First of more changes for the struggling FM sports talker?
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/media...elton-let-go-from-sportsradio-987-the/2108713
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/media...elton-let-go-from-sportsradio-987-the/2108713
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Gary Shelton Exits 98.7 The Fan
- Thread starter DToTheJ
- Start date
So WDAE can make a show with two Times sportswriters work, but The Fan can't have a show with just one?
http://sportsrantz.com/media/2013/03/13/time-to-panic-in-tampa-98-7-the-fan-unplugs-gary-shelton/
http://sportsrantz.com/media/2013/03/13/time-to-panic-in-tampa-98-7-the-fan-unplugs-gary-shelton/
Wonderful. A "blogger" talking about a newspaper guy that was let go from a radio station.
The "blogger" fails to mention that Warren Sapp has always disliked Tampa, so unless you want to pay him three or four times what Shelton made AND have Sapp piped in from out of town, good luck.
Now, can they find a radio man or woman who can do this instead of going outside the medium.
The "blogger" fails to mention that Warren Sapp has always disliked Tampa, so unless you want to pay him three or four times what Shelton made AND have Sapp piped in from out of town, good luck.
Now, can they find a radio man or woman who can do this instead of going outside the medium.
I think the biggest problem CBS has in Tampa is not having the local rights to any of the teams. CC has a stranglehold on that.
Going back 20+ years a sports signal could do OK in Tampa Bay but not great. WFNS really started the ball rolling but their signal was a straight east-west from St. Pete to Winter Haven.
Chris Thomas on WFLA in 1990-91 was huge and he helped WDAE get their footing.
The blogger mentions WBZ-FM in Boston that launched in 2009 but they also had the Patriots and Bruins from day 1. What sank WEEI was their refusal to talk hockey which backfired when the Bruins won the Cup in 2011.
If I had a voice I would move Nanci to mid-day as she still has the Rolodex. Nothing to lose at this point.
They need to be a flagship of somebody but who? I can't see CC losing any team.
Going back 20+ years a sports signal could do OK in Tampa Bay but not great. WFNS really started the ball rolling but their signal was a straight east-west from St. Pete to Winter Haven.
Chris Thomas on WFLA in 1990-91 was huge and he helped WDAE get their footing.
The blogger mentions WBZ-FM in Boston that launched in 2009 but they also had the Patriots and Bruins from day 1. What sank WEEI was their refusal to talk hockey which backfired when the Bruins won the Cup in 2011.
If I had a voice I would move Nanci to mid-day as she still has the Rolodex. Nothing to lose at this point.
They need to be a flagship of somebody but who? I can't see CC losing any team.
DToTheJ said:
Studio20 said:
I've been really interested to see all of the negative comments in this market about all of the writers doing shows. I'm not sure why there's so much objection to it in Tampa, when clearly it is the trend throughout sports talk radio at both the national and local levels. Whether it's John Feinstein on CBS national, Mike Lupica on ESPN/NY, or the very successful CBS stations in places like Pittsburgh and Detroit, writers are part of this format.
The reasons? They have access and contacts, they have opinions and know how to express them, and they have other income from the newspaper so they often don't have to be paid as full-time radio employees. Would you rather hear Whitney Johnson ask everyone what their favorite Allman Brothers song is? Apparently so....
Perfect example of success having a thousand fathers and failure being an orphan. Putting on active, high profile sports writers is always going to present the problem of availability. As a listener, I crave consistency. I want to know who I'm going to hear when I turn on the radio and Shelton being gone so often it wasn't there. Funny how Gary mentioned that he put that all up front when he was hired and the response was "you made that deal with the OTHER guy"... Not that I find any pleasure in anyone getting canned. It's happened to me and it sucks. Personally, I thought Shelton was interesting and if he didn't sound like a radio guy, I think that was supposed to be the point. Anyway, I'm one who believes it takes time to establish a talk format, even for station's that hit all the right notes up front. I don't recall the Animal being a rip-roaring success out of the box. However, so far, nothing they've done has really seemed to resonate with the audience. I have no doubt that given enough time, talent and resources CBS can make a go of it, but it's been a messy start and some of the problems seem to me to have resulted from questionable hires and incorrect assumptions. Whether CBS will stay committed to a format that hasn't generated any kind of ratings and no buzz outside of a handful of sports a holics, is going to be interesting to watch.
