4 stations under one roof including music FMs, imagine that.The decision by ARS to buy 93.7 would work out later under Entercom ownership when they needed to put WEEI on FM.
Because CBS, who briefly owned WRKO etc but had to spin it off, had a sports station on 98.5--former sister station of ARS' WRKO and WEEI, as seen here--and 98.5 was tearing into WEEI's sports listenership.
If Entercom could have kept 98.5 maybe we would have eventually had "Sportsradio 98.5, WEEI".
There was a time Nassau was thinking of luring Dennis and Callahan to WCRB and starting a sports station that could have been syndicated across the region but it didn't happen..and there was talk of making WBOS 92.9 sports with a Red Sox partnership.
When the Sox won world series in 04, all the signs fans at Fenway held said WEEI 850 on them. 3 yrs later, the 07 championship Sox had WRKO 680 as flagship.Yeah the idea was to put most Sox games on RKO...some on WEEI. Help RKO in ratings.
When Sports Hub debuted, the Sox flagship reverted to 850 WEEI 2 weeks later.Entercom realized they had to concentrate on making WEEI identified as the Sox station. Took em 2 years of competition with 98.5 to finally move to FM. Entercom did OK with Mike 93.7.
They could have beaten CBS to the punch and made 93.7 "Boston's first FM sports station". The Sports Hub had been announced in advance. As it is, it's ironic to think that 93.7 was once owned by Sox voice Curt Gowdy.
Now you see why content matters and the advantage FM has.WEEI 850 has a pretty good signal by day. Did well for years as a Sox flagship (though 850, like 680, has problems to the west at night).Now, with all ESPN, it gets puny ratings.
