Salary
Average Salary: $54,020
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,255,000
"Oh, wow...in your life, have you seen anything like that?" Verne Lundquist announcing Tiger Woods' astonishing 30-foot chip shot to win a playoff against Chris DiMarco at the 2005 Masters.
In any journalism-related career, the usual path starts in small markets with local jobs, then involves years of trying to move up through progressively larger, more lucrative markets by letting your talent, skill, and work ethic attract the attention of station managers and producers. Sportscasters typically follow a similar path.
After years of doing the play-by-play via bullhorn for amateur stock car racing or announcing the Blue Ribbon winner for Best Hog at thirty-two different county fairs, you work your way up to doing small town college games on a local radio station, maybe. At this point you are pretty much being paid in ballpark franks, so you either need a side gig or you need to learn enough to announce several different sports for the sake of versatility (source).
Almost all the great ones did this, with the notable exception of Harry Caray who, broadcast-wise, is really only known for his work in baseball and his amateur singing career. Look him up on YouTube leading the stadium in "Take Me Out To The Ballgame."
Being versatile is going to be a big key because for every Costas, Albert, and Michaels out there, there are hundreds of others doing smaller market jobs, making a living but not making a fortune. According to 2010 information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median pay for news and sports announcers is around $27,000 per year, or roughly $13 an hour.
Not dead broke but a family of four is going to have a rough time living on that these days. So onward and upward is the goal. Costas, Joe Buck, and their cohorts make in the realm of $5 million annually from their TV contracts with more from endorsements and paid appearances, but there are only five to ten guys tops pulling down that kind of salary as a sportscaster.
On your way to the big time, you work your way up from the small town local radio gig to a larger venue, say a medium sized town like Kansas City, and you keep trying to get noticed by bigger stations and networks. You'll probably have to take a few gigs in the industry that aren't sports related just to keep money coming in. Al Michaels' first TV job was selecting contestants to appear on a dating game show. No joke.
And the bigger the town the more announcing jobs there are, so you go where the work is. New York, for example, has, just in terms of pro teams, the Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Giants, Jets, Nets, Islanders, Liberty, Rangers, and Devils. They also have a few soccer teams.