850 vs The Fan vs The Gambler

[Santa fe]

One of the few competitive format battles left is between sports talk stations. They tend to have more local programming than other formats and are popular with advertisers and listeners. While it may not be a legendary Top 40 battle between 850, The Fan and 1350, that's the closest to any real local format competiton that we have. So what do you think of them?

All are owned by big operators. Audacy & I-Heart are larger but Good Karma is becoming a major force in the format.

850 is AM, with a big daytime signal (can hear it in Detroit) but a minimal night signal (can't hear it in Kent).

92.3 is FM, not a flamethrower with its east side transmitter location and co-channel protections, but has a serviceable signal. And their stream shows up in the ratings.

1350 AM has the same signal that made WSLR a successful station way back when and is about as good as most AM's are nowadays.

All three have well-known local personalities on their schedules, like Tony Rizzo, Jeff Phelps and Munch Bishop. 92.3 and 850 have large staffs and they both have the Browns games. 1350 fills out its schedule by carrying other local teams.

Who's the best? Are there differences? Will all three prosper, or will there be a winnowing at some point?

 

[vjm]

1350 The Gambler exists as a flanker for WTAM - it was never meant to be a head to head competitor with 850 or The Fan.

The Gambler has soaked up every second tier play by play contract they could (Monsters, Charge, CSU), but they are there to have the Fox Sports flag planted in Cleveland (which looks better cosmetically than in Akron...gives the sales geeks a chance to say they have 7 stations in Cleveland for clients to sell their widgets), and follows a pattern in other iHeart markets which back up a main talker with a Fox Sports/Gambler station. BTW Munch has long been gone from morning drive on 1350 - replaced by the national Fox Sports morning show "2 Pros and a Cup of Joe" with Jonas Knox, former NFLer Lavar Arrington and former Browns QB Brady Quinn (Munch still does a Saturday show on WTAM). Jimmy Malone has his weekly show Friday mornings.

92.3 The Fan is more old school basic Xs and Os sports talk, countering the snarkier and more free wheeling ESPN 850.

Both have the Browns, but 850 really goes all in on football as they also have the Buckeyes and High School Hysteria, and made Tony Grossi their biggest star not named Tony Rizzo or Aaron Goldhammer (who - for better or worse depending on your POV - are the undisputed faces of the station). They finally found stability in PMD with Emmitt Golden and Je'Rod Cherry.

92.3 has been remarkably stable since being established as The Fan about 11 years ago. Midday hosts Andy Baskin and Jeff Phelps, and PMD hosts Adam "The Bull" Gerstenhaber and former Buckeye Dustin Fox have manned their posts since day 1. Fan OGs Ken Carmen and Anthony Lima - who started in other timeslots - have become a solid morning team (and found their groove mixing in mancave talk with pure sports talk). Only real change was in AMD from Kiley and Booms to Carmen and Lima The Fan will devote more time and caller participation to non-football topics (Guards, Cavs) than WKNR.

 

[skiwest]

I used to listen to sports talk years ago when it was just Sportsline with Pete Franklin in the evening. I have no desire to listen to it now, especially since it seems to be mostly Browns/NFL. What kind of show is Jimmy Malone doing? I assume it is not sports related.

 

[vjm]

I used to listen to sports talk years ago when it was just Sportsline with Pete Franklin in the evening. I have no desire to listen to it now, especially since it seems to be mostly Browns/NFL. What kind of show is Jimmy Malone doing? I assume it is not sports related.

Jimmy is doing a general talk show, and he even brought back "Knuckleheads in the News".

It's replayed Saturday mornings on WMJI as well.

 

[vjm]

PMD hosts Adam "The Bull" Gerstenhaber and former Buckeye Dustin Fox have manned their posts since day 1.

And of course, as soon as I talk about The Fan's stability, Adam the Bull announced he's leaving as of April 1.

 

[davideduardo]

Who's the best? Are there differences? Will all three prosper, or will there be a winnowing at some point?

Well, 1350 is an Akron station and, thus, in a different market. It has a usable (10 mV/m signal) that falls short of Bedford and Seven Hills to the north in the daytime, and is not really usable at night in any but a tiny piece of Cuyahoga County. It appears to not be subscribed in Cleveland, Akron or Canton.

And it has no usable signal in Geauga, Lake, Lorain or Medina counties which make up 1/3 of the metro area population. Add in the fact that it covers less than 1/4 of the Cuyahoga County population usably, and it ends up with coverage of less than 20% of the Cleveland market. And at night, it is worse.

 

[Rusty Muck]

Well, 1350 is an Akron station and, thus, in a different market. It has a usable (10 mV/m signal) that falls short of Bedford and Seven Hills to the north in the daytime, and is not really usable at night in any but a tiny piece of Cuyahoga County. It appears to not be subscribed in Cleveland, Akron or Canton.

And it has no usable signal in Geauga, Lake, Lorain or Medina counties which make up 1/3 of the metro area population. Add in the fact that it covers less than 1/4 of the Cuyahoga County population usably, and it ends up with coverage of less than 20% of the Cleveland market. And at night, it is worse.

This exactly. iHeart can say it’s a Cleveland station but it really isn’t, it’s a high-band AM at the same transmission plant in Cuyahoga Falls it’s always been at (since the early 40s at least?). It’s also the oldest surviving radio station in Akron.

The other untold story is how they clearly weren’t making enough money to be an Akron-based FSR affiliate.

