Miller, Over and Out
KISU’s general manager retires as station celebrates its 20th birthday
After nearly 20 years at as general manager of the public radio station KISU, Jerry Miller retired from that post in June, but will continue to be “the voice of the Bengals” broadcasting Idaho State University men’s football and basketball on commercial radio.
During his career, Miller has done play-by-play radio announcing for more than 2,000 ISU sport contests.
Miller, 66, interviewed for the KISU job only as a favor to a friend.
“After the interview, both of them stood up and said ‘it’s great to have someone with your experience on board. Welcome to ISU,’” Miller said. “I was like, ‘what’s going on here?’ I am not sure I wasn’t the only person interviewed. I was an emergency hire and here I am almost 20 years later.”
Despite only having one day of training and no general manager’s experience, Miller has grown the station. When he began, KISU was a small, 400-watt FM station with a single station number, 91.1 FM. Its wattage has grown 10-fold since then, it has a much more powerful transmitter and now has translator signals in Idaho Falls (91.3) and Rexburg (88.1).
“I think the thing that pleases me most is that very few people in East Idaho are unaware of KISU,” Miller said. “Now you can listen to us all the way up to the Montana border if you’re going up on I-15. You just have to adjust your dial once in a while.”
The Southeast Idaho native has had a varied professional life. However, radio has always been the first love of Miller.
As a student at Brigham Young University, he had an internship with KSL radio in Salt Lake City, which turned into a job after he graduated. At the time, KSL was one of the 12 largest stations in the country.
“It was my sports play-by-play that ended up landing me my first full-time gig, and as a result I ended up being the backup announcer for the Utah Jazz,” Miller said.
As a kid on the farm, he’d listened to Los Angeles Lakers games on his small transistor radio, listening to legendary announcers Chick Hearn and “Hot Rod” Hundley and fantasizing about being a big-time announcer.
“And there I was, my first year out of college and I find myself calling a Lakers-Jazz game in the Forum in Los Angeles in ‘Hot Rod’ Hundley’s chair with Chick Hearn right behind me. In my mind, I had just lived the biggest dream I’d ever had for my career. I walked out of the forum that day wondering where I go from here, and here I am at ISU.”
Miller also worked at KLCE in Blackfoot and KSEI Radio in Pocatello. At KSEI he was “the voice of the Bengals” for 12 years starting in 1982. He didn’t call another ISU game until he was back at KISU, calling women’s basketball games during the 2000-2001 academic year. In 2008, Miller was once again hired to cover ISU men’s basketball and football games on commercial radio.
“I’m going into my 32nd year total of doing ISU games when you combine all the men’s and women’s games,” Miller said. “Going into this season (2019 fall football) I’ve done 2,013 different broadcasts, which, to me, is incredible. I just can’t believe I’ve been around that long.”
Miller has been married 44 years to his wife, Rozan. The couple had seven children and has 20 grandchildren, with another on the way. Besides calling ISU games in retirement, Miller said he hopes to keep up on yard and house work, golf when he and Rozan can, and he loves to fish.
Andy Taylor