Frankie Graziano joined CPBN in October of 2011 as a sports producer. In addition to reporting for WNPR, Graziano produces feature profiles for CPTV and the web.
Since October of 2011, Graziano has been the lead producer for over 1,200 hours of sports content. CPTV Sports specialized in covering Connecticut’s best high school games and giving Connecticut student-athletes the platform to tell their story. Graziano also produced games outside of CIAC, including WNBA Basketball games and New Britain Rock Cats Baseball.
Graziano created what he touts as Connecticut’s only multi-sport poll to determine a true statewide high school student-athlete of the week in October of 2014. Each week, he scours the state to determine the top six performances by local players. Voting begins Saturday at 6 p.m. and ends Monday at 6 p.m. Over 80 UChoose Student-Athlete of the Week winners have been crowned from 50 different towns since that time. 300,000-plus votes have been cast in that time in support of Connecticut student-athletes.
In addition to producing games, Frankie has done it all at CPTV from coordinating on-air traffic to providing play-by-play commentary. He has called numerous CIAC Championship soccer games. He has been acknowledged twice with awards from the Connecticut Soccer Coaches Association for outstanding coverage of High School Soccer.
Frankie, born Francesco Graziano Jr. in Torrington, Connecticut, is the proud son of Rosa Maria and Francesco Sr. His parents emigrated from Italy 40 years ago. He is married to Colleen Graziano, APRN. Besides his love for Colleen and his family, he deeply adores sports and talking. He had always hoped he would cover sports–never wanting to work in any other field.
In 2011, he graduated from the University of Connecticut. He graduated with a 3.56 cumulative GPA and a bachelor’s degree in two fields—journalism and history. While in college, Graziano interned at WFSB under two men he admires as his mentors—Joe Zone and John Holt. He appeared on various shows at UCTV (UConn’s student television station) and spent his summers covering the Torrington Titans collegiate baseball team.