ESPN

[Scott Fybush]

"Sutton" isn't a person, it's an investment house. (Well, there was 
probably a Sutton involved at some point...)

The key player in all this is a woman named Jessamy Tang, who's the "J" in 
"J-Sports." She's the one who'll be running the station and affiliating it, 
apparently, with ESPN. WallerSutton is just loaning her the money to do it, 
and if it doesn't work, they'll hold the paper on the licenses and be able 
to reclaim them down the road. $9 million is essentially "bare stick value" 
for those two licenses anyway, so the downside for WallerSutton is 
relatively minimal. I don't know what Tang's finances are like, but she 
comes from a sports-marketing background (including an MBA from MIT), so I 
suspect that if nothing else, she created a nifty-looking business plan for 
the whole thing.

I wouldn't draw very many connections, if at all, between the fate of an 
ABC Radio Stations o&o like WEPN and the decisions made by ABC Radio 
Networks about what sort of affiliation deal to offer a station in a 
non-ABC market (yes, they own WMKI, but...) to carry one of the many, many 
syndicated formats they offer. And I'm quite certain that nobody at the 
corporate level in Disney is astute enough to draw the connection. They 
have much, much bigger problems right now, which could - and here I'm being 
very speculative - even result in the entire radio unit being spun off and 
potentially split, with the stations going one way and the networks going 
another.

At 08:06 PM 3/15/2005 -0500, Dan Strassberg wrote:
>Yes, WEEI did carry SOME MLB games and clearly did not take the whole
>package. However, has WEPN made ANY showing against WFAN in New York? I had
>heard that WEPN's New York numbers were in the same, umm, league as WWZN's
>Boston numbers. If so, what sort of deal is ESPN giving to major-market
>stations, such as 890, to take the whole package? Is ESPN Radio getting
>desperate? Maybe the execs are thinking that, with new managment at the
>parent company, losers can't have much time left and they are trying to
>solve the problem by throwing money at it. Without some sort of reasonable
>assurance that he could get a decent return on his investment, would Sutton
>be shelling out $9 million for 890, which has probably never made a cent in
>its entire history (OK, call it $8,5 million and assign a value of $500k to
>WLLH.), or for that matter, would he do it for WWZN, which hasn't made a
>cent in probably two decades? Was Sutton maybe in play to buy WWZN when
>SNR's problem with "billing irregularities" put the sale of WWZN, WSNR, and
>KMPC on hold for "nine months"? Maybe Sutton had already made a deal with
>ESPN on the assumption that he was going to buy WWZN, and when that fell
>through, he took the only other station in the market that he could find,
>afford, and get his hands on quickly. The last requirement rules out WBIX,
>which is likely to be in limbo longer than WWZN. I guess you can make a case
>that 890 is a better deal than 1510, but you can also make the opposite
>case, given that 1510 has been doing sports for quite a few years--however
>paltry the numbers.
>
>--
>Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
>eFax 707-215-6367
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>
>To: "KEVIN GOODWIN" <w1mex@lycos.com>; <bri@bostonradio.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 7:21 PM
>Subject: Re: ESPN
>
>
> > At 07:16 PM 3/15/2005, KEVIN GOODWIN wrote:
> > >With ESPN sports radio format coming to WAMG and WLLH 890 and 1400
> > >according to the Boston Globe article, both 890 and 1400 will carry both
> > >MLB and NFL games. Does anybody list happen to know whether ESPN radio
> > >carries NBA games and if and when there is a NHL season whether ESPN
>radio
> > >carries NHL games as well?
> > >
> > >To respond to an earlier post about WEEI carrying ESPN MLB games. I don't
> > >believe that WEEI can do that. My assumption is that if WEEI takes any of
> > >ESPN's product don't they have to take the sports format as well? My
> > >assumption is with ESPN it may be an all or nothing deal. Meaning that
>you
> > >take all of their product not just pick and choose. Besides WEEI can not
> > >carry ESPN MLB games because of their with the Red Sox. Also, according
>to
> > >the Globe article it sounded like WEEI wanted to break ties with ESPN and
> > >go FOX Sports Radio instead seeing that they are already an alfiliate of
> > >theirs.
> >
> > ABC will sell the ESPN MLB package without the full-time format under some
> > circumstances, but I'd think that if they have a full-time ESPN Radio
> > affiliate in a market (as 890/1400 will apparently be), that that station
> > would get first dibs on the MLB.
> >
> > Hasn't WEEI already had some of the ESPN MLB games?
> >
> > s
> >