Milwaukee gets yet another sports talk station

[LoadStar 363]

This was brought up in the Scripps thread, but I think needs to be split off as it is now very tangentially related to that thread.

This morning, iHeart flipped CHR station WRNW "97.3 Now" to sports-talk "97.3 The Game." This makes the fifth full-power station (fourth unique station) in Milwaukee with sports-talk: Good Karma's 94.5 WKTI / 540 WAUK (simulcast as "ESPN Milwaukee"),  Entercom's 1250 WSSP / 105.7 W289CB ("105.7 The Fan"), iHeart's 920 WOKY ("The Big 920"), and now iHeart's 97.3 WRNW ("97.3 The Game").

Unlike what Good Karma is currently doing with WKTI/WAUK, iHeart's two sports stations are, as of now, distinct stations. WOKY will carry Fox Sports Radio network programming for most of the day, while WRNW will be all the local content that was previously on WOKY. The sports PxP that would have previously been on WOKY have been split up, with some remaining on WOKY and others moving up to WRNW.

I can't see how this is sustainable. Milwaukee may be seen as a big sports town, but not *that* big. There can't be that many people all wanting to listen to sports talk. 

That said, WRNW was doing quite poorly in the ratings, and there were three CHR stations in the area competing for listeners, so a format flip is not terribly surprising. Unfortunately, WRNW was the only station in Milwaukee doing straight CHR (WXSS leans slightly rhythmic, and WRNG is very much a rhythmic CHR) so losing WRNW as a CHR is very disappointing.

[TriangleTriadMediaNews 267]

54 minutes ago, LoadStar said:

I can't see how this is sustainable. Milwaukee may be seen as a big sports town, but not *that* big. There can't be that many people all wanting to listen to sports talk. 

Raleigh has about three or four sports talkers, all owned by Capitol Broadcasting but airing different networks.  The main channel is WCMC-FM which is affiliated with ESPN with a local midday and afternoon drive show, an AM station affiliated with FOX Sports that I believe has a local morning drive show, and one that just carries the CBS Sports feed 24/7. 

Hell, DC only has two and they're both garbage at best.

[24994J 5269]

Chicago couldn't even support 3. Granted, that third one resided on 87.7FM and had more people on-air than listening. I was one in the latter group.

[mrschimpf 2050]

I just don't understand how this can be sustained long-term, and judging from how the Packers are doing right now, I wouldn't have flipped the station this fast because nobody wants to hear discussions about how bad they're doing, especially on a number of radio stations where it's the only topic possible. And there's only so many sports hosts in the market before you begin to run thin and have to bring in the time brokers who only seem to exist to be angry and unhinged.

They probably should have flipped with KTI on the 1st, so that way the audience for 97.3 would have understood. Right now though, you're going to have a lot of listeners gone to WXSS/WMYX (not many are going to WNRG) and they aren't going to be coming back to an IH station for a whole month, if ever due to WRIT being all-Christmas. I tuned in this morning to listen not knowing, and it was not a positive reