[BC] All Sports Stations

[Tom Dimeo]

I understand most of the "what" but can't understand the 
"why."  Is Phillies baseball really all that important?  
Harrisburg hasn't had a Phillies station for many years.  
Most of the Phillies games are at night, WGLD runs 
fifty-three watts at night, on 1440, how much coverage will 
they really have?  Also, I'd guess that the IBOC racket from 
WTKT on 1460 will also limit coverage to the north.  Maybe 
Cumulus has been immune to the financial problems other 
broadcast companies have had and have lots of money to spend.

Sorry for quoting so much text but it is a rather long story.

Tom

** SHAFFER, RANDY L Wrote: **
>WSBA had been airing the Baltimore Orioles. But, York got 
>its' own baseball team which WSBA signed on to broadcast. 
>WOYK picked up the Orioles which made sense. 1350 had aired 
>the Orioles for many years in the 60's and 70's. In the early 
>1980's they became co-owned with WFBR in Baltimore and again 
>picked up the Orioles. So, now they had the 0's again. But, 
>they had to drop the Phillies which went to WPDC, which 
>didn't have good coverage in York. There weren't enough 
>outlets for all this baseball. All of this happened around 
>the time that Susquehanna was selling off the flagship 
>facilities and just a year or two after they had acquired 
>WGLD/WSOX. Cumulus bought Susquehanna and was left to fix the 
>problem.
>
>WGLD had been sitting dark in Red Lion and needed alot of 
>work. The WSBA transmitter site was planned to be developed. 
>The decision was made to combine the stations at the 
>remaining Manchester Twp. location. The beautiful building 
>was flattened and a pre-fab unit was placed at the base of 
>the center tower for the two stations. They really spent a 
>ton of money to rework the entire location. That allowed the 
>Phillies to move to WGLD which signed on with mostly dead air 
>for several weeks in April and then a loop of Phillies 
>highlights..
>
>WPDC has been ESPN radio for many years, they have a 
>marketing agreement to operate 1350 WOYK (former WZIX, WORK), 
>hence ESPN on that facility. I'm making the assumption, w/o 
>really knowing, that Cumulus used their size to wrestle ESPN 
>away from WPDC/WOYK. WOYK will be Sporting News Radio too in 
>several days.
>
>1460 WTKT (former WWKL-AM, WCMB) and 1390 WLAN-AM had also 
>been branded "The Ticket" and are Clear Channel stations. 
>Both were Fox Affiliates. WLAN-AM returned to music and 1490 
>WLPA (former WDDL, WGAL-AM)  picked up Fox Sports. 1490 is 
>also airing the new Lancaster baseball team. WLPA is a Hall 
>Communications station.  I'm not sure if they have other 
>sports stations.
>
>WPDC/WOYK seemed to have been left out in the cold and 
>forced to look for a new relationship. Sporting News Radio 
>has benefited from the shifting sands. Otherwise, they still 
>may have been locked out of the market. Cumulus apparently 
>used the leverage of their other stations by agreeing to 
>cross promote on their other York stations and agreed not to 
>bump ESPN programming to get the affiliation. A recent news 
>article says that WOYK bumped ESPN programming often for 
>Baltimore Orioles and Phillies Baseball.