About Will Charlton
Will is the current Sports Multimedia Journalist with KRTV in Great Falls, Montana. The job has allowed him to cover all sorts of high school athletics in the Great Falls viewing area, where he has produced numerous feature stories and highlight tapes. He started with KRTV in July 2024.
He recently graduated from the University of Illinois in May as he received his B.S. in journalism. The Chicago, Illinois native has been involved in sports broadcasting since his sophomore year in high school where he was on football and basketball broadcasts. His first-ever live play-by-play experience came his junior year calling high school football. Since then, his work in play-by-play extends to NCAA football, volleyball, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball. On top of that, he was most recently the Broadcast & Media Relations Intern with the Wausau Woodchucks of the Northwoods League where he called 72 baseball games on TV and radio. He has also done extensive work as a beat reporter for the website The Champaign Room — the Illinois SB Nation site — and has been an reporter/anchor on the student-run sports show Illini Sports Night. One of the biggest accomplishments Will has to his name is anchoring on a Crystal Pillar/Emmy winning women’s basketball pregame show his junior year of college.
See below for more information on each.
Anchor/MMJ
With KRTV, Will has covered all sorts of fall and summer sporting events. This extends from high school football to the rodeo. He is also the sports anchor for the 10 p.m. news on Fridays and Saturdays. You can watch live KRTV broadcasts at krtv.com, and you can also find all of Will’s daily content on montanasports.com.
Will was a talent on the weekly student-run sports show at Illinois — Illini Sports Night — for over two years. He hosted the show a handful of times, produced multimedia journalism stories for the show, and wrote his own segments which he read on the show. As part of this, he had the chance to be an anchor for two pregame shows that have aired live on Big Ten Plus. The first was a Crystal Pillar/Emmy winning women’s basketball pregame show, and the second was a softball pregame show.
Click below to see samples of his work on the show and shows that he’s hosted.
Play-by-Play
Will has been very fortunate to call many games in his broadcasting tenure. For Big Ten Plus — the subsidiary of Big Ten Network — he’s called many Illinois volleyball matches, two Illinois men’s basketball games and a handful of women’s games, a good deal of baseball and softball games, and one wrestling dual. He also has radio tape of this last season’s Illinois vs Northwestern football game.
He was able to really work on his craft as the broadcaster for the Wausau Woodchucks in the 2023 summer. Through 37 TV and 35 radio calls, he was able to better himself as an overall speaker. He also produced and anchored short pregame shows before each TV broadcast.
He has found the best tempo that works for him depending on the sport and has seen his annunciation skills improve vastly.
Click below to see Will’s demo reels.
Beat Reporter
Will worked for The Champaign Room — the Illinois SB Nation site his junior and senior year in college. He covered Illinois football and basketball as a beat reporter where he wrote numerous game recaps and press conference briefs. On top of this, Will got the chance to write a national article for NBC Sports about Illinois football.
He has gotten very familiar with the use of AP Style and is able to edit his own pieces to make sure they’re ready for publication.
Through TCR, Will has been able to be credentialed for the second weekend of the 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in Boston, Massachusetts, the 2023 ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa, Florida, and the 2023 Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament in Chicago. He has also had the chance to travel and cover road events at different Big Ten Universities.
Click below to see article samples.
