Good Karma dumps Nielsen

[Rusty Muck]

Keep in mind that a market doesn't need to have a local football team to drive interest in football. Today interest can also be driven by fantasy teams and betting. Sports betting is legal in Ohio.

I'd have no data to back it up but I'd be shocked if iHeart didn't make way more money running WARF/Akron in their Cleveland cluster with VSiN programming than if it had remained in the Akron cluster with FSR around-the-clock.

 

[vjm]

Even in the three years Cleveland didn't have a football team, the bulk of sports talk was speculation about the incoming team or what happens next with the NFL. The remainder was people griping about whatever tactical error Mike Hargrove made the previous night or pining for that elusive "ace" starting pitcher... and that's not counting the comedy bits Rizzo and Triv had on their respective shows.

A lot of talk - especially in 1998 when the team was a year out from returning - centered on who would be the best new ownership group for the then expansion team.

Al Lerner/Carmen Policy/Bernie Kosar or Larry Dolan/Bill Cosby/Don Shula

Dolan and company did make a bid...Dolan the locally based main owner, Cosby the celebrity backer/part owner, with Shula being the main "football guy".

It would be Lerner and Policy winning the bid, and they later caught flack for only using Kosar as a "front man" and not giving him a real role in running the team.

Of course 2 years later, Dolan would buy the then-Indians, and the now-Guardians remain under his family's watch to this day.

 

[vjm]

I'd have no data to back it up but I'd be shocked if iHeart didn't make way more money running WARF/Akron in their Cleveland cluster with VSiN programming than if it had remained in the Akron cluster with FSR around-the-clock.

WARF is basically now WTAM's "KNR2" - a flanker used as a chip to help out the bigger station