Certainly true about those team rights being important. But WEEI has maintained the lead despite the end of baseball (for the Red Sox) and lack of basketball. And, during a period where WBZ-FM has the Pats. So personalities and loyalty still do count for something.
About WEEI-FM, that's a non-starter. Although it can be received in portions of the Boston area, it's not local in any portion of the market and is a Providence market station which rimshots Providence from the south. None of the other FMs can possibly be received anywhere in the Boston DMA. So, to answer your question, zero. All of the WEEI Boston market ratings are from 850.
KeithE4 said:
It would certainly do a lot better in the downtown office buildings if it was on FM. I think The Score will simulcast on FM first, especially now that the Sox are starting their own programming on one of WJMK's HD channels.
Absolutely! That office listening is particularly important in a PPM world. I won't say that the Score couldn't be the recipient of an FM frequency. Certainly could happen.
But my thought is financial: WBBM is the most expensive signal to run and would bring in the fastest ROI if simulcasted on FM. In other words, you'd grow more audience by putting WBBM on (for example) 105.9 than you would with WSCR which will always have a smaller audience. That's why my bet is that - if CBS simulcasts anything here - it would be WBBM. Along the lines of KCBS-FM and Bonneville's incredible success with WTOP-FM.
The caveat to this entire argument is that both WSCR and WBBM have very strong AM signals that do a fine job of covering the whole metro. Many of the examples of AM/FM simulcasts have AMs with some sort of signal handicap. That said, to me it still makes a lot of sense to toss WBBM on FM - it would kill in the ratings and lower the demos very quickly.
