radio will now simulcast their TV show at that time instead. “When he gets rolling on some things, I’ll probably be regarded as the straight man. But we have a lot of laughs,” Durham said. Durham did their old SiriusXM show from his home in Georgia, while Packer was at his home in Charlotte.
For the TV show, the two men will be in the same place. The Connecticut-based ACC Network has built a TV set in the basement of Packer’s home. So Durham has moved into an apartment in Charlotte; his wife will go back and forth from there and their house in Georgia.
Durham and Packer will conduct remote interviews with ESPN folks in Bristol, Connecticut, and with ACC coaches on campuses. Virginia Tech carved a “bureau cam” room out of the Cassell Coliseum press room, for example, while UVa has a remote-interview studio at John Paul Jones Arena.
“We have the ability to do a lot of interviews because these campus facilities, whether it’s the one in Blacksburg or Charlottesville or any of these other places, that’s the secret sauce,” Durham said.
Friday’s debut show will include interviews with UVa men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett, UVa men’s lacrosse coach Lars Tiffany, and Virginia Tech wrestling coach Tony Robie. “Packer and Durham” will re-air on the ACC Network from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. weekdays.
Durham used to do TV play-by-play for the ACC’s syndicated cable package of football and basketball games (which will still be seen in this area on NBC Sports Washington). His new partner on ACC Network football games will be former Georgia Tech running back Roddy Jones; they will be among three football announcing teams on the news channel.
Durham also used to do TV basketball play-by-play for Raycom’s syndicated games, which aired in this area on WFXR and WWCW. Because of the launch of the ACC Network, Raycom will no longer be doing football and basketball games. Durham was hired at Radford after graduating from Elon in 1988. He spent three basketball seasons announcing Radford games. He moved on to Marshall, Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech before switching to TV in 2013.
Wes Durham Georgia Tech
Durham came to Georgia Tech in the fall of 1995. In 1997, he was also named Tech’s Director of Broadcasting. Durham was normally paired with former Georgia Tech and NFL quarterback Rick Strom in football and Atlanta TV sports reporter Randy Waters on basketball.
Particularly known is his statement upon Calvin Johnson’s game-winning catch against Clemson in a 2004 game “He has lived up to the legendary billing… And the legend is born in Calvin Johnson! ”
After Durham left his role at Georgia Tech in 2013, his duties were taken over by Brandon Gaudin.
Wes Durham Broadcasting Career
Play-by-play
Beginning with the 2004 NFL season, Durham also took on the radio play-by-play duties for the Atlanta Falcons in addition to his responsibilities at Georgia Tech. In 2011, when Raycom Sports began producing ACC college football games to air on Fox Sports Net (under a sub-license from ESPN), Durham was called upon to be the play-by-play announcer due to his long history working in the ACC. He was teamed with analyst James Bates.
Wes Durham Radio host
In 2018, Durham began hosting ACC This Morning on SiriusXM ACC Radio, with co-host Mark Packer. In March 2019, it was announced that the duo would host a similar program in simulcast with SiriusXM and ESPN’s new ACC Network, Packer and Durham.
Wes Durham Falcons Radio
The Atlanta Falcons, after eight years, has dropped 92.9/Dave-FM as its radio partner and is moving to Star 94 and 790/The Zone. Those two stations will simulcast Falcons games starting this upcoming season. CBS Atlanta will also pick up the pre-season games and special weekly Falcons shows which had been on NBC affiliate WXIA-TV.
Financial terms for the four-year deal were not disclosed though given how much more popular the NFL is now, it’s likely a richer deal than what CBS Radio signed in 2003 for radio rights.
The Zone has been providing exclusive sports content for CBS Atlanta over the past year. For the past two years, the Zone was already a partner with the Falcons, helping CBS (which owns Dave FM) with sales. Others reportedly in the running for the Falcons included Dave FM, 680/The Fan (owned by Dickey Broadcasting) and Clear Channel Atlanta, which owns 640/WGST-AM and Project 9-6-1, among others.
The Falcons first aired on radio in 1966 on what was then 790/WQXI-AM and stayed there for a decade. According to CBS Atlanta, which broke the story, “fans will still hear the familiar voices of Falcon’s broadcasters Wes Durham (play-by-play) and former Falcons quarterback Dave Archer (color analyst) calling all of the Falcons action on both stations.”
Given 790/The Zone’s limited coverage area, Star 94, with its 100,000-watt signal, will fill in the gaps. While the NFL has a sizable female audience, football is still a heavily male-oriented sport. Star 94 draws 70 percent of females. It’s a bit of a mismatch.
But this affects pop station Star only on Sunday afternoons for 20 weeks or so out of the year (including pre-season games, not counting playoffs) and maybe a stray Monday or two. This is not like the Braves, which takes Rock 100.5 out of music commission 160-plus days out of the year.
Wes Durham Fox Sports
First, it was growing up as the son of legendary University of North Carolina announcer Woody Durham, and then it was his own career as the radio play-by-play voice of Georgia Tech athletics and the Falcons. Durham, who left Tech in 2013 to join Fox Sports, has joined the ACC Network, which will launch in August, in addition to calling Falcons games.
In a recent exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the Atlanta Sports Awards ceremony, Durham spoke of his new job and what he thinks of changes in Tech football and offered a few thoughts on the Falcons.