Sporting News Radio has been struggling since its creation. It owns a few stations of its own and has a few dozen stations that carry some of its programming. Mostly I find Sporting News on stations that just need filler – AM stations after the sun goes down and the transmitter goes to 8 watts, but the FCC requires them to keep the transmitter on, etc…
Today’s news is that Yahoo! is taking over operation as Yahoo! Sports radio effectively immediately. This is mostly a sign that the Internet and Cable TV are where people go who are sports fans, not radio.
The other big news is that Westwood One is being merged into Dial Global by the end of the month. Westwood One owns the radio rights to NCAA sports and NFL football, syndicates Jim Bohannon, Dirk Van, Dennis Miller, Doug Urbansky, Phil Valentine, a number of satellite delivered music channels and until recently owned Metro Traffic – the people who have a person 1000 miles away who gives the local traffic reports by watching the TrafficCams over the internet.
Westwood One basically went under a couple years ago from their debt load – a Private Equity firm saved them from going under, and seems to now be selling off the parts. What’s left is being merged into Dial Global, the folks who syndicated all the Progressive talk hosts, and also do a big business in satellite radio. Dial Global is controlled by OakTree Capital, who control TownSquare Media, Triton Media, StreamTheWorld, and own a big chunk of Cumulus). Westwood One was originally closely affiliated with CBS radio, but the nature of that relationshp at this point is very hard to figure out from publicly available information.
Wow, Yahoo is taking over sporting news. I Kinda liked their college and NFL football things they did on the weekend. It was good when you are working outside on your Jeep or in the shed fixing something on your Cub Cadet tractor. I spent alot of time listening to them on the weekends cleaning a motorcycle. Evenings with that crazy Arnie spainier. He’s at KRLD Dallas now. or was?
Radio on all day coming and going out of the shed. It was all radio, no computer in the shed, LOL
I do have a mini fridge there with a couple cold ones. Art, if you are ever in southwest Virginia, drop on by. we’ll just hear Dave ramsey now, LOL
I don’t have cable for the TV in the house , we are over the air old skool. DSL works, cells phones don’t, LOL
AM radio just kinda filters into the hollows and over some ridges, where FM and Digital TV don’t
Yahoo sports radio? I usually am in a Yahoo sports fantasy football league, hmmmmm
Interesting.
Yahoo! apparently does some pretty significant sports related web traffic. As I’ve described elsewhere, Sporting News seemed to target the hard core betting audience – a lot of the content was not about the scores, the great play in the game, etc… but more on “the line” in Vegas, the over/under, how injuries and trades was going to change the point spread… and until recently, the guy in the middle of the night handing out Dr Laura advice, competing with John & Jeff