Weather Or Not For Sports Media

Which is worse? A media owner controlling on-air content or the rest of the media being so quiet about it?

It seems that the Super Bowl weather prediction segment on The Dan Patrick Show was reportedly "forced" to change guests, with the request coming from management at DirecTV. (The L.A. Times reported this story on Tuesday (1/28).) The story quotes at DirecTV spokesperson as admitting that DirecTV causing a change and having Paul Douglas from WeatherNation as Patrick's guest.

Orginally, Patrick planned to have the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore on the show. However, the show is owned by DirecTV, which recently dropped The Weather Channel from its lineup,  replacing it with (you guessed it) WeatherNation.

The problem is that this change of guest had nothing to do with which is more accurate forecasting the weather. Clearly, this had everything to do with the DirecTV change of its weather source. In this instance, it means that management was dictating content.

During this week, when seemingly the smallest detail related to the Super Bowl gets a mountain of media hype, this story has not caused one bit of controversy. At least not yet.
Sports fans need to be concerned over this. Now we have a blatant case of management dictating content. In recent weeks, this column has pointed out several instances of pro teams taking more steps toward controlling their own content, which is sometimes better than what the traditional media and social media has access to.

One more point. How is that DirecTV doesn't care enough to have a live show with guest hosts fill in for Dan Patrick on his days off, but knows to force a guess change for specific segments?


Chances are we will see Sunday TV sports ratings go from one extreme to the other by this time next week. It seems that the Sunday before the Super Bowl wasn't as kind to the TV ratings, except for the Pro Bowl telecast on NBC. Over at ABC/ESPN, there is some disappointment from the first of several Sunday NBA doubleheaders on ABC.

Both the Lakers at Knicks and Spurs vs. Heat telecasts wound up with ratings around 30% less than the same week last year. Over at CBS, not having Tiger Woods hurt, as final round coverage of the PGA tourney also dropped more than 30% compared with last year (as did their third round coverage on Saturday).

Of course, this coming Sunday with the Super Bowl figures to be the highest TV ratings for any Sunday of the year.


Speaking of which, I still don't get the attention paid to the Super Bowl on local sportscasts outside of the Seattle and Denver coverage areas, except for the various Fox radio and TV stations (which do so to promote the Fox telecast). The other stations should limit it to any "real" news related to the game, such as injuries and weather conditions. Listeners and viewers know that both teams practiced and are looking forward to the game. Worse yet is how some TV stations have the nerve to take time out of a sportscast to promote commercials which will air and other "non-sports" aspects of the game, instead of giving viewers actual sports news.

Regarding Fox Sports, these next couple of months will be most interesting in terms of shaping the future. One of the most important missions for Fox on Super Bowl day will be to promote its Fox Sports 1 Network to the maximum number of TV viewers. You had better believe that we will all see numerous promos for FS1 all evening.

However, it also means that if FS1 doesn't show an increase in audience over the next few weeks that Fox can no longer say that people don't know it exists. There will be no excuse.

It should also be noted that 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox Sports Media Group is looking to take a majority stake in YES Network, which has been owned (in majority) by the Yankees. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval but is expected to close during the second quarter of 2014.

My hunch is that if and as FS1 fails to generate viewership (after the Super Bowl promos) that Fox Sports will then do some combining of FS1 and YES Network in order to force FS1 to gain an audience. Don't forget that FS1 has the rights to show MLB games starting this season. Owning the network with the rights to all Yankees telecasts could make things interesting.


LOS ANGELES: The new SportsNet LA will no longer send a separate broadcast crew to the road games which Vin Scully does not broadcast. Instead, Charlie Steiner will move over to the TV booth (from the radio side) and to call those games and have Orel Hershiser as analyst. On the radio side, for those road games, Rick Monday will take over as lead play-by-play voice, and will have Nomar Garciparra as his analyst. In recent years, the Dodgers have used Eric Collins and Steve Lyons as the TV crew the majority of their road telecasts only. It still remains to be seen how many will be able to watch these games, however. There are still several cable and satellite carriers not yet signed to air SportsNet L.A.


SAN FRANCISCO: A change in the 49ers radio booth is coming for the 2014 season. Play-by-play voice Ted Robinson will now have former defensive lineman Tim Ryan as his analyst. Ryan grew up nearby in the San Jose area, and replaces Eric Davis, who held that role for the past three seasons. Davis will continue his role on the NFL Network's morning show.


