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Buffalo WGR to Simulcast on 107.7

WGR will be fine. They are a sports talk station that happened to carry play-by-play. They will still be a great sports talk station, but this time, they will have a little more freedom in what they are able to say

I sold WGR for over 20 years. Very few advertisers wanted or could afford to be “In Game”. They wanted to be involved in the pre and post talk, which will still happen on WGR.

They are the well branded sports talk station, with live, local hosts. The Bills cost them a ton of money, and revenue from that expenditure was not producing ROI. WGR made some money with playoff games, enough to probably bring them to even.

Same with Sabres. Not a big deal

As long as WGR sticks to sports talk, they will be fine. Plus the simulcast on 1077 won’t hurt.
 
Buddy Shula said:
WGR will be fine. They are a sports talk station that happened to carry play-by-play. They will still be a great sports talk station, but this time, they will have a little more freedom in what they are able to say

I sold WGR for over 20 years. Very few advertisers wanted or could afford to be “In Game”. They wanted to be involved in the pre and post talk, which will still happen on WGR.

They are the well branded sports talk station, with live, local hosts. The Bills cost them a ton of money, and revenue from that expenditure was not producing ROI. WGR made some money with playoff games, enough to probably bring them to even.

Same with Sabres. Not a big deal

As long as WGR sticks to sports talk, they will be fine. Plus the simulcast on 1077 won’t hurt.
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They will lose a degree of access. There will be no more mandatory appearances----unless of course individual Bill's or Sabre's personnel work out a deal with them. Then again, I cannot imagine Pegula would allow that if they are promoting exclusivity. Then again, WGR offers them mucho exposure.

Maybe Pegula will run tons of ads on 'GR promoting their new platform! :)
 
flybynight said:
There will be no more mandatory appearances----unless of course individual Bill's or Sabre's personnel work out a deal with them. Then again, I cannot imagine Pegula would allow that if they are promoting exclusivity.
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The rules for individual players and their ability to negotiate appearance and endorsement deals are all negotiated by the various players unions as part of their overall labor agreement. I doubt any owner could prevent player appearances on a non-team associated station, except under circumstances spelled out in those labor contracts.
 
I think someone mentioned geographical targeting. Business and regulatory factors can result in things that are puzzling to the audience. It can become complicated.
 
The world is complicated. Everything is complicated. Don’t overthink GR’s role. I am told they will have even more player shows, live, local shows, and better feature programming.

They are a sports TALK station. That’s what they will focus on. They will lose all the nonsense and expense of having to run all these games , and being scolded by professional teams about what they are talking about.

Running the games is more of a beat your chest initiative. Gives a certain amount of bragging rights. That’s it.

I predict they will become an even better sports talk station.

I also predict that the games will end up on another station or stations. I know for a fact Pegula has not figured that part out yet.
 
Greg Strickland said:
Buddy Shula-
I appreciate your thought and views. It is interesting what motivates a station to carry play by play sports. And what it does, and does not do.
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Thank you. Since the media landscape has changed so much over the years, radio has become just another platform. To make it not just another platform, adding something so special to the market, like our sports teams is just something that separates the station from the other, essentially bragging rights, and external publicity.
 
I will add to this some insight I have on what I think may be happening in the market. I’m not just guessing.

WNED- Has applied for Commercial status. - I believe they will have nothing to do with the sports teams. I believe they want to sell commercials and I also believe they want to sell the station. You can bet they will not be doing anything regarding sports

WGR- They will be fine. They are replacing One Bills Drive with a Sabres live and local show . They will replace the country format Feb 16th

Bills and Sabres- Townsquare. WBUF. They also have their network of stations around NYS.

I think you’ll find that I will be correct on each count.
 
Buddy Shula said:
I will add to this some insight I have on what I think may be happening in the market. I’m not just guessing.

WNED- Has applied for Commercial status. - I believe they will have nothing to do with the sports teams. I believe they want to sell commercials and I also believe they want to sell the station. You can bet they will not be doing anything regarding sports

WGR- They will be fine. They are replacing One Bills Drive with a Sabres live and local show . They will replace the country format Feb 16th

Bills and Sabres- Townsquare. WBUF. They also have their network of stations around NYS.

