• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Red Sox extension to Entercom?

in a way, I agree with Ken, yes, Entercom should get rid of Mike FM. But DG02816 and Raccoonradio are right.

As some of us suggested, Entercom should put 93.7 to Sports Talk. I think 93.7 should have Dennis and Callahan on weekdays, then put Sporting News Radio The rest of the day, as well as games on there. On Weekends put on Games and Sporting News Radio. On 850am I think they should put "Sporting News Radio" on instead of ESPN because "Sporting News Radio sounds more attention grabber. That's just my idea

My other idea is change 97.7 to ??? HOT AC, go against Mix 104.1 Call it ??? "97.7 The Rose-WZOU" Put HOT AC Format, if they don't want to use Radio DJS, then use a service like Citadel Radio Network's "Today's Best Hits" Format. Use that Midnight-3pm, and 3pm-7pm put "Doug Banks Show", then 7pm-Midnight put "Kim Iverson" on. Then on weekends put some Syndicated Countdowns on and some Urban AC Syndicated Programs on.
Why I say "Doug Banks Show" and Syndicated Urban Shows, because WZOU was Rhythmatic back then.
 
WEEI probably chooses to be an ESPN affiliate because it's a better known name (connection with TV network) and they can carry baseball playoffs and other stuff. I don't know if they would just run D&C and then go to network stuff the rest of the time on an "FM 93.7". They would want to also have their other shows, too--D&H, Big Show, Mike Adams. You make it sound like they
should have Sporting News Radio on both AM and FM. Maybe if they moved the local sports
lineup to FM, all of it, they could put it on the AM, but they are preferring ESPN at this time.
And again, Mike's music format is making money and as much as I'd like to get Red Sox games
on an FM I can receive clearly at work, it may not happen.

The only thing at this point which might make them move to FM (a move not a simulcast) would be if they really went down in the ratings and Sports Hub was beating them, badly. Then, maybe.
The main focus of WEEI is their local shows, which make money on the whole EEI network (or
at least EEI). National shows are secondary. They run ESPN overnight rather than pay a local
host. They run ESPN on weekends to fill a few time slots when there isn't local. Keep in mind
you have (this time of year) Celtics and college sports taking up a lot of weekend slots
and also they run local talk rather than national because that's their focus. They don't have the rights to Pats game but they know people want to talk about them.

That's why last Sunday WEEI opted for local sports talk after the Pats game rather than
World Series, which they shifted to WRKO

Look at WEEI's lineup for last Sat:
9:00AM 1:00PM Mustard & Johnson
1:00PM 3:15PM Talk Show
3:15PM 7:00PM BC Football vs. Wake Forest
7:00PM 11:00PM SEC Football

They want to talk local, then they have college football to run

Now look at Sunday
8:30AM 9:00AM NFL Preview Show
9:00AM 12:00PM NFL Sunday
1:00PM 4:00PM Mike Mutnansky
4:00PM 6:30PM Real Postgame Show
6:30PM 9:30PM Celtics @ Ok. City
9:30PM 12:00AM John Ryder

No room for ESPN, or Sporting News, there. They know the Pats are a huge draw and
they want to talk Pats before the game. During the game. After the game. Then they have
Celts followed by local talk.

Especially with 98.5 for competition, WEEI is focusing on local, local, local, and national
is maybe for overnights, if that. If you can convince EEI to dump ESPN for Sporting
News, more power to you, but realize they can only run it maybe overnight. And they
would lose the ability to carry stuff like baseball playoffs. The idea of putting EEI on FM
with Sporting News on AM, that could work, but as long as Mike is playing music and
making money it won't happen. I'm just looking at the sched. here are trying to assume
what WEEI wants to do. That means local, local, local, ESPN, local, local, local...

E-mails or phone calls to WEEI (post on their facebook too) might convince them to
switch to SNR but I don't know if you'd be successful.
 
I'll add that if I went to Jason Wolfe and said, "You know, you really should have Dennis Miller on instead of Charley Manning on RKO, and Jerry Doyle on instead of Howie Carr--people want a national
perspective" I'd get laughed out of the office. Even though they do run the likes of Ingraham
and Savage, they too have a focus on local. Otherwise their ratings would plummet--some say
they already are pretty low but it's also been said they do well in their target demo. The same
applies to WEEI; the focus is on local talk in a town that supports not one but two highly
successful sports talk stations. Hey, Sports Hub, why have all these local talk shows when
you could be running Fox Sports? Yeah, nobody wants to hear local people talk about the Pats
when they could be hearing national people talk about the Detriot Lions...