MINNEAPOLIS: The Twins probably won't have many "big" games in 2014, based on their current roster, but if and when they do they will have Jack Morris. Not on the mound, but in the booth. Morris has been signed to be an analyst for both the Fox Sports North and KTWN broadcasts.


RICHMOND: ESPN 950 will now be simulcast on WZEZ-FM 100.5, which is actually licensed to nearby Goochland VA, except for some play-by-play conflicts. The station airs University of Richmond games, as well as national games from ESPN and Westwood One.


ROCHESTER: These small stations may be in upstate New York, but they have decided to air Boston Red Sox games this season. Both WRSB 1310 Canandaigua and WASB 1590 Brockport plan to carry the entire schedule. The funny part is the press release mentioning that this includes "preseason and playoffs". Makes you wonder how the Yankees fans who currently listen to either of these stations reacted to hearing or reading about upcoming Red Sox playoff games.

Truly a "National" football league

Whether it is due to superior marketing, fantasy leagues, or both, the NFL continues to be the strongest sports draw on the national level. No other sport is "guaranteed" the huge audiences for its ultimate championship. A study of local NFL viewership, as reported in the Dallas Morning News, actually confirms this.

Regular season and post-season ratings have been strong in the biggest NFL markets this season, which is no surprise. However, we are seeing instances of large markets showing fewer viewers for the local teams, which tells me that fans are hooked into a "good" game no matter who is playing.

The study took local ratings for the past two regular seasons (2012 and 2013), and shows that since the 2011 season the N.Y. Jets have "lost" approximately 19% of their audience. Before the Giants fans stop reading this to call their Jets fan friends, it seems that the Giants' ratings have dropped about 15% during the same period. The "loss leader", so to speak, is actually the Oakland Raiders with a viewer loss of around 22%. Football crazed markets such as Pittsburgh and Nashville also have shown double-digit drops during the same time period. Even more amazing, Dallas Cowboys local viewership is reported as down about 12%. It will be interesting to see the local breakdown for these markets for the Super Bowl.

This shows the importance of TV for the NFL being a league deal for TV rather than the local team deals which exist in the other major pro sports. If, for example, a Dallas local station had the rights to its own Cowboys telecasts and lost more than 10% over two seasons, it would hurt the station's revenue and perhaps rights fees if a renogiation was scheduled. Since every NFL team is part of a national package, all that matters to the NFL is "total" viewership. And that is what the NFL has.


To its credit, ESPN continues to swap out some of its previously scheduled NBA telecasts. This week it announced two more changes. On Weds. Feb. 5th the scheduled Detroit vs. Orlando game has been (thankfully) replaced by Portland at the N.Y. Knicks. A month later (March 5) the Knicks vs. Minnesota gets bounced with Dallas at Denver as the replacement. The balance of power in the Western Conference is such that ESPN is taking out the "same old East teams" and showcasing more of the West. It is good to see more flex scheduling.


KANSAS CITY: It seemed to have taken longer than it should, but it is status quo in the Royals booth for the coming season. Denny Matthews returns (while again missing a couple of extended road trips) for his 46th season on the radio side, with the rest of the crew dividing the radio and TV duties. Ryan Lefebvre returns for his 16th season, along with Steve Physioc and Steve Stewart. In addition, Rex Hudler will be back on the TV side for his third season.

NEW YORK: Sorry to learn of the passing of Carlos Silva at the age of 50. Silva had served as producer and engineer for the Yankees Radio Network, while also engineering for Nets broadcasts and for some ESPN Radio assignments over the years.

CLEVELAND: WKNR 850 is adding a local "prime time" weeknight show from 8 to 10 PM. Dave DeNatale will move over from a reporter and anchor role to host the show, which will follow "Munch On Sports".

YORK PA: It looks as though the minor league baseball team, the York Revolution, wants to be certain that its games will be broadcast without conflict. WOYK 1350 has been the flagship station, and will definitely remain that way going forward. Why? Because the team is purchasing the station, which is expected to continue to be all sports. Word is that the station will continue to air York College sports, although I think we know which team gets priority in the event of game conflicts.

