Thanksgiving Day football on the radio

[Kevin Vahey]

I know Cambridge and Everett wanted to be on and couldn't find an outlet 
and it would have been an easy sell.



On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 8:24pm, Sean Smyth wrote:
> A quick scan of the dial today as I was running late for the game I 
> went to
> found the following stations near Boston carrying games:
>
> * WSRO (650), Marlborough vs. Hudson
> * WSNH (900), Nashua vs. Bishop Guertin
> * WBNW (1120), Framingham vs. Natick
> * WESX (1230), Salem vs. Beverly
> * WJDA (1300), Quincy vs. North Quincy
> * WPLM (1390), Plymouth North vs. Plymouth South; they were also doing 
> some
> other games on tape-delay
> * WBET (1460), Brockton vs. Waltham
> * WAZN (1470)//WSRO
> * WSAR (1480), Durfee vs. New Bedford
> * WCCM (1490), Andover vs. North Andover, fighting it out with (this 
> was in
> Woburn on 128) WMRC's coverage of Milford High
> * WIQH-FM (88.3), Concord-Carlisle vs. Bedford
> * WATD-FM (95.3), Marshfield vs. Duxbury
>
> Feel free to add others in. I think I'm leaving out one or two.
>
> Some stations that have carried games in the past that were MIA this 
> year
> including WNTN, which has carried Newton North vs. Brookline forever,
> practically. What happened here? Bob Bittner told me when he was there 
> the
> North-Brookline game was the station's biggest selling event 
> (spot-wise) of the
> year. I know Rob Rudnick used to do the game when he was station 
> manager and
> even after he bought the station. I was kind of disappointed this one 
> was not
> broadcast (although it's apparently on CN8 tonight).
>
> And how can WWZN, claiming to be Boston's "sports station," not spend a 
> couple
> hundred bucks to bring in a host and board-op to at least pretend to 
> cover the
> biggest sports day of the year in Massachusetts (outside of pro 
> playoffs)?
> Might have gotten some people listening to the station for more than a
> nanosecond.
>
> Another observation: the quality game announcers is hideous as opposed 
> to 10
> years ago. Half the broadcasts were done by homers who have 
> ridiculously thick
> Boston accents; I could barely understand the description of the play 
> being
> run. Of course this is coming from a former play-by-play announcer 
> himself so
> take it with a grain of salt.
>
> I know local radio has gone by the wayside -- 10 years ago there were 
> several
> other stations doing Thanksgiving games, including WKOX, WMSX, and WMFO 
> -- but
> Thanksgiving Day games can still bill a decent amount for stations and 
> it'd be
> nice if said outlets at least pretended to care about their COL and 
> covered
> events there for a day.