WBCN to sports at 98.5; WBMX to 104.1

[Scott Fybush]

Garrett Wollman wrote:
> <<On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:10:40 -0700 (PDT), Maureen Carney <m_carney@yahoo.com> said:
> 
>> Two - this could be the death knell for ESPN890. They'll either be
>> foreign-language or birdfeed ESPN 24/7 by the end of the year.
> 
> I bet Disney would be willing to pull ESPN from 890/1400 if it meant a
> decent amount of clearance on a station that people will actually
> listen to.

I don't think ESPN and 98.5 will be a good fit. If 98.5 is going to 
work, it will be heavily local, without much room to clear ESPN's 
product. We already know it will be local in mornings, so there goes the 
flagship Mike & Mike show.

I think ESPN can survive as a niche on 890, for that relatively small 
number of Boston listeners who want something other than nonstop 
Sox/Pats/Bs/Cs. National sports is almost a completely separate format 
from what WEEI does and what 98.5 should be doing, and I don't think 
there's any other sports market in the country (except maybe NYC or 
Philly) that's as parochial about its home teams.

Meanwhile, watch the fireworks from down in NYC - the Times is selling 
WQXR for $45 million. Univision Radio pays $33.5 million for the 96.3 
facility so it can move WCAA there from 105.9; WNYC pays $11.5 million 
for the 105.9 facility and the WQXR intellectual property. WNYC-FM 93.9 
will be all news/information, and WQXR on 105.9 will be noncommercial 
classical 24/7.

s