NORFOLK: The format change at WTAR 850 means that two syndicated sports shows will be part of the weekday lineup even though the station is going to "News/Sports/Talk". The "Sports" part of this will be middays when the station now carries Dan Patrick and Jay Mohr. As of now, there are no plans for any local sports talk.

College Voices In The Air - Not On The Air

While college football fans await changes in the post-season format starting late this year, it looks to be a season of change for national media as well. When long time network college football voices such as Brent Musberger and Tim Brando both may or may not be calling games or hosting studio shows for their "current' networks, you know something is up.

Multiple reports have Tim Brando out completely from CBS Sports, where he has been a big part of their college football and basketball coverage going back to the mid-90's. A basketball replacement will need to be made relatively soon, in order to give the new host enough time to prepare for the CBS coverage of the NCAA Tournament in March.

Over at ESPN, Brent Musberger's contract has not been renewed (as of press time), even though ESPN increases its football post-season presence at the end of the 2014 season.

Can't help but wonder if these two could wind up switching places. While Musberger has spent many years with ABC/ESPN of late, his greatest accomplishment remains building the NFL Today from a time-filler into the institution known as NFL pre and post-game programming. There will never be anyone who could do it like Brent did it, even though there are much stronger supporting casts today.

Both Musberger and Brando have done their share of studio hosting and play-by-play over the years. It will be interesting to see if either or both CBS and ESPN/ABC are looking to go with "new" and younger voices, or if they would consider the other. Then again, it is still not over between Brent and ESPN/ABC. So we now get wonder who we will be "LOOKING LIVE" at later this year.

 
ESPN is already looking ahead to its 25th season of MLB telecasts. (Yikes! 25th season!) The network has announced its opening day telecast schedule, with the L.A. Dodgers at San Diego opening the season on Sunday night March 30th including an extended 90-minute pre-game show. The only change in the booth will be Curt Schilling joining the Sunday Night crew in place of Orel Hersheiser, who has joined the Dodgers' broadcast crew.

On Monday March 31st, ESPN will air five more games. These will be Chicago (Cubs) at Pittsburgh, Boston vs. Baltimore, and St. Louis vs. Cincinnati during the afternoon, with Colorado at Miami and Seattle at Los Angeles (Angels) at night. The Mariners at Angels game has the marquee matchup of Robinson Cano's first game with the Mariners and Albert Pujols returing to the Angels lineup.

Speaking of the Padres, there will be a new voice speaking "for" the Padres, as the team still needs to hire a Public Address Announcer to begin this season. In an interesting move, the team is going fan friendly, and is planning to hold live auditons for the job on Saturday Jan. 25th at the ballpark. http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/sd/fan_forum/announcer.jsp


As many of us continue to forget that Fox Sports 1 has been on the air for a few months, even their Fox Sports Live nightly report is showing signs of struggle. Industry insider Robert Seidman (TV By The Numbers) reported that the January 7th Fox Sports Live drew an estimated 7,000 viewers. Keep in mind that this was the night after the BCS Championship telecast on Fox Sports (which included several promos for Fox Sports 1), and was actually fewer viewers than FS1 had going up against the BCS Championship telecast the night before. And this show has content from the day's sports news, unlike so much of the filler that takes up the rest of the network.

BALTIMORE: WBAL 1090 continues as the Orioles' radio flagship for at least two more seasons, with the radio team of Joe Angel and Fred Manfra remaining in place. The station will also air 16 spring training games. The O's returned to WBAL in 2011 and this coming season will be their 45th season total airing on the station. In addition, this Thursday (1/16) begins the weekly Hot Stove show at 7:00 PM.

St. LOUIS: Putting the retirement rumors to rest, Mike Shannon will return for his 42nd season in the Cardinals' radio booth, although he will only be working less than half of the team's road games moving forward. Shannon will again be teamed with John Rooney on KMOX. No official word yet as to who will handle the duties for approximately 50 of the road game broadcasts.

HOUSTON: Looks as though KILT 610 is taking its recent audience growth seriously. Fred Davis is out after about two years on the station's night time slot, while co-host Ted Johnson (the former NFL linebacker) remains with the show. No replacement yet (as of press time) with Paul Gallant and Patrick Creighton filling in until the new co-host is determined.

