ESPN New York 98.7 FM

[MarcB]

I picked up ESPN New York 98.7 FM in Connecticut this morning. I noticed that 98.7 is several seconds behind 1050AM. And there's a noticeable delay between those two and local Clear Channel owned 97.9 ESPN WUCS Windsor Locks-Hartford. All 3 carrying COWHERD from ESPN Radio.

 

[pjc1961]

The 8 second delay on 98.7 FM NYC is due to the built-in HD delay, which is in addition to whatever profanity delay ESPN Radio New York runs on WEPN-AM and FM. Yes, even though 98.7 FM is now in monaural, it's still in HD, much like the other station Emmis owns a small stake in here in NYC: WEMP 101.9.

If I had to guess, the profanity delay is in the 13-15 second range, judging by the top-of-hour start of the national SportsCenter updates which start at around 21-23 seconds past the actual top-of-hour. Not scientific by any means, just conjecture on my part.

I've noticed when listening to the online feed of WUCS (granted, not the same as listening on-air) that they're much closer to being "live" than most other stations. Of course that may also be attributed to the iheartradio feed being relatively "quick/buffer free", which I've noticed with other Clear Channel stations that I've been able to compare on-air vs. online -or- that Clear Channel has a hefty built-in on-air delay which makes the iheartradio online feed appear closer to real-time.

 

[d21ofnj]

You know......I have to admit, ESPN on 98.7 is convenient when I can't watch the Devils conference finals.

 

[DToTheJ]

Unfortunately, they won't be much of a help after the current series (note 98.7/1050 is the Rangers' flagship)...

 

[milton77]

It will be interesting to see what the PPM #s are between WFAN & WEPN for games of this series when WFAN doesn't bump the Devils to WBBR because of the Mets.

 

[nd2023]

It will be interesting to see what the PPM #s are between WFAN & WEPN for games of this series when WFAN doesn't bump the Devils to WBBR because of the Mets.

Why can't WFAN bump the Mets to Bloomberg Radio instead of the Devils? The Devils are in the NHL playoffs and the Mets perform poorly.

 

[TimeIsTight]

Why can't WFAN bump the Mets to Bloomberg Radio instead of the Devils? The Devils are in the NHL playoffs and the Mets perform poorly.

I've been told that the Devils actually buy their own airtime from WFAN or WBBR and sell their own commercials to help pay for it, that's a far different situation from WFAN paying the Mets to carry the baseball games.

There's probably a line in the WFAN contract with the Mets that essentially says "the baseball team comes first" when it comes to deciding which games to broadcast, and the Devils can't buy airtime that somebody else already has a claim to.

 

[ansky212]

Why can't WFAN bump the Mets to Bloomberg Radio instead of the Devils? The Devils are in the NHL playoffs and the Mets perform poorly.

As bad as the Mets may be, they have a much greater following than the Devils. Nobody outside of northeastern NJ cares about the Devils. I'd bet a typical Mets game gets much better ratings than a Devils playoff game. Hockey will always come last among baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.

 

[Ai4i]

Can the HD processor be used as a profanity delay? In othe words, don't use a profanity delay, but cut the delayed analogue and digital outputs to the transmitters when necessary? Also, we used to have a talk station in Miami (pre-internet) which sent pre-delayed feeds to CATV head ends for use on data channels. For the same reason, I don't suppose a profanity delay would be necessary for the web feed.

 

[wadio]

Can the HD processor be used as a profanity delay?

Probably way too short, plus you'd never want to dump the HD delay ... even temporarily ... that would leave the analog & digital signals unsynced for periods of time defeating the purpose of the delay.

 

[jhguthlac]

Baseeball, which is a much slower game, has more of a radio following than does hockey. The Mets bring in a lot of money regardless of performance.