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Sports-and-music hybrid formats

M

Miss Tuned

The UK has launched a new sports radio station, Track Radio, with a hybrid format of sports talk and AC/classic hits music:

Track Radio

www.trackradio.com www.trackradio.com

Is this something that has been done prior, or is done elsewhere in the U.S.? I know it was done on a local level in Scotland ("RockSport", shockingly a rock/sports hybrid) but didn't last long. KGA Spokane did it for a bit as "The Game, Sports & Hip-Hop" but I think that was mostly automated hip-hop to fill time between sports play-by-play.
 
Miss Tuned said:
The UK has launched a new sports radio station, Track Radio, with a hybrid format of sports talk and AC/classic hits music:

Track Radio

www.trackradio.com www.trackradio.com

Is this something that has been done prior, or is done elsewhere in the U.S.? I know it was done on a local level in Scotland ("RockSport", shockingly a rock/sports hybrid) but didn't last long. KGA Spokane did it for a bit as "The Game, Sports & Hip-Hop" but I think that was mostly automated hip-hop to fill time between sports play-by-play.
Click to expand...
There are some rock stations like 98 Rock in Baltimore, Maryland with the Baltimore Ravens and, when they were the Kansas City Chiefs flagship, KCFX in Independence, MO that run live football games and talk sports while also playing music. There are some AAA stations like KTBG that run women's soccer matches (I know that's from 2 years ago but they're still running the matches) as the flagship station, but since I'm not into soccer, I don't know what else they do with the Kansas City team. I can't think of any sports/music hybrid stations like the one you mentioned, but maybe others here know of some.

Was RockSport related to TalkSport at all or was the name just similar?
 
In San Diego, back in 2018, there was "The Machine" 97.3 FM. It was a sports, comedy, and classic rock station that only lasted a month. It was built around the Padres baseball franchise. An inappropriate tweet from a shock jock promoting his new morning show caused an uproar, causing Padres management to have second thoughts being associated with the station. The tweet was a picture of the Coronado Bridge, a popular spot to jump from and commit suicide. It had the caption "Jump to a new morning show". They quickly became "The Fan", a now popular all sports outlet.

timesofsandiego.com

Entercom Rebrands 97.3 (Again) to 'The Fan' After 'Jump' Fiasco

Entercom Communications has again rebranded radio station KEGY, this time to “97.3 The Fan,” San Diego’s only 24/7 all-sports FM station and flagship home of the San Diego Padres.
timesofsandiego.com timesofsandiego.com
 
There were some sports rock efforts in West Virginia.

Toucher and Rich were also syndicated to music stations in New England. It seemed like a good fit because they came from rock radio anyway. I think it's more due to Toucher and Rich's internal issues than genre fit that the syndication experiment didn't last.
 
what about news/talk and music?

I was at WGGH 1150 Marion, IL not long after it dumped gospel for news talk and we did news/talk by day weekdays and most of the weekend with evening/overnight country then classic hits. The stations name was "Monster Radio AM 1150" which was borne out of a failed sell of a weekend show to a client.

I dont remember the details, but we were going to have a weekend music show sponsored by a client, the show had monster in the name, they didnt end up going with it.... but we kept the monster named and had a few slogans.... "Monster Radio.. monster talk, monster hits" .. "The LOCAL station, Monster Radio AM 1150"

We really pushed the local angle. "Connecting with southern illinois because we care.." was our line whenever we read PSA's.
I did 4-5 minute interviews during Rick n Bubba and dennis Miller... and we did a ton of remotes.... way back in 2009 even without a board op.

A few very short airchecks exist on youtube. We had that station sounding TIGHT BRIGHT AND LOCAL.

Even when I Couldnt make it through a talk break, i still it the next element
 
WAES in Charlotte did America's Best Music days and talk nights in the late 80s.

I've heard of two Myrtle Beach stations which did a mix of sports and music. One was WDAI-FM in the early 90s with music that was some kind of easy listening, and in 2000 when a new owner took music off easy listening WJYR-FM and put similar music on the sports talk AM part time. Did not go well.

WDAI nearly went all-sports.


But it eventually went urban and that has been its format for more than 30 years.
 


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