Nothing Negative About The Film Room

Nice to see a new innovation to highlight the New Year in sports media. For as much hype as ESPN gave to its "multi-cast" of the college football championship game on Monday night (1/6), the "Film Room" portion on ESPNews received glowing reviews from media and fans alike. ESPN, picking up on a good thing, replayed the entire "Film Room" telecast on Tuesday (1/7) on its ESPNU, creating its own version of an Instant Classic game telecast. This concept featured current NCAA  head coaches providing instant commentary on each play, as well as predicting trends within the game. 

The question now will be to see how far this concept goes. Since ESPN has NFL rights for Monday Night Football, it could make for an interesting off-season in this regard.





 
It certainly didn't take a crystal ball to predict solid ratings for the NFL Wild Card weekend telecasts either. As if coming off a strong regular season of TV ratings wasn't enough, the frigid conditions gripping much of the northern part of the country certainly played a part in this. The San Francisco at Green Bay telecast, understandably, set a wild card playoff ratings record, according to early returns. You might say that all of the "elements" were there for this to happen.

One very curious thing took place at the end of the exciting game with New Orleans winning in Philadelphia on a last second field goal. I'm not sure if Al Michaels feared for his safety after the game winning kick or what happened. For whatever reason, Michaels' call of the big kick was extremely subdued. Not to be harsh, but his call was closer to a Pat Summerall version than what it should have been for the conclusion of a post-season NFL game. 

Having listened to and enjoyed Al Michaels during the most exciting of calls going back to when he was doing the Cincinnati Reds games on radio (only) in the early '70's, I can't help but wonder why this was such a casual call. Perhaps it was how quiet the Philadelphia crowd became. Yet, the call of the kick and the end of the game telecast sounded more like a pre-season game than what it really was.

 
Sorry to learn of the passing of Jerry Coleman on Sunday (1/5) at the age of 89. Coleman was very much overlooked during most of his 40 seasons calling the Padres games and rarely mentioned in the same breath as other Hall of Fame broadcasters. Coleman was aware of this, as best remembered by a line of his many years back. It went something like "There is the ocean to the west, Mexico to the south, the desert to the east, and Vin Scully to the north!". He will be missed. As for his play-by-play, you can hang a star on it.

 
PHOENIX: An interesting move as KTAR 620 begins an FM simulcast, adding 98.7 KPKX. What makes this interesting is that the music station known as "The Peak" that comes off the FM signal has had much stronger overall audience ratings within the past six months. The addition of the FM signal will keep play-by-play conflicts 'in house', which is significant considering that everybody that's anybody airs on KTAR. This will solve the problem from the numerous conflicts of having hockey (Coyotes) and basketball (Suns and AZ State) all winter, as well as the NFL Cardinals and AZ State football during the fall which often conflict with Diamondbacks baseball.

In some markets, AM sports talkers are adding FM signals with regard to possible competition. However, in Phoenix, KGME 910 has recently held ratings of less than half of the KTAR-AM audience, while KDUS 1060 has moved "up" to have only about 10% of the audience that KTAR holds.

 
LIMA OH: WCIT 940 has become this market's second sports station, a sister station to WWSR 93.1 The Fan.

Avoiding New Year's Blackouts

As we enter 2014 it appears that the NFL's local TV blackout policy will continue indefinitely. However, even those in support of eliminating it need to realize that the issue is not as significant at this time than it was several years ago. Now that the regular season has concluded, the final tally reveals that a grand total of just TWO telecasts were blacked locally over the entire 17 weeks. For all teams combined. The fact is that the NFL did not have a single local blackout during 15 of the 17 weeks, which is a record low. I suppose it is not worth arguing about if this is going to be the case.

Yet, I continue to find it curious that the TV networks, paying hundreds of millions for the telecast rights, somehow forget to take this up during the negotiation and renegotiation periods. For that much money, the local stations should have the right to show whichever games they want to attract the biggest audiences on "any given Sunday".

When this version of the home team blackout rule went into effect about 40 years ago, it was a time when home games in all of the  major pro sports were quite often not available. The original intent was for NFL fans to now be able to see home games, but "only" when the team sold out in advance. MLB, the NBA, and NHL had no such possibility, leaving most fans to see mostly (if not exclusively) select road games during that era.