I'm going to give one final thought on this, as I've either not been able to properly get my point across in print, which is probably why I never worked in newspapers, or many of you are ten years or younger in the business.
You'll note the words "was" or "were" used in the following. Yes, times change. I get it.
In the day, there were three clearly defined businesses: You were a jock or reporter for Radio, or you wrote for the paper or you worked in television. There were the occasional crossovers, normally the newspaper guy would appear on radio or tv, the tv guy would appear on radio or the paper...somehow the radio guy rarely appeared on tv unless it was a sweetheart deal or he paid for the appearance. The radio guy in the paper? As rare as finding one who admits to listening to 98.7 these days.
There once was pride in being a full time radio guy or girl. This was your business and if someone from the other media came in, it was out of courtesy or perhaps a trade.
Like the writer who earned his stripes at the Penny Shopper, the radio guy cut his teeth in 250 watters splicing tape with razor blades, rebuilding carts, begging the jocks to be careful with the records, spending weekends at used car lots with sales weasels who threw you under the bus every time the sponsor whined, and running to Radio Shack with petty cash for cables and whatever else.
We loved it.
Unfortunately, as many of the aforementioned account executives ascended to power, with only a handful ever working a board, the philosophy changed. Licenses were no longer needed, not even the "Cap'n Crunch" boxtop that replaced our Third Class ticket. The Crossover turned into a takeover, and it's almost always one sided in favor or the papers or television. Remember the 90's? Frank Robertson, chip Carter, Rob Stone, the other two guys from 44. They had regular sports radio gigs and while the radio station ran ads ad nauseum about their stations shows and reporters, aside from plugging their own appearances on radio, never mentioned any of the regular radio hosts. Well, not that there were many others after the tv invasion began. I believe 13 did chide Colin Cowherd once for name dropping.
(Note the exclusion of the late Chris Thomas from above. He was a true hybrid, and very proud of being in radio, and we were all the better for it.)
The columnists do have an advantage. Their line of work allows them access to more events than radio folk, and so does the papers budget. Of course locally, someone at CBS has discovered that at least one scribe happened to be devoting more time to his paper than the radio show. And thats as it should be, it just took someone way too long to grasp that putting this station on life support, if not at least critical conditon.
Look, times change and so did the business. I'll capitulate with one request for an admission of a shred of respect for the radio business and the people who grew up in it, and the fact that management now rely mostly on crutches to meet their bottom line. flame away...
You'll note the words "was" or "were" used in the following. Yes, times change. I get it.
In the day, there were three clearly defined businesses: You were a jock or reporter for Radio, or you wrote for the paper or you worked in television. There were the occasional crossovers, normally the newspaper guy would appear on radio or tv, the tv guy would appear on radio or the paper...somehow the radio guy rarely appeared on tv unless it was a sweetheart deal or he paid for the appearance. The radio guy in the paper? As rare as finding one who admits to listening to 98.7 these days.
There once was pride in being a full time radio guy or girl. This was your business and if someone from the other media came in, it was out of courtesy or perhaps a trade.
Like the writer who earned his stripes at the Penny Shopper, the radio guy cut his teeth in 250 watters splicing tape with razor blades, rebuilding carts, begging the jocks to be careful with the records, spending weekends at used car lots with sales weasels who threw you under the bus every time the sponsor whined, and running to Radio Shack with petty cash for cables and whatever else.
We loved it.
Unfortunately, as many of the aforementioned account executives ascended to power, with only a handful ever working a board, the philosophy changed. Licenses were no longer needed, not even the "Cap'n Crunch" boxtop that replaced our Third Class ticket. The Crossover turned into a takeover, and it's almost always one sided in favor or the papers or television. Remember the 90's? Frank Robertson, chip Carter, Rob Stone, the other two guys from 44. They had regular sports radio gigs and while the radio station ran ads ad nauseum about their stations shows and reporters, aside from plugging their own appearances on radio, never mentioned any of the regular radio hosts. Well, not that there were many others after the tv invasion began. I believe 13 did chide Colin Cowherd once for name dropping.
