Re: Patriots' radio rights

[Martin Waters <martinjwaters@yahoo.com>]

- ---SteveOrdinetz <steveord@xtdl.com> wrote:
>
> At 09:51 AM 11/20/98 -0400, Martin J. Waters wrote:
> > This one [WTIC-FM] seems like a rather poor fit...an AC is not the
most logical place
> for sports.  

	On the format, I pretty much agree, although I don't think it would
be that bad a fit given this market and this situation. The Patriots
moving here is a huge community event that transcends sports. Football
is different from the other major sports because it's only once a week
and never disrupts PM weekday drive or otherwise causes headaches for
programmers. If you said it would be a bad fit with WRCH, I'd agree
1000 percent.
	When the Whalers were here and there was an occasional sports
conflict, my recollection is that they moved whichever play-by-play
they were bumping from the AM to WTIC-FM, rather than to, for example,
WZMX. Even if WTIC AM & FM don't have the management autonomy any
longer to act on their own and bid like crazy, there certainly could
be a good argument made, IMO, within the company, that in an indirect
but not insignificant way, you would protect the AM franchise by
having he Patriots on a station called WTIC. You could use some of the
staff from the AM, maybe, for pre-game / post-game shows, etc.
	Again, this is all if Kraft crosses AM off his list from the get-go.
I think WTIC (AM) probably benefits from the Patriots moving here even
if they don't get the play-by-play because there'll be a lot more
interest in local sports news and sport talk, and they're the only
ones that do it. They have sports talk from 6-7 each weeknight, cut
back from 6-8 up until a year or two ago. It will be interesting to
see if there's any expansion there.
	 
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

------------------------------