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1510 Yahoo Sports Radio

S

Shellanswerman

Danny Picard Ends Show On WUFC-AM 1510

Danny Picard, the sole remaining local host in the morning on WUFC-AM 1510 said good bye to his listeners, I mean listener, at the end of his show this morning. WUFC-AM will take network sports all morning and midday. Time will tell if the afternoon drive local show that just started will remain on the schedule. WUFC's website does not reflect recent changes.
 
New logo http://www.1510nbcsportsradio.com/media/cache/1b/f5/1bf5df7c68caa789a983c5aa58770e1e.jpg

@bostonradio tweets:
>>1510 is slowly repositioning itself as Yahoo Sports Radio. Clearing Yahoo shows from 6am to 3pm

>>http://www.1510yahoosportsradio.com points to http://www.1510nbcsportsradio.com for now but probably not for long :)

"Home of Yahoo Sports Radio"--not sure if NBC being phased out or what
Mark S adds:
>>The only NBC shows left for now are b/n 6p and 1am. Even overnights and weekends are all Yahoo shows.
 
Some of the radio and/or media websites have been reporting on NBC Sportsradio accumulating affiliates, chief among them WUFC. When WUFC does a local show, now seemingly restricted to afternoon drive, they run NBC News (you know, real stuff happening in the world, like shootings in DC) including the G-E'-C sounder. Sometimes, just before station ID OTOH, WUFC runs the slogan "Flying high with the peacock" meaning the logo NBC uses on TV, not radio. Peacocks have very limited flying capability. Duh.
 
I had been noticing that 1510 had been running some Yahoo Sports shows at night, even during the summer. I wondered why? NBC is a 24/7 network.

I assumed that when WWZN last year switched from a mix of Progressive Talk and brokered programming to WUFC, it was because NBC made a deal with the owners. If they gave NBC Sports Radio a round-the-clock outlet in Market #10, they'd get some "kick back" from the deal. After all, why switch to sports on AM in a market with two FM Sports stations? NBC Radio Sports, debuting a few months after CBS Radio Sports, needed affiliates in large markets, and had to make sweetheart deals.

So why would WUFC drop NBC, which I assume has a better quality of hosts and coverage, for Yahoo Sports, the fifth place radio sports network after ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC? Elsewhere, the trend has been the opposite. Many AM stations that had no choice but to carry Yahoo Sports in markets where ESPN and Fox were already taken, quickly switched to CBS and NBC when those networks became available. Yahoo has no TV Sports Network to draw on as the other radio sports networks have.
 
I don't know if people are familiar with Marissa Mayer, but she's the very high-profile CEO of Yahoo the Company. I really wonder if she's been informed that the Company runs a sports radio network, a type of business that's far from its core competency (I used to work for a computer company, Wang Laboratories, and "core competency" was a very popular term in the business years ago) and doing so poorly relative to the competition.
 
Could be that Yahoo Sports Radio is merely licensing the Yahoo name, as Clear Channel is doing with the Fox brand for its Fox Sports Radio.

Yahoo Sports Radio has a small but vocal cult following among Sirius/XM subscribers, especiallly the Steve Czaban show, which is sort of a Dennis & Callahan-like blend of sports talk and aggressive, "liberalism is a mental disorder"-ish (to quote Michael Savage) right-wing politics. SXM, though, treats YSR like the fifth-place network it is, putting its programs on channel 208 only when it doesn't have in-house programs scheduled.

Meanwhile, has the significance of WUFC's call letters ever been determined? Even casual sports fans now know that UFC is the best-know mixed martial arts brand, yet the radio station has nothing to do with it. What in the world DOES it stand for?
 
WUFC 's afternoon drive time today did run a locally-produced show, the Press Box. They gave out the phone number to call in but nobody did. There were a couple of guests to fill up the time. I listened sporadically, not the whole three hours.
 
I'm not sure if NBC and/or Yahoo are buying time with 1510 to get their broadcasts on but:
--Yahoo!Sports radio is distributed by Gow Broadcasting (acc to Wiki) with content form Yahoo Sports
--NBC Sports Radio is distributed by Westwood One, formerly Dial Global, with content from NBC sports.
--Cumulus has paid $260 million to purchase Dial Global, "part of which will be used to pay off Dial’s debt before it is folded into Cumulus Media Networks." (Wiki)--and collectively they are now known as Westwood One.

--Cumulus distributes CBS Sports Radio--content produced by CBS Sports

WUFC is owned by Blackstrap and recent it seems to have rebranded as Yahoo Sports Radio Boston, though some NBC shows
are till on there (6 pm-1 am I think, though often pre-empted by Red Sox in Spanish). Wikipedia shows the former "1510 NBC Sports Radio" logo they had, and it says they are formerly an NBC affiliate, but again some NBC shows are still airing.

Cumulus/Westwood One thus distributes both CBS Sports Radio (overnights on 98.5) and NBC Sports Radio. If they're fine
with that, distributing two competing networks, then great. But I wonder what's going on:

--as a prog talk station WUFC, then WWZN, carried several shows from what was then Dial Global. Now and in the past year
they have carried NBC from the same distributor; a business relationship. But now is Yahoo paying them more money to
carry their product, even though as Gregg said they're the fifth most popular network for sports?

