Newsradio 88 is adding broadcasts of all Rutgers University basketball games. They have already been devoting a considerable portion of their time to coverage of Mets baseball games etc.
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WCBS AM Moving Further Away From News?
- Thread starter Barry
- Start date
Rutgers must be paying for the time. NYC might be the worst market for college sports in the nation, other than the Notre Dame subway alumni and wannabe alumni. Audacy would be fools to pay a penny for the rights.
The rights are owned by Learfield Sports and they negotiated the deal. So it's not paid by the University.
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It's likely some kind of barter deal where Learfield gets spots on these radio stations and the stations can sell the content. They also get streaming rights.
The big problem for WCBS is their audience is aging, and advertisers are less interested in the demo. What we've already seen is that WCBS is running info-mercials on the weekends to improve revenue. Sports programming will attract a different demographic from news, and will provide another revenue stream for the station.
This is a big loss for WOR, who has been carrying Rutgers Sports for many years.
Rutgers is the state university of New Jersey, but that's not like saying Ohio State is the state university of Ohio or the University of Texas is the state university of Texas. Rutgers sports on radio hasn't a fraction of the appeal to listeners in the NYC metro that Texas sports has to those in the DFW Metroplex. The big state schools of the South and Midwest have their athletic teams followed avidly by people with no connection to the schools but their place of birth, or at least their current residence. Many went to other colleges. Many never went to college at all. They're all likely to have the Buckeyes or Longhorns game on in the car if they're out and about on a Saturday afternoon. You're not going to find that sort of interest in Rutgers games. The audience will be limited largely to alumni, and even they might not follow a school that rarely competes with the "big boys" in terms of wins and losses. WOR will barely notice the games are gone, and what listeners the station has will be overjoyed to have Mister Magoo's alma mater going elsewhere.The rights are owned by Learfield Sports and they negotiated the deal. So it's not paid by the University.
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It's likely some kind of barter deal where Learfield gets spots on these radio stations and the stations can sell the content. They also get streaming rights.
The big problem for WCBS is their audience is aging, and advertisers are less interested in the demo. What we've already seen is that WCBS is running info-mercials on the weekends to improve revenue. Sports programming will attract a different demographic from news, and will provide another revenue stream for the station.
This is a big loss for WOR, who has been carrying Rutgers Sports for many years.
This isn't being done for ratings. It's being done to lower the demos for WCBS and provide another revenue stream. Rutgers is part of the Big Ten, with a lot of top teams. Rutgers has a very active alumni organization, particularly in the northern part of NJ. So there will be interest, and consequently there will be new advertisers for WCBS.
All-news as a format is in big trouble. It's very expensive, and it attracts a median age of 62. That combination isn't good. It doesn't help that the station is on AM. But it has a great signal that is probably slightly better in some areas than WOR.
But they'll notice the money is gone. WOR suffers from similar demos as WCBS, and the station also runs a lot of info-mercials on the weekends. I'm sure they'll find another college to replace Rutgers very quickly. St. Johns is very popular, and they're currently on WMCA. Perhaps they'll move to WOR at the next contract.
Teams that often beat Rutgers by scores of 52-3, 56-21 and 48-7. Look, up this way, most universities and colleges are where you go to learn, not where you go to paint buckeyes all over your face or hold silly signs that let Lee Corso know you're there mugging in the background on ESPN hours before kickoff. That St. John's is, in your words, "quite popular," yet its games air on a religious-formatted AM, speaks volumes. Since St. John's doesn't play football, maybe Rutgers football winds up on 570 with the Red Storm next.
Doesn't matter. It's all about money.
This is a multi-year deal with Audacy, and Audacy doesn't own WMCA. My expectation is there will be conflicts for Rutgers football on WFAN. There are likely to be Yankee games on Saturday afternoons, and so football will move to WCBS. This is the future for WCBS, as a spillover for WFAN. It's better than the alternative, which is more brokered financial and medical shows.
If the sporting events make more money than news, then news becomes expendable.
Audacy owns two all news AM stations in NYC. So if the audience transitions to WINS, that's great.
Given that WCBS has traditionally been one of the top billing stations in the country, that seems like a flashing red warning light for the format's future.
You don't become a top biller by selling spots for $2.50 like a station you might find at the helm of the Nebraska sports network.
I'm not sure you're right about selling spots for $2.50. You might provide an example.
My take is this sports programming mainly airs at night and on weekends, when ad rates are low anyway. The choice is between sports programming or more info-mercials.
Given the number of diehards who might still be listening to those spots in the third quarter of a Wisconsin-Rutgers game that's 48-3 at halftime, $2.50 might be seen as exorbitant.
Once again, this is not being done for ratings, and the spot price one pays weeks in advance doesn't change during the course of a game. There will be title sponsorships for these games that will greatly exceed the typical rates this station gets during these dayparts. They are selling brand association.
We're going in circles here. What good does brand association do if only a few hundred people even listen to the broadcast?
I don't see it that way in this case. Audacy owns both all-news stations in NYC so they have the luxury of being able to run special programming on one of them (WCBS), and the news audience still has the other station to fall back to (WINS).
Audacy gets sports revenue they wouldn't get otherwise. And WCBS might even increase its cume by pulling in sports listeners who wouldn't normally tune in for the regular news format. Besides, some if not most of those games will be played during non-prime news hours so there's not much harm done. Less harm than from the weekend morning infomercials, that's for sure.
Of course, WOR benefits from a much lower payroll than WCBS due to the nature of its format, and it also clears programming for Premiere Networks.
The demo issues tor all news is interesting. I’m not surprised, but I’m surprised radio companies were open to considering the format just 10 years ago when it seemed to be on a bit of an upswing.
The demo is what it is. What else can anyone put on AM that's going to do any better? In fact, FM is heading toward the same fate eventually. Radio doesn't even target listeners under 25 so the most impressionable age group is growing up with streaming as the only thing that serves them, and that's undoubtedly where they will stay. Meanwhile, the over-25 gang that radio serves now won't be getting any younger.
A few hours a week will not lower the demos. Demos are based on AQH averages across 128 hours for the broad picture and across 6 AM to 7 PM M-F for the majority of agency buys.
This is just "paid programming" like the other weekend stuff on WCBA (AM).
Right, what I meant to say is it will give them access for those hours to lower demos, as in students and parents. They are likely to be younger than most of the traditional WCBS listeners. So for those hours, the sellers will have access to advertisers who probably don't usually buy WCBS or all news radio.
But the main thing is the overall brand sponsorship package, which is new money. My two favorite words (other than free shipping) are new money.
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