Forwarding to 2014, it has become newsworth to find ANY MLB, NBA, or NHL game not televised, with many pro teams having every game shown on cable or over-the-air TV each season. Over the years, the NFL "innovation" of finding a way to make home games available to the local audience has been passed up and lapped by the other pro sports.

The zillions of dollars in rights fees paid by the networks are being passed along to all of us, sports fans or not, who pay a hefty monthly fee for cable or satellite TV. These networks should have the ability to show all of the games they want to in any market, regardless of local coverage, "secondary" market status, and which televising network.

Even the NBA is now, understandably, showing signs of flex scheduling due to circumstances beyond its control this season. Granted, the ABC/ESPN Christmas Day schedule of five games is something which, due to the holiday status, was not able to be changed, there are other opportunities.

Injuries and team slumps have made a mess of this young NBA season. At the start of the season, it was hard to question ESPN/ABC and TNT combining to schedule teams such as Miami, the Lakers, Chicago, New York, and Brooklyn for upwards of 20+ telecasts, more than 25% of their season, for national games.

However, major injuries to players such as Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose, Brook Lopez and others, have hurt the seasons for the Lakers, Bulls, and Nets. The Knicks have disappointed as well. The NBA has to be aware that scheduling so many of its national prime-time matchups for TV before the regular season begins is too risky. For example, having both the Knicks and Nets at several games below .500 this far into the season hurts when you realize that all four of their head-to-head meetings are scheduled for either TNT or ESPN/ABC.

Now there are signs of hope. The NBA has moved the Jan. 8th game of the L.A. Lakers at Houston off of ESPN, replacing it with Phoenix at Minnesota. Word is that the NBA is fine with this and that fans can expect more flex scheduling for this season. For example, Portland is off to its best start in years, and had originally been scheduled for only two ESPN telecasts.

ESPN/ABC could prosper with its NBA telecast schedule by flex scheduling, primarily because there are generally a multitude of games available on Wednesday and Friday nights, when ESPN shows the majority of its games. However, TNT, despite having market exclusive telecasts on most Thursdays, does not have as much flexibility because the Thursday night schedule is generally lighter.

The paying fans are entitled to have more flexibility of which games they see locally, while the networks should be able to show ANY game in any market.


The November into early December radio ratings are coming out during this holiday period. The only one worth commenting on continues to be the Boston sports radio race. During this period, WBZ-FM Sports Hub maintained a similar lead, and it is a convincing lead, over WEEI-FM, compared with the month prior.

However, the significance is that BOTH stations dropped by more than 1 1/2 ratings points, which is a large dip for the total audience. Consider that five of the top six rated radio stations in Boston for the month GAINED in audience at the same time. This shows how the local sports market is what drives sports radio, and not the personalities and the specific shows.

Both stations dropped during that time because this ratings period was after the dust had settled from the Red Sox championship, and questions remained (during this ratings period) as to where the Patriots would wind up in the playoff race. Yet, such a big deal was made when WEEI made changes to its afternoon show and its Program Director. If one station went down and the other rose in audience accordingly, a case could be made for the specific programming of the stations.


Elsewhere, sorry to learn of the passing of former long-time Cleveland Indians (and Milwaukee Brewers before that) analyst Mike Hegan at the age of 71. After a playing career with several teams including the Brewers and Yankees, Hegan went on to spend 23 seasons in the Indians' booth.


HOUSTON: It's odd timing that as the NFL regular season ends (especially for the Texans) is when former NFL QB Sean Salisbury returns to co-host a sports talk show. Yet, that's what is happening in what could be a secret even to Houston sports fans. KGOW 1560 is bringing in Salisbury, starting Monday (1/6) to co-host 3 to 7 PM with John Granato. The station also let go of John Harris, who had been with the lowly rated station since 2007, and earlier in December lost Josh Innes to KILT 610.

COLUMBIA SC: WOIC 1230 becomes ESPN Radio on New Year's Day, returning ESPN Radio to the market after nearly 1 1/2 years. However, the station plans to only have local weekday programming during the 4 to 7 PM time period, with Duane "Shot Doctor" Everett, Bobby Gist, and Ernest Robinson hosting. The station will be NBA heavy, airing the Charlotte Bobcats broadcasts in addition to the ESPN Radio national games.


