WBCN to sports at 98.5; WBMX to 104.1

[Sean Smyth]

On Tue, 7/14/09, Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> wrote:
> 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.

I wonder where Fox Sports Radio sits in this. It's a Premier property, but they have linked up with other CBS-owned sports stations in the past (distributing shows from WFAN, for instance) -- and I would imagine FSR will remain a big part of WJFK's lineup. Could WEEI lose the FSR affiliation to the new WBZ-FM?

> 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.

Didn't WNYC-FM sell for something like $80 million back in the 1990s? Different times, I know, but it still seems like a Times Co. firesale. (Maybe it's just coincidence that Carlos Slim also owns a stake in Univision, in addition to loaning NYTCo. a bunch of money.) 

Does 93.9 // 820 full-time now?