Some of his resume highlights:

• sports reporter, sportscaster and sports director at New Jersey Network, the state's public television station. He was name New Jersey Sportscaster of the Year nine times.
• general manager at CN8, The Comcast Network (he guided the channel's launch in 1996)
• vice president of television production and marketing at TRN, The Racing Network.

The jobs gave him broadcast experience on the business, programming and production side. It also gave him something else -- relationships and contacts that are now helping to fuel the growth of his own company, Shamrock Communications LLC.

"I looked at the contacts I had in New Jersey, the skill set I had and decided to focus on building my own business," said Scanlon, 48.

Shamrock is a communications and marketing company that specializes in television production, promotion and marketing. His company has produced a variety of programs from cable TV commercials for The Jeep Store and SeaView Chrysler car dealerships in Ocean to preseason New York Giants football games, which are shown on WWOR-TV.

The company was formed as a part-time business for Scanlon's freelance assignments in 1996, but became a full-time business in 2001.

A 1978 graduate of Notre Dame University with a degree in business, he got his first full-time job after college as a reporter at WNDU-TV, an NBC affiliate in South Bend, Ind. He also was a sports anchor on Saturdays.

In 1980, he and his wife, Jamye, who have two children ages 21 and 18, moved to New Jersey where he took a job as a sports reporter at NJN. The move allowed him to be more creative, giving him the ability to do different types of stories and features, said Scanlon, who grew up in Hartford, Conn.

Around 1984, Scanlon became sports director at NJN, making him responsible for the nightly sportscast as well as assigning, reporting and writing. At NJN, he also decided to telecast a weekly college basketball game.

Meanwhile, he also started to do freelance jobs, including producing and hosting The P.J. Carlesimo Show, which was broadcast on Sports Channel. Carlesimo is the former basketball coach at Seton Hall University. Starting in 1989, Scanlon also began to host the international telecast of the U.S. Open Golf Championship, which is broadcast to 140 different countries.

Scanlon left NJN in 1996 to join CN8 as general manager, a job that not only gave him more experience with programming and production, but scheduling and contract negotiations as well. A few years later he went to work at TRN, The Racing Network, a horse-racing channel on the DISH Network.

After the network closed down in 2001 from a lack of subscribers, Scanlon said he decided to devote his efforts to his own business.

"I wanted to be able to do production and programming and enjoy the creative process of being able to take a project from the beginning to the end and oversee the entire process," Scanlon said.

He turned to his contacts to get him started, making calls and printing materials such as brochures. "I went back to the relationships that I had and developed over the years," he said.

Scanlon, who runs his business out of his home, doesn't have any employees. He hires everything and everyone, from cameras and satellite trucks to technical crews and graphic artists, as he needs them.

"When I need to go to an editing facility, I lease an editing facility," Scanlon said.

For instance, for the Giants preseason games, he hires a crew of about 50 people, including camera, audio and tape operators and engineers. He also has to lease a multi-million dollar remote truck and arrange for the transmission of the games.

The on-air announcers -- Sam Rosen doing play-by-play, former Giants wide receiver Phil McConkey doing color commentary and former Giants linebacker Harry Carson, the sidelines reporter -- are hired by the Giants.

During the game, Scanlon coordinates the show as the producer, speaking to announcers through their ear pieces, calling replays and their various angles among other tasks.

"To the outside (audience), these games are produced by the Giants," said Rusty Hawley, the Giants' vice president of marketing. "I hire an expert like Pat who handles things, soup to nuts, and hires all the technical talent and works with the broadcast talent. It is no small ordeal for what happens to be a three-and-a-half-hour game."

Hawley, who has known Scanlon for years since the broadcaster covered the Giants, talked with him a couple of years ago when the football franchise was looking for a new producer. "We were comparing notes. Pat was perfectly qualified to fill that roll," Hawley said.

Scanlon also has moved beyond sports, developing videos for corporate customers as well as commercials for cable television.

For instance, Shamrock produced a three-and-a-half minute video highlighting Coldwell Banker's charity work for Habitat for Humanity, said David Siroty, director of public relations at Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp. Siroty worked with Scanlon at CN8.

For a media tour with Coldwell Banker's president and chief executive officer, Jim Gillespie, Scanlon arranged for the satellite time, procured a studio and directed the day's activities, Siroty said. "The great thing about Pat is that he's been in front of the camera. He's been behind the camera. He's been in a corporate setting."

Sales have grown over the past three years, including a 30 percent spurt in 2004 over the prior year, Scanlon said. He would not disclose his company's annual sales, but said it is a profitable, "healthy, six-figure business."

Scanlon sees the corporate side of his business as an avenue for future growth. "There is so much going on in Ocean and Monmouth County," said Scanlon. "There is a growing need for production services. My goal is to cater to that."

Scanlon also is looking to acquire a business or production facility so he doesn't have to lease production space anymore.

Scanlon says he enjoys his business.

"I love the deal-making," he said. "I love the creative process, and I have the ability to deal with people and understand their situation and what they are trying to accomplish."