High School Football On The Radio

[Mark Watson]

  With Thanksgiving upon us, I scanned the radio dial on my way home from a 
road race I worked at this morning and found that weren't too many stations 
carrying turkey day High School Football games. WCAP is carrying their first 
complete football H.S. game broadcast in many years as they are carrying 
Lowell vs. haverhill. Unfortunetly they've had some technical issues at 
Lowell's stadium, so they've gone to the cell phone backup, but at least the 
game is on the air, the first Lowell area schoolboy game to air on a Lowell 
radio station since WLLH's pre-Mega days. Other stations broadcasting H.S. 
games include: WEIM (Fitchburg/Leominster), WBOQ (Gloucester/Danvers), WNBP 
(Newburyport/Amesbury), WAMG/WLLH (Quincy/North Quincy), WSMN (Nashua 
North/Nashua South), with veteran Nashua radio sports announcer Ed Lecius 
(sp) and WGAM/WGHM simulcasting a game between 2 Manchester schools. I know 
last year WMWM aired the Salem/Beverly contest, not sure if they are this 
year. WCCM used to be the H.S. football leader even back in their daytimer 
days on 800, but today it's birdfeed talk.

  And while High School football is not a huge deal around here broadcast 
wise, out in PA it's the opposite. When we were in the Poconos in Sept. we 
heard football on many stations, even stations with minimal staff or 
automated/birdfeed. The TV stations from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and even 
WPVI in Philly had Friday night H.S. highlight shows that ran for 20 minutes 
after a shortened 11PM newscast. Here Channel 5 does a half hour highlights 
show at 7:30PM on Thanksgiving night, and Channel 38 will have H.S. Super 
Bowl games on Dec. 6th, produced by Robert Kraft, the Patriots' owner,  but 
other than tha H.S. sports gets little to no attention on Boston TV.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone on the list and your families.

Mark Watson