Thanks for all of your feedback and input. We're back with more next week. Happy New Year!

Holiday Happenings For Sports Radio & TV

Two of the biggest injuries in the NBA this season will hurt in another way on Christmas. Along with the teams suffering the loss of star players (Chicago without Derrick Rose and the Lakers without Kobe Bryant), ABC/ESPN will likely lose out on viewers and ratings for their entire day of NBA games.

The opening game, at Noon ET, with Chicago at Brooklyn sure looked good on paper when the schedule came out. This will still be these two teams' first meeting since the 7-game opening round playoff series in the spring. However, with Derrick Rose out for Chicago and Brook Lopez out for Brooklyn, even the fans of those teams may have a tough time making this a "must see" game.

Game two, with Mike Breen and Hubie Brown, is Oklahoma City vs. New York, which features what has been a disappointing Knicks team thus far. Then, the third live game of the day, scheduled to be the marquee matchup, loses luster as the Lakers face Miami without Kobe Bryant. Mike Torico and Jeff Van Gundy will call that game. The best matchup of the five could very well be the L.A. Clippers vs. Golden State at 10:30 PM ET, with Dave Pasch and Jon Barry on the call. However, the late start for most of the country combined with four live games being shown nationally earlier, might take away some of the audience for those reasons. It is certainly not the fault of ABC/ESPN, which thought it had a monster when these games were originally scheduled.


Speaking of ESPN, their concept of multiple, or as they say, "Megacast" coverage of the BCS Championship Game on January 6th appears to be another idea "borrowed" from Turner Sports.

ESPN plans to use its video feed over its entire network that evening, with different audio on each. In addition to the "regular" telecast on ESPN, ESPN2 will present live analysis by guest coaches, players, and what it terms "celebrities". ESPNews will present other guest analysts and feature "multiple angles" of key plays. ESPN Classic promises a "no announcer" version with additional graphics and crowd noise, while online promises video feeds with the separate radio versions from both the Florida State and Auburn networks.

While I can understand ESPN wanting to continue to hype of this game and make it dominant over their entire network, this concept just happened to be unveiled a few weeks after Turner Sports announced a similar plan for the NCAA basketball Final Four tournament in late March.

On the NBA side, ESPN had already taken a page from TNT's coverage a couple of seasons back when they (ESPN/ABC) made their NBA studio coverage a crowded room of analysts. This came after the relative success of TNT continuing to add studio analysts such as Shaq to an already crowded room with Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith.

At least ESPN made a major improvement for this season by adding a true broadcaster as host, after a couple of seasons of not having a true host and causing the impact of the show to suffer.

Actually, I like the BCS coverage idea of multi-plexing, in theory. It is quite possible that the casual fan would enjoy switching around and hearing the different perspectives. I'm just not sure there could be enough different points of view to justify having all of the different analysts be available to comment after every play.


LOS ANGELES: As KLAC struggles to gain an audience, even with having had the Dodgers broadcasts this past season, the station has managed to get Petros & Money away from Fox Sports Radio and bring it back to being a local Los Angeles show each afternoon.

Even if a couple of days late, we want to wish L.A. Kings radio voice Nick Nickson a happy 60th birthday (12/21). Nickson is still going strong after calling more than 2,800 Kings games during his more than 30 seasons with the team. This goes back to when Nickson was often teamed with Bob Miller on radio when games were not televised, and his being Miller's analyst in the early days of Prime Ticket telecasts in the 80's.


NEW YORK: Sid Rosenberg is back on WFAN, but it's not what you think. Rosenberg is filling in over the holiday period and is expected to host (or co-host) several shows through New Year's Day. He last worked full-time on WFAN back in 2005. He currently hosts a morning show on WMEN in the Palm Beach FL area.


PHILADELPHIA: WIP-FM 94.1 is adding Josh Innes to its weekday lineup for its 6 to 10 PM slot. Innes comes to Philly by way of KILT Houston. In addition, the station has moved Glen Macnow off of the weekday afternoon co-host spot, but will keep him on the Saturday midday show with football writer Ray Didinger. Macnow will also be a part of Phillies pre and post-game programming on sister station WPHT 1210. Rob Ellis moves from a sports anchor into the weekday afternoon co-host spot along with Anthony Gargano.


