It was ten years ago this month that WFNS, the first all-sports station in Tampa Bay, bit the dust.
WFNS was at 910 AM. It had previously been WPLA, a Southern Gospel station heavily focused on Plant City, with special reports during the Strawberry Festival and anytime there was a freeze that affected the berry fields and citrus groves. Oh, and Plant City Raiders/ Brandon Eagles football on Friday nights.
Harmon moved the station to Tampa, changed the format to all-sports, and ironically, dumped the high school football.
This was one of the stops for the Fabulous Sports Babe (Nanci Donnellan) before she went national, and
afterwards as well. It was the place where the world first heard Todd Wright's odd mixture of sports and ramblings about "Saved by the Bell." I realize there's a whole generation who has never heard Todd Wright in daylight (except as fill-in) and may think he's some sort of vampirish character who only comes out at night. Mornings were Paul Porter's turf, and I believe a fellow named Dave Campbell was 910's first sports talker.
It was also the home of the most famous sports duo in Tampa Bay radio history, Steve Duemig and Scot Brantley. Duemig, as I recall, was brought down when WFNS got the rights to Lightning hockey, because none of the locals could handle hockey talk. The funny thing about the Brantley-Duemig show was that it seemed like two different shows going on an alternating basis on the same frequency. Brantley talked
football and NASCAR and fishing; Duemig talked hockey and golf and some football, and the twain almost never met.
For its first five years the station struggled with a weak signal, especially outside of Hillsborough and Polk counties. It managed to get up into non-fractional share territory, then signed a deal with WSUN, then at 620, to simulcast some of its programming, with Cox selling all the inventory. In effect, it was a sports station with a sidecar.
Cox finally acquired 910 outright, and immediately upon doing so, killed the sports format on both stations, replacing them with two satellite nostalgia music formats, an act that baffles me to this day. It is curious that Cox, which has done so well on AM in Atlanta, Orlando and Jacksonville, avoids the band in Tampa like the plague, and by selling out, allowed Clear Channel to get a corner on all the usable signals.
The demise of 910 was one of the first examples of "winning by attrition" in the Tampa radio market. 820's ratings were about the same ad as 910's, so the 620 simulcast kept the whole WFNS-WSUN operation above water. 820 benefitted (at least for awhile) when Cox decided to bail out of sports altogether. Cox would of course, learn to use that attrition strategy itself on other competitors, such as (Oldies 97.1 vs.) U92 and (Bone and Eagle versus) Thunder 103.5. Don't outplay, outcheap and hang on.
Today, you have 620 WDAE dominating and two weaker stations huddling around the fire of one of the few AM formats that doesn't draw gray and silver haired listeners. It is possible that all-sports will end up being the last viable AM format ever developed.
WFNS was at 910 AM. It had previously been WPLA, a Southern Gospel station heavily focused on Plant City, with special reports during the Strawberry Festival and anytime there was a freeze that affected the berry fields and citrus groves. Oh, and Plant City Raiders/ Brandon Eagles football on Friday nights.
Harmon moved the station to Tampa, changed the format to all-sports, and ironically, dumped the high school football.
This was one of the stops for the Fabulous Sports Babe (Nanci Donnellan) before she went national, and
afterwards as well. It was the place where the world first heard Todd Wright's odd mixture of sports and ramblings about "Saved by the Bell." I realize there's a whole generation who has never heard Todd Wright in daylight (except as fill-in) and may think he's some sort of vampirish character who only comes out at night. Mornings were Paul Porter's turf, and I believe a fellow named Dave Campbell was 910's first sports talker.
It was also the home of the most famous sports duo in Tampa Bay radio history, Steve Duemig and Scot Brantley. Duemig, as I recall, was brought down when WFNS got the rights to Lightning hockey, because none of the locals could handle hockey talk. The funny thing about the Brantley-Duemig show was that it seemed like two different shows going on an alternating basis on the same frequency. Brantley talked
football and NASCAR and fishing; Duemig talked hockey and golf and some football, and the twain almost never met.
For its first five years the station struggled with a weak signal, especially outside of Hillsborough and Polk counties. It managed to get up into non-fractional share territory, then signed a deal with WSUN, then at 620, to simulcast some of its programming, with Cox selling all the inventory. In effect, it was a sports station with a sidecar.
Cox finally acquired 910 outright, and immediately upon doing so, killed the sports format on both stations, replacing them with two satellite nostalgia music formats, an act that baffles me to this day. It is curious that Cox, which has done so well on AM in Atlanta, Orlando and Jacksonville, avoids the band in Tampa like the plague, and by selling out, allowed Clear Channel to get a corner on all the usable signals.
The demise of 910 was one of the first examples of "winning by attrition" in the Tampa radio market. 820's ratings were about the same ad as 910's, so the 620 simulcast kept the whole WFNS-WSUN operation above water. 820 benefitted (at least for awhile) when Cox decided to bail out of sports altogether. Cox would of course, learn to use that attrition strategy itself on other competitors, such as (Oldies 97.1 vs.) U92 and (Bone and Eagle versus) Thunder 103.5. Don't outplay, outcheap and hang on.
Today, you have 620 WDAE dominating and two weaker stations huddling around the fire of one of the few AM formats that doesn't draw gray and silver haired listeners. It is possible that all-sports will end up being the last viable AM format ever developed.
