Jim Host
Jim Host (born November 23, 1937, in Kane, Pennsylvania) is an American businessman best known for founding Host Communications, a pioneering collegiate sports-marketing and production services company that was acquired by IMG in 2007 for $74.3 million. Host sits on the National Advisory Board of the College of Communication and Information at the University of Kentucky. Early life Host was born in Kane, Pennsylvania to Wilford and Beatrice Host. His father worked in tanneries, and they traveled from Pennsylvania to New York to Virginia to West Virginia looking for work. The family settled in Ashland, Kentucky when Jim was an eighth grader. Host was one of the first two recipients of a baseball scholarship offered by the University of Kentucky. He earned a bachelor's degree in radio arts from the university in 1961. During his time at UK, Host started recording a lot of play-by-play radio broadcasts for college and high school sports. He worked with the UK Student Station, WBKY, from 1957 to 1959 covering UK games and in 1959 he created the Kentucky Central UK Network, one of five UK broadcast organizations until 1961. Following his career as a Wildcat, Host was a pitcher in the Chicago White