WAMG, WLLH

[Dan Strassberg]

I'm taking the liberty of cross-posting a message I posted yesterday on the
Boston board at radio-info.com. There has been a lot of speculation there
about the format of WAMG and WLLH after the transfer from Mega to Walter
Sutton, a principal in Route 81 Radio, whose properties have heretofore
mostly been concentrated in cental New York and northeastern Pennsylvania.
The cross-posted message follows:

The mystery may have been solved. According to today's FCC actions, the name
of the company that has applied to buy WAMG and WLLH is J-Sports. Do you
suppose that Sutton is buying in anticipation of Sporting News Radio bailing
out of WWZN? Buying 890 and 1400 would allow the two stations to divide the
"audience" that WWZN is alleged to be walking away from. Since the reports
here have indicated that WWZN has been getting zero shares, I hope that
leaves at least one listener for the each of these new sports stations. A
few people will recall 890's previous incarnation (or is it incarnations?)
as a sports-talk station. One was under Prime Sports, which was responsible
for the WBPS calls that outlived the format. Rumor had it that Prime wasn't
doing that badly with 890--audience-wise, but folded after running into
financial difficulties that may have been unrelated to the Boston (well,
officially Dedham) station.

I wonder whether the company name may be some sort of ploy (as is often done
with call signs before a format flip) to mislead possible competitors. I'm
sure that having "Sports" in the company name doesn't obligate the new
owners to run a sports format.

As for WWZN, if 890 and 1400 really are flipping to sports talk, it would be
a pretty sure bet that WWZN would flip to Spanish--however not until
Sporting News straightens out the billing irregularity problems (isn't that
the term that was used in the company's press release?) that are allegedly
delaying the sale of the company's three stations (WWZN, WSNR, and KMPC).
Now here's a good Boston radio trivia question (for which I don't have the
answer): How many times, with what calls and what owners, has 1510 done
Spanish? And weren't all such formats on 1510 brokered?

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367