You can’t compare WARF to 92.3 or WKNR; heck, WKNR’s night pattern is terribly north-south directional and a rumor west of Westlake, and it’s still more credible than WARF.

 

[davideduardo]

You can’t compare WARF to 92.3 or WKNR; heck, WKNR’s night pattern is terribly north-south directional and a rumor west of Westlake, and it’s still more credible than WARF.

I lived and worked in Cleveland Heights as a young teen. I was a board op and gofer at WJMO and WCUY, and lived a bit more than two miles away.

WCUY, of course, is WARF. WCUY always had a hard to get signal on the far West Side, and did not make it to Akron, either. At the time, WCUY was on a self-supporting tower at Cedar and Lee.

1350 that far NNE of Akron was there, but noisy even in the 60's before all the new devices made much more AM noisy.

 

[skiwest]

I've never been a big country music fan, but I used to occasionally tune in to WSLR 1350 back in the 60s/70s when I was living in Garfield Hts and reception seemed to be fine.

 

[Tim]

1350 WARF (formerly WSLR) has had the same 2-tower directional array for over 50 years. 5kw, same pattern 24/7. (I know, I worked there). Absolutely correct about the increase in man made noise for AM stations in particular, but AM bands in car radios and antennas have gotten less & less effective. Put the technology on the FM and audio side, fudge on the AM side of the "radio' in cars.

 

[skiwest]

WKNR’s night pattern is terribly north-south directional and a rumor west of Westlake...

If WKNR's night pattern is so bad, can they crank up the power a bit or adjust the pattern? I realize they need to protect other stations on the frequency, but if they aren't even covering the metro Cleveland area at night, they certainly can't be interfering with stations hundreds of miles away.

 

[frankberry]

WKNR is sandwiched in between WGVS and WKGE. Not much they can do with their nighttime signal other than move the transmitter site closer to the center of population. That's not going to happen.

 

[davideduardo]

If WKNR's night pattern is so bad, can they crank up the power a bit or adjust the pattern? I realize they need to protect other stations on the frequency, but if they aren't even covering the metro Cleveland area at night, they certainly can't be interfering with stations hundreds of miles away.

That's not the way "protection" works. All it takes is a minimal signal to destroy the listenability of another station. In the daytime, it's not about what you can hear on 850 in Cuyahoga County... it is about the interference of various 850, 860 and 840 stations somewhere in between the location of each.

So 850 in Cleveland has to guard against interfering with 840 in Louisville somewhere to the Southwest of Cleveland towards Dayton and Cincinnati, or interfering with the Canadian station to the northeast. Or any of the 850's part way between each of them. Just look at the stations on 850 and adjacent channels and you can see what they have to protect.

Of course, major night protection goes to Denver and Boston on 850. There is no way that will be relaxed.

If there were a way to make WJW any better, it would have been done decades ago.

 

[skiwest]

Well, they did make the 850 daytime signal better.

 

[DXingRadio]

WKNR is sandwiched in between WGVS and WKGE. Not much they can do with their nighttime signal other than move the transmitter site closer to the center of population. That's not going to happen.
View attachment 2714

I believe WGVS shut down, and WKGE is supposed to power down at some point (it's been limping on STAs, pretty much exists now to feed a FM translator). So maybe some day WKNR could get the wiggle room for a power boost, assuming it would be worth the investment.

 

[davideduardo]

I believe WGVS shut down, and WKGE is supposed to power down at some point (it's been limping on STAs, pretty much exists now to feed a FM translator). So maybe some day WKNR could get the wiggle room for a power boost, assuming it would be worth the investment.

It's already 50 kw daytime with a reasonable pattern. Nights are mostly due to protection of KOA and Boston as well as adjacents in Canada and Louisville, and there is no chance of those being relaxed.

 

[Rusty Muck]

That's not the way "protection" works. All it takes is a minimal signal to destroy the listenability of another station. In the daytime, it's not about what you can hear on 850 in Cuyahoga County... it is about the interference of various 850, 860 and 840 stations somewhere in between the location of each.

So 850 in Cleveland has to guard against interfering with 840 in Louisville somewhere to the Southwest of Cleveland towards Dayton and Cincinnati, or interfering with the Canadian station to the northeast. Or any of the 850's part way between each of them. Just look at the stations on 850 and adjacent channels and you can see what they have to protect.

Of course, major night protection goes to Denver and Boston on 850. There is no way that will be relaxed.

If there were a way to make WJW any better, it would have been done decades ago.

The current night pattern is replicated from what the previous pre-1999 tower array called for, with the cutback from 5kW to 4.7kW more or less having to do with the tower configuration, otherwise the overall performance output didn’t change.

To my understanding it’s unchanged from when WJW moved to Cleveland from Akron in 1943 and it was shoehorned in.

 

[johnbasalla]

On the radio locator site, WGVS is a 2000 watt station at 95.3 FM in Whitehall, Michigan, owned by Grand Valley State University. The call letters of WGVS were first used as of 03/01/1999.
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WKGE is listed as AM850 in Johnstown, PA, but identified as "101.3 Wkge". The AM has unlimited operation hours at 10,000 watts but is directional with a whopping 9 towers. Wouldn't that be costly to maintain? With so many stations on AM840, 850 and 860 for WKNR to protect, it makes the case that AM radio really isn't dying, or is dying a very slow death.

 

[skiwest]

Here is the coverage map for WKGE 850.

 

[johnbasalla]

Here is the coverage map for WKGE 850.

9 towers will do that.