HOUSTON: Just as KILT 610 has found some respectability in the ratings (not easy for a sports radio station in Houston), it loses Josh Innes to Philadelphia. Innes had been hosting afternoons along with Rich Lord for the past three years, and contributed to the recent growth of the station's audience.
KILT has announced that, starting no later than Jan. 6th, Sean Pendergast will become the new afternoon co-host, moving on up from KGOW 1560. 


PITTSBURGH: The Fan 93.7 is making a couple of lineup changes for the new year. Former Steelers punter Josh Miller is being moved from afternoons to co-hosting the morning show along with Gregg Giannotti, while Colin Dunlap will now host the 6 to 10 PM slot. The revised lineup starts on January 6th.


NEW ORLEANS: Well, almost New Orleans. Nearby KLRZ 100.3 from nearby Larose is dropping its talk format and picking up ESPN Radio starting on January 1st. The station's signal covers much of the New Orleans area.


PALM SPRINGS: Ironic timing indeed for KFSQ 1270, which just last week (12/18) switched over to Fox Sports Radio. Located just two hours east of Los Angeles, the station was hoping to have a regional feel thinking it would get the Petros & Money Show out of Los Angeles as part of the deal. Coincidentally, within a matter of hours after the change came the word that PMS (another name for Petros & Money Show) was going local for KLAC Los Angeles and coming off from the Fox Network.


Have a great holiday, and we look forward to serving you throughout 2014 and beyond.

Secondary Markets Should Come First for NFL

The time has come for the NFL to seriously re-consider their "secondary market" telecast policy, at least for the final three weeks of the regular season. This week's example of why comes from Los Angeles, the nation's #2 television market, which is still considered a "secondary market" for San Diego Chargers telecasts.

The Chargers, a long shot to make it to the post-season, sold out their home game against the 4-10 Oakland Raiders for this coming Sunday (12/22) earlier this week. As a result, KCBS-TV Los Angeles viewers are, well, stuck, with that game instead of the Baltimore vs. New England telecast. The Ravens vs. Patriots game was moved by CBS to the doubleheader spot due to the playoff implications it has.

One would think that with all of the dollars the TV networks pay to the NFL for the rights to televise that those networks would have a bigger say in getting the "best available" games to the viewers in every market.

Of course, the NFL is busy concentrating on generating even more TV dollars starting in the next two years. The league is expected to decide well before its 2014 season begins on splitting off an additional Thursday night games package, leaving fewer telecasts exclusive to NFL Network.

Obviously, a new deal, perhaps with Turner Sports, isn't going to come cheap. And, the NFL continues to work with DirecTV about the satellite service retaining the Sunday Ticket package, which is currently scheduled to end in 2014. The current package is valued at almost $1 billion, and, again, it's not like the cost will be reduced.


NEW YORK: It has become official that YES Network will end its nearly 10 years of simulcasting some or all of Mike Francesa's WFAN Radio show on weekday afternoons. In a bizarre coincidence, the final simulcast is scheduled for Friday Jan. 31st, which is the final weekday leading into Super Bowl weekend with the big game being staged only minutes away from WFAN's studios. This relationship goes back to the days of "Mike and the Mad Dog". YES Network plans to 'replace' the simulcast with live sports talk related programming, leading to easy speculation that it will pick up WEPN-FM ESPN 98.7 and the Michael Kay Show.

Kay and YES Network seem to be an obvious fit, given that Kay is the TV play-by-play voice for most Yankees telecasts.

Either way, YES would have a Yankees flavor with its simulcast, since WFAN becomes the flagship radio home of the Yankees in a few weeks.


ATLANTA: Steven "Steak" Shapiro moves back over to The Fan 680 during the first week of January. Shapiro had originally moved to Atlanta, from Boston, back in 1994 to be part of the morning show on The Fan when it made its debut, lasting about nine months. "Steak" will handle the 9 AM to Noon "The Front Row" show along with Brian Finneran and Sandra Golden.


CHARLOTTE: WZGV ESPN 730 has a new evening co-host who is new to full-time sports talk, but is certainly not new to the market. Al Gardner, who is well known for "Charlotte's Morning News" on WBT AM/FM for the past 14 years, started this past Monday night (12/16) in his new role.