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Yankees Radio: Decision 2012

101.9 is going after women. Women don't listen to play by play baseball.

I have a problem with the Daily News article because it's only source is an unnamed person at the MLB. It could be some blogger at MLB, who has no better information than anyone here. So I don't put much credibility in it. Disney and ESPN don't own WABC or have any stake in Cumulus. Cumulus is in a position right now where it has a lot of work to do on their AM stations. WABC and KABC are two of them. They're built around syndicated conservative talk shows that appeal to older demos. The future for Cumulus will be in what they do to fix their major market AM powerhouses. They already let the Dodgers go in LA. I take that as more of a trend than what some unnamed source at the MLB says.

The other question I have, and no one seems to know, is how much independence does ESPN have from Disney. Can WEPN spend this kind of money without the approval from Burbank? I don't know the answer. But I think that says a lot more to me than an unnamed MLB source.
 
TheBigA said:
The other question I have, and no one seems to know, is how much independence does ESPN have from Disney. Can WEPN spend this kind of money without the approval from Burbank? I don't know the answer. But I think that says a lot more to me than an unnamed MLB source.
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Burbank, maybe. Bristol, absolutely not. I would suspect the real decision-making for the local ESPN Radio stations is made at the ESPN mothership, and they're pretty savvy there about the value of play-by-play rights.
 
Scott Fybush said:
Burbank, maybe. Bristol, absolutely not. I would suspect the real decision-making for the local ESPN Radio stations is made at the ESPN mothership, and they're pretty savvy there about the value of play-by-play rights.
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I agree. But so far, ESPN itself has not spent any money buying radio stations. They've used the stations Disney owned when they launched the format, and then syndicated programming to outside stations. But buying the Yankee rights would entail either buying a NY station (which Disney won't support) or making some kind of deal with another owner that would be outside the traditional ESPN contract. Do they have so much cash sitting around in Bristol that they can act without the support of their parent company? If ESPN could still deliver the same level of profit, or the potential of delivering even more, with some kind of radio deal that involved the Yankees and/or Cumulus, THEN perhaps Disney would accept it. Otherwise, the view in Burbank is that ownership of towers and transmitters is a dying business that they don't want to be in long term.
 
I'm not clear on the distinction you're attempting to draw between "Disney" and "ESPN itself." There's been no change in ESPN's ownership since ESPN Radio first entered the O&O business, and only one of those O&Os, WEAE Pittsburgh, has left the fold, largely because of external factors.

The ESPN unit clearly has plenty of cash to work with - they just spent large cubic bucks building a new studio facility in Bristol for ESPN Radio, and there's even more construction going on there now for yet another digital TV broadcast center - and it's always appeared to me (looking in from outside) that there's a fair amount of autonomy given to Bristol to make capital expenditures. I agree with you that Radio Disney is easing its way out of the towers-and-transmitters business, and I'd even concur that ABC-TV isn't adding to its O&O roster...but I'm not at all convinced just yet that there's much that those business units can tell us about the very specific situation in which WEPN finds itself.
 
Scott Fybush said:
I'm not clear on the distinction you're attempting to draw between "Disney" and "ESPN itself."
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None. Others in this thread have talked about ESPN buying radio stations. That has not happened before. I see no change in Disney policy that began 6 years ago about not buying any more radio or TV stations. That's why I say I don't expect ESPN to buy something Disney doesn't want. Unlike some other media companies, Disney is very centralized, and everything serves one goal.
 
TheBigA said:
None. Others in this thread have talked about ESPN buying radio stations. That has not happened before.
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Sure it has. Who bought then-WEVD in the first place? (And WMVP, and KESN, and what's now KSPN...) Those acquisitions were all made specifically for ESPN Radio after the network had already been created.

Yes, the Radio Disney arm has pulled back from broadcast radio. Yes, the ESPN Radio operation has focused more on adding affiliations than on buying O&Os. But Disney on the corporate level and ESPN on the operational level have never shied away from spending money in the short term to make money in the longer term. If they believe there's a benefit to be had from improving WEPN's facilities in support of a bid for Yankees broadcast rights, I don't think they'd be held back by any sort of corporate mandate from doing so. There's ample reporting to suggest that ESPN/Disney has been a player in recent years in the negotiations for several New York FMs. I'd be very surprised not to see them in the hunt for either 94.7 or 107.5 if there's a sale of either station.
 
Scott Fybush said:
Sure it has. Who bought then-WEVD in the first place? (And WMVP, and KESN, and what's now KSPN...) Those acquisitions were all made specifically for ESPN Radio after the network had already been created.
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But not since Disney made the decision to sell its radio stations and network, retaining only Radio Disney and ESPN Radio.
 
ABC Radio was always a separate business unit from Radio Disney or ESPN. Even when the RD/ESPN stations were located in the same buildings as the ABC Radio stations in their markets, they had completely separate local management teams and reported to different corporate managers. The fact that Disney kept the ESPN and Disney radio units when it sold ABC Radio suggests to me that if Disney corporate has any overarching radio strategy at all (and I'm as yet unconvinced that they do), it's a different strategy for ESPN and Disney than it was for the ABC stations. If Disney had wanted completely out of the towers-and-transmitters business, it could have gotten a very healthy price for the ESPN stations as a package with their co-located ABC stations. So why didn't it sell them?
 