Might it make sense nationally for some kind of merger between NBC Sports and Yahoo? As distribution goes, Cumul/W1 does
both CBS-Sp and now NBC. (Note that Fox Sports is distributed not by Fox radio but by Clear Channel) Wondering what may happen
(does NBC go away totally now? Just when it seemed they would be the dominant network on 1510...with a nearly full time schedule...)

---
National networks in Boston sports radio
ESPN: WEEI 850 and sometimes on WEEI-FM 93.7
(Isn't Mon night football dist by W1 though...?)

Fox Sports: WEEI-FM
CBS Sports: WBZ-FM
NBC Sports, Yahoo Sports: WUFC
ESPN Deportes: No affiliate
--
This wk's WUFC schedule, note changes incl. PM drive
http://www.1510nbcsportsradio.com/m...d5d272c881c86dcc5bda7c/assets/sept15_21_3.pdf

-=-
Mon Night Football, on Wiki.:
>> As of 2008, Westwood One was no longer controlled by CBS, but the network retained its NFL broadcast rights. In 2011, Westwood One was purchased by Dial Global.
The Spanish-language broadcast is carried on ESPN Deportes Radio.

(I will add Cumulus is buying Dial Global and the Westwood One name is being used for it..)
 
If it's available, I think it would be better to put "NBC Sports Radio" on WEEI on overnights, and have it on 850am 24/7
They seem to be much better than "ESPN Radio"
 
WEEI has an agreement to carry ESPN which includes such things as the baseball playoffs. Entercom gets money to do this. When WEEI started simulcasting on FM, the AM's numbers became miniscule. They probably still are--now that the AM is ESPN only, but this means a) ESPN gets full time clearance in a major market, and b) Entercom gets some money out of it.
WEEI-FM runs Fox Sports' JT The Brick overnights. Previously both AM and FM ran ESPN overnights.

You may think they're better, however Entercom likes the money. And again there's play by play to be considered. I think ESPN
still does baseball playoffs, etc.; our glorious Red Sox will be on the FM hopefully for more than one round, while you may be
able to hear other matchups on the AM. ESPN is usually considered the #1 network in sports...at least as far as identity is
concerned. The one people tend to think of first, especially on TV.

Signal wise, where would ESPN like to be in Boston--on 850 (and sometimes 93.7) or on 1510...?
 
Last edited:
Yahoo Sports Radio is run by David Gow's Gow Media out of Houston. He licenses the Yahoo name. Gow made most of his money at Compaq and is said to have been an early investor in Yahoo, which helped him put together the licensing deal when his deal with Sporting News was about to run out.

Gow owns 2 sports stations in Houston, KGOW, which became the flagship for what is now known as YSR when he bought the former Sporting News Radio network and KFNC, a FM rimshot that carries ESPN Radio that he picked up at a bankruptcy sale last year.

From my understanding of the Yahoo licensing deal, Gow produces and distributes the network; Yahoo links to its stream from the Yahoo Sports website and shares content.
 
Thanks for the info! By the way this morning I heard Anthony Pepe and friends, Bawston Diehards, on WUFC 1510 and it sounded like they said WUFC was "the flagship station of Yahoo Sports Radio". Maybe he meant the flagship station of his show only (as you say, the Houston station is the real flagship?), which is apparently running network wide. "You can also hear us on XM Channel 207". Sure enough, I tuned there and heard what he was saying, after a 10-14 sec or so delay. (Y!SR has some of its programming on XM, while other networks might be carried in full. I'm not sure if Fox Sports still has a home on XM as apparently Clear Channel and XM are parting ways a bit...?)

Or maybe WUFC is the flagship, as I note you were using past tense ("became"...)
 
If you Google "dx" and "wufc", a couple of Youtube videos pop up showing medium-wave receivers and people claiming that they received WUFC-AM in Germany in midwinter late at night. I believe I heard the words "Quicken Loan studio", which is a slogan used by Yahoo Sports radio, but no station ID. I remember seeing WWZN-AM appearing on DX blogs in Europe over the years. Also true of WEEI-AM 850 that also aims its signal towards the Atlantic.
 
Long ago in the Hallowed Halls Of Radio Fun, someone asked, "How can you possibly screw up a 50,000 watt radio station?" Without missing a beat, someone in the next room yelled "1510!!"

True story!
 
frnkp2000 said:
Long ago in the Hallowed Halls Of Radio Fun, someone asked, "How can you possibly screw up a 50,000 watt radio station?" Without missing a beat, someone in the next room yelled "1510!!"

True story!
Click to expand...

Of course, today, you could yell "1520!" or "1540!" or even "680!" in response to that question.
 
raccoonradio said:
I'm not sure if Fox Sports still has a home on XM as apparently Clear Channel and XM are parting ways a bit...?)
Click to expand...

Sirius XM keeps this sort of news a tightly guarded secret, so there's nothing official out there yet. Latest guesses/rumors/pseudo-inside-info on the boards is that Oct. 18 is the drop-dead date, but there's conjecture that a couple of channels will remain under a new, limited agreement. Right now Fox Sports Radio is on channel 247, the upper end of the XM dial, with a bunch of other CC channels that SXM management would like its listeners never to find occupying the channels directly below.
 
Expect WUFC to go Latino before the year's out! ESPN Deportes, perhaps? Or probably the old Alfa radio format with Socrates Regalado, Tony Molina, Juaquin Suner and company.
 
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