(Note the exclusion of the late Chris Thomas from above. He was a true hybrid, and very proud of being in radio, and we were all the better for it.)
The columnists do have an advantage. Their line of work allows them access to more events than radio folk, and so does the papers budget. Of course locally, someone at CBS has discovered that at least one scribe happened to be devoting more time to his paper than the radio show. And thats as it should be, it just took someone way too long to grasp that putting this station on life support, if not at least critical conditon.
Look, times change and so did the business. I'll capitulate with one request for an admission of a shred of respect for the radio business and the people who grew up in it, and the fact that management now rely mostly on crutches to meet their bottom line. flame away...
Now I understand your point. A couple more comments...
1) It's all about multiple platforms now
2) Pittsburgh's 93.7 the Fan has Post-Gazette writer Ron Cook as part of their midday show. When he was covering the Steelers vs. the Ravens he did his show from the CBS studios in Baltimore. He is covering the Big East tournament today and did his show from WFAN. John Feinstein is doing his national show from St. Pete this week. If Tampa wanted to make it work for Shelton they could have done so.
3) Contrary to the prevailing opinion here, a friend of mine who programs several stations for CBS in a top 5 market heard the station last week while he was in the area for Spring Training and said it was better than he expected. I think most of the really negative comments are coming from people with axes to grind.
4) To my recollection, the Animal never cracked a 1- share on 1250. Moving to the big signal on 620 was a huge factor. CBS maybe needs to think about a full simulcast on 1010 to fill in 98.7's deficiencies to the east.
1) It's all about multiple platforms now
2) Pittsburgh's 93.7 the Fan has Post-Gazette writer Ron Cook as part of their midday show. When he was covering the Steelers vs. the Ravens he did his show from the CBS studios in Baltimore. He is covering the Big East tournament today and did his show from WFAN. John Feinstein is doing his national show from St. Pete this week. If Tampa wanted to make it work for Shelton they could have done so.
3) Contrary to the prevailing opinion here, a friend of mine who programs several stations for CBS in a top 5 market heard the station last week while he was in the area for Spring Training and said it was better than he expected. I think most of the really negative comments are coming from people with axes to grind.
4) To my recollection, the Animal never cracked a 1- share on 1250. Moving to the big signal on 620 was a huge factor. CBS maybe needs to think about a full simulcast on 1010 to fill in 98.7's deficiencies to the east.
Studio20 said:
The day the Lightning were born I convinced Chris not to play Kate Smith but instead a female anthem singer from Quebec. He loved it was singing along in French with her.
Chris could have gone to ESPN but he just loved Tampa weather.
Fenway1912 said:
I agree. Maybe this isn't the best example, but hope it works. It's hard for me to personally take a music station seriously without a national countdown show on the weekends. Again, that's me personally and no one else may share my opinion. It's hard for me to take a talk station seriously without at least some decent national host that has some name value. And it's hard for me to take a sports talk station locally seriously without some team coverage of some kind other than an only somewhat popular college. They do carry NFL games from Dial Global but it just isn't the same as having a real anchor team. Does anyone in the area carry Orlando Magic games? I mean its not a team here but it's in the region and the primary basketball team people probably care about here. It'd be something on the pro level that might help them get their feet on the ground and stabilize.
Also, dumping Rome for pretty much anyone would help. Honestly I listen to WDAE from 6-noon, then either music or SXM until 3 and then I finally will turn to 98.7.
Please. Since the Magic entered the league they've been on every sports radio station in this town, and some that were'nt, at least three times. In fact, the second worst team in the league has some games aired on 1010 this month.
This isn't an NBA town, heck USF hoops, the worst in the Big Least didn't draw numbers.
This isn't an NBA town, heck USF hoops, the worst in the Big Least didn't draw numbers.
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