Scott Fybush said:
So why didn't it sell them?
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Those are two brands they want to own and control. The real question was if they wanted to improve on their property in NYC, why didn't they do a format switch from 1050 to 770 and then sell 1050 to Citadel? But I agree that they kept those businesses separate, perhaps with the knowledge that they'd sell the ABC package at some point.
 
TheBigA said:
Those are two brands they want to own and control. The real question was if they wanted to improve on their property in NYC, why didn't they do a format switch from 1050 to 770 and then sell 1050 to Citadel? But I agree that they kept those businesses separate, perhaps with the knowledge that they'd sell the ABC package at some point.
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Who's to say Disney didn't try to make that switch before the sale? Citadel was well-aware of WEPN's compromised signal and may have simply told them no deal.

Also, while I would be surprised if WEPN simulcast NYY games on WABC, I wouldn't be shocked for two obvious reasons: 1) the two stations simultaneously aired NYJ games for years, until the 2009 season, and 2 ) one can't ignore the fact that WABC and WEPN, while under two different parent companies since 2007, continue to share the same office space as they have since WEPN launched in 2001. There are deep relationships there, starting with Tim McCarthy and Traug Keller.
 
blue feast said:
one can't ignore the fact that WABC and WEPN, while under two different parent companies since 2007, continue to share the same office space as they have since WEPN launched in 2001. There are deep relationships there, starting with Tim McCarthy and Traug Keller.
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Farid was a very different kind of owner than the Dickeys. That's putting it mildly.
 
What puzzles me about this if the Yanks are on 770 also along with 1050 what purpose does that serve. Would it not be better if 1050 went with their national programming instead. Remember this is for 162 games not 16 games like they did for the Jets. I belief that something is in the works for ESPN to get the 770 signal away from Cumulus while WABC goes to WPLJ. If and when the deal is announced for Yanks flagship with ESPN they will just say that 770 is also on the network if they can't work out a deal with Cumulus for 770. At that point they will have to pay for time on 770.
 
I can't imagine a company paying $2.4 billion for a company and then giving up one of it's two signals in NYC without getting something beyond money in exchange.
 
WPLJ bills more than WABC does. Moving the WABC format to FM 95.5 won't happen - even if Cumulus sells off the AM 770 frequency...which also likely won't happen since as TheBigA mentions, Cumulus would likely want a frequency in exchange for AM 770 and AM 1050 wouldn't exactly fit the bill. Unless one wants to complicate things and think of bringing in a third player (Buckley/WOR? Bloomberg/WBBR? Salem/WMCA?-not WNYM!).

I'm sure that Cumulus wants to at least give it a go with the WABC/WPLJ combo for awhile, assess things, then make a decision - if there's any decision to be made. There's lots of opportunities for Cumulus to work with WABC/WPLJ.

Another minor factor in the NYC profile is the possible move of Cumulus's WFAS-FM-103.9 (COL Bronxville, NY; transmits from Hartsdale, NY) transmitting antenna to the Bronx...where it would likely have similar coverage as WVIP-FM-93.5 (COL New Rochelle, NY; transmits from the Bronx, NY) has from the same location - which is to say, limited penetration in NYC outside of the Bronx, upper Manhattan and random sections of Queens and Brooklyn.
 
wabc860 said:
What puzzles me about this if the Yanks are on 770 also along with 1050 what purpose does that serve. Would it not be better if 1050 went with their national programming instead. Remember this is for 162 games not 16 games like they did for the Jets. I belief that something is in the works for ESPN to get the 770 signal away from Cumulus while WABC goes to WPLJ. If and when the deal is announced for Yanks flagship with ESPN they will just say that 770 is also on the network if they can't work out a deal with Cumulus for 770. At that point they will have to pay for time on 770.
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We shall see if they will make a decision about this. It's the post season and the Yankees are in the playoffs in the AL Division Series. Will wait until they will make an announcement after the Yanks win or lose in either the Division, the AL Championship or the World Series.
 
wabc860 said:
...I belief (sic) that something is in the works for ESPN to get the 770 signal away from Cumulus while WABC goes to WPLJ...
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Which would be ironic since the two stations were co-owned for years - yet still share the same office space, as mentioned on the previous page of this thread... And you'd have to figure the "ESPN Deportes" feed would be a lock to go on 1050 at this point.
 
We wait.

As Suzyn said in signing off last night, "Thanks to everyone at CBS, and we hope we'll be here again next year."
 
I was listening to it last night on "The Wolf" at 94.3/97.3 in the Hudson Valley listening area that John Sterling mentions that there's no announcement about his last day for Yankees baseball on WCBS-AM or so and so. I don't really know if the Yankees contract is either up or they should extend the deal until 2020. I hope the Yankees should stay at WCBS-AM if they should extend the Yankees deal until the next 9 years like I said in 2020. Will see what happens if the future of Yankees and WCBS would stay.
 
The Yankees should be on the Fan. Put the Mets on an HD-3, shortwave or one of the ham bands.
 
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