Programming From Within For Boston

Looks like even the most successful stations don't like paying relocation costs. When it comes to sports radio, what happens in Boston, where the two stations continue to each consistently rank in the top seven in overall audience, is important.

WEEI-FM, the flagship station for the Red Sox, has been without an official Program Director for almost six months, despite its ratings battle with rival WBZ-FM Sports Hub. After all this time, what happens?

They hire from within. Congratulations are in order for Joe Zarbano, who moves up from Assistant Program Director to the coveted P.D. position, which also puts him in charge of the Red Sox Radio Network. Zarbano has already been with the station since 2007, working his way up the ladder during that time, and is an ideal candidate for the position.

It has to be asked what took so long. If they couldn't find a more ideal candidate from outside of the organization in, say, 60 days, who was going to come along in the next four months? As it goes in radio and TV these days, it is probably about money. Again, there are zero costs for relocation. Let's figure that the pay for "interim" Program Director for six months is less than the pay for the official
Program Director is going to be, resulting in the saving of thousands of dollars.

Again, Zarbano is a good candidate for this important position. It took too long to get to this point. The hiring from within didn't stop there. Ben Kichen moves up from "Senior Producer" to "Assistant Program Director" to take over most of Zarbano's previous duties.


Fans with a paid subscription to CBS All Access service get an added bonus starting immediately. After some behind the scenes negotiating with the NFL, CBS is now able to stream its NFL game coverage to subscribers. This plan begins with this Sunday's telecasts and will include regular season and post-season games televised by CBS. Users will also be able to stream content from NFL Game Pass, which is the League's digital video subscription service. This is part of a multi-year deal, although terms were not disclosed.

Thanksgiving Day gave CBS and Fox a lot to be thankful for, as the holiday NFL games were huge. The Dallas vs. Washington game wound up as the most-watched regular season telecast of all-time on Fox with more than 35 million viewers. This was also the most watched NFL regular season game on ANY network since 1995, which happened to be for the Thanksgiving matchup between Dallas and Kansas City.

Earlier that day, even the Minnesota at Detroit game, with two teams struggling to stay in the NFC North race, wound up as CBS' most watched NFL game for the entire season, with more than 27,000,000 viewers. The Thanksgiving Thursday Night Football game (Pittsburgh vs. Indy) on NBC, however, had nearly 21 million viewers, which was down roughly 7,000,000 viewers from last year's turkey night game between Green Bay and Chicago.

The prime-time decline stayed for Sunday's (11/27) Kansas City vs. Denver game, even though it went into overtime. While it did still win prime time for NBC, its overnight national ratings were down more than 35% from the similar night 2015 game, also with Denver, but against New England.

We'll never know how much of a difference it might have made, but NBC had flexed to have the K.C. vs. Denver telecast instead of New England vs. N.Y. Jets.

One thing for sure is that this years Cowboys team spells huge ratings. Of the NFL's five highest rated regular season telecasts as of Nov. 30th, FOUR of them have been Cowboys games. The only one which is not is the Thanksgiving Detroit vs. Minnesota game, which scored high ratings leading into the Cowboys vs. Redskins game.

Fox and CBS will be flexing for Sunday Dec. 11th. Fox has moved the New Orleans at Tampa Bay game from 1:00 to 4:25 ET to have three late games to show, while this moves Chicago at Detroit over to CBS during the 1 PM ET window. Of course, NBC won't even think of changing its scheduled game that night, which is Dallas vs. N.Y. Giants.


CHICAGO: The emotional run for WSCR The Score 670 afternoon host Terry Boers continued this week. Boers, who has missed months of 2016 due to major medical issues, returned on Monday after missing nearly a full month. On Tuesday (11/29), he then announced that, as many suspected, he will retire from the station (and his long and successful career) on Jan. 5th, 2017.

Boers has a very good reason for picking that date to retire. Jan. 2, 2017, marks the 25-year anniversary of the debut of WSCR The Score (on a different Chicago frequency), and Boers was a part of the station from the start.

His replacement will likely come from within (which sounds familiar), with speculation pointing toward current night host Laurence Holmes, whose show is so often pre-empted or shortened by play-by-play broadcasts.


PHILADELPHIA: Although the number of years and terms have yet to be released, it is official that WIP-FM 94 will continue as the flagship station for the Phillies on a multi-year extension. Scott Franzke, Larry Andersen, and Jim Jackson will continue as the broadcast team.