I think you’ll find that I will be correct on each count.
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I think you're going to be right on the first 2.....but I think Townsquare's stations won't be the local flagship for both teams.

To point 1: WFMT in Chicago runs a primarily classical music format(and, like Buffalo, they're co-owned with their local PBS station WTTW).
To point 2: WGR didn't have a problem the LAST time they lost the rights to Bills games and they won't this time.

As for point 3: I can see the Bills going to one station(say, WBUF)and the Sabres land on another.

JMO.
 
ckg279 said:
I think you're going to be right on the first 2.....but I think Townsquare's stations won't be the local flagship.

To point 1: WFMT in Chicago runs a primarily classical music format(and, like Buffalo, they're co-owned with their local PBS station WTTW).
To point 2: WGR didn't have a problem the LAST time they lost the rights to Bills games and they won't this time.

As for point 3: I can see the Bills going to one station(say, WBUF)and the Sabres land on another.
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You are entitled to what you think. I know differently.
 
Buddy Shula said:
I believe they want to sell commercials and I also believe they want to sell the station.
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My view is that the seller of a station doesn't go through the expense and paperwork of changing the status of the station. That is done by the buyer. So I don't believe WNYPM made that switch to sell. They did it to expand the way they credit their sponsors. The FCC rules are too confining, and they will have fewer restrictions now. It wouldn't surprise me to see WQXR and WCRB (other classical stations in the commercial band) make this change.
 
TheBigA said:
My view is that the seller of a station doesn't go through the expense and paperwork of changing the status of the station. That is done by the buyer. So I don't believe WNYPM made that switch to sell. They did it to expand the way they credit their sponsors. The FCC rules are too confining, and they will have fewer restrictions now. It wouldn't surprise me to see WQXR and WCRB (other classical stations in the commercial band) make this change.
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They want to sell it
 
Buddy Shula said:
They want to sell it
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Maybe, but they didn't have to change the status to sell it. When Cumulus sold its stations to K-Love, they were sold as commercial stations. K-Love applied to change it to non-commercial. When Audacy sold it's Buffalo station to K-Love, they didn't change it to non-commercial. That was done by K-Love.
 
TheBigA said:
Maybe, but they didn't have to change the status to sell it. When Cumulus sold its stations to K-Love, they were sold as commercial stations. K-Love applied to change it to non-commercial. When Audacy sold it's Buffalo station to K-Love, they didn't change it to non-commercial. That was done by K-Love.
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That's the way 99% of these sales happen. No need to change status before the sale.
 
Could be a number of reasons why administrative things happen the way they do, and the reason may not be sensational.
Buyer and sellers, and their respective in-house and outside attorneys and engineers; nuances of asset purchase agreement, etc.
 
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TheBigA said:
My view is that the seller of a station doesn't go through the expense and paperwork of changing the status of the station.
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It is an odd situation. Perhaps the current owners want to sell and believe that putting it on the market as a commercial license would make it more attractive to prospective buyers, thus a higher purchase price?
 
Mediafrog+ said:
It is an odd situation. Perhaps the current owners want to sell and believe that putting it on the market as a commercial license would make it more attractive to prospective buyers, thus a higher purchase price?
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Once again, the frequency is in the commercial band. So the value of the license is in the frequency, not the status.

In the WNED thread someone said the station has emailed its members and said they are having a listener forum on Wednesday when they'll discuss it further.
 
TheBigA said:
Once again, the frequency is in the commercial band. So the value of the license is in the frequency, not the status.

In the WNED thread someone said the station has emailed its members and said they are having a listener forum on Wednesday when they'll discuss it further.
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I think the s**t is going to hit the fan at that meeting. There will be a huge listener outcry (much like the one that occured when the city of Dallas, TX, tried to take WRR-FM commercial). Whether or not said outcry will result in a change of plans is anybody's guess.
 


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