The situation at 98.5 is similar to WEEI. They are Fox sports but you only get Tony Bruno and
JT The Brick because they don't want to pay overnight people. And WKLB runs After Midnight
overnights to save money (they get a good packaged show and no need to pay a DJ). But otherwise, KLB is local. Hey, they could run a syndie country service but they do pretty well
with local content and save the national stuff for the wee hours. Getting back to 98.5 I suppose if they had a medium powered AM sister station they could run Fox Sports or SNR on it
(thought it would be competing with their main product; and they certainly wouldn't do it on 1030)...if not for the fact that a Catholic group bought it, a station like WQOM 1060 could
do SNR, and if not for the fact that many people do brokered ethnic programming on AM,
those could also be targets...

It's all economics, and making the best of daytime vs. overnights. Heck, if WEEI had a little
money to burn they could have someone local talking sports overnight but there aren't as
many listeners so they turn to ESPN for those hours.
 
Would WEEI or Sports Hub ever consider going local in the over night? WFAN is local during the day and overnight.

Not sure how much longer or what it will take for Entercom to put WEEI on FM. (Maybe if The Sports Hub beats WEEI in ratings) Its to bad Entercom doesn't have another FM in Boston to spare. What CBS did was smart sure Boston lost WBCN, if CBS never did that move would Entercom flipped WAAF to say WEEI-FM? Then leaving only WBCN and not WAAF.
 
One of Entercom's FM's would have to drop in the ratings so far and for so long that it would be written off as a lost cause fir them to flip it.

That was exactly what happened to the mighty Rock of Boston, it sank to ratings obscurity, for a bunch of reasons, nothing they tried could turn it around, and they had zero to loose.

Entercom on the other hand has done very well with 93.7 as far as ratings and its contribution to the bottom line, and I assume WAAF/WKAF does well too.

If the 850 franchise started dropping like a rock, to the point that it is cost effective to risk flipping/sacrifice a profitable FM to make it a sports format then it might happen, but nobody wants to end up with a AM signal that is worthless in the process. What would you do with 850 in you sent Sports packing to the FM side of the band? Move WRKO up to 850, and watch 680 turn into another leased time ethnic or religious broadcaster?
 
MRBIboredop said:
If the 850 franchise started dropping like a rock, to the point that it is cost effective to risk flipping/sacrifice a profitable FM to make it a sports format then it might happen, but nobody wants to end up with a AM signal that is worthless in the process. What would you do with 850 in you sent Sports packing to the FM side of the band? Move WRKO up to 850, and watch 680 turn into another leased time ethnic or religious broadcaster?
Click to expand...

Why move WRKO to 850 both stations are pretty much the same signal. All Entercom would have to do with 850 is making it natioal feed of ESPN, and air sports when conflict.
 
WEEI will go local in overnights if events warrent--when the Celtics won the NBA title a couple of seasons ago, they stayed on all night taking calls once the game crew signed off..but Entercom is not going to hire a host or two, along with call screeners, when you can run ESPN, and their spots, and save some cash..same for CBS and the Sports Hub..its just not worth it from an economic standpoint..
 
>>Would WEEI or Sports Hub ever consider going local in the over night?

I think Sports Hub would def. do local talk after mid., etc., if Pats had a game on Sunday Night Football (as they will vs. Steelers this upcoming Sun.) or Mon Night Football. EEI too
 
Why move WRKO to 850 both stations are pretty much the same signal.
Click to expand...

Despite the comparable patterns and identical ERP's, if anything I believe 680 has a somewhat better signal over 850...thanks to the lower frequency and better ground conductivity of their site.

Of course, this is also part of the problem. Neither has jack squat for decent coverage over the relatively lucrative MetroWest region after dark...a major handicap for the winter months when more than half of drivetime (both AM and PM) is when it's dark out. There's a lot of Class B's out there like that; signals with patterns that were market-dominant when they were built 40 or 50 years ago, but since then the market has expanded outside of their range...often with the most lucrative neighborhoods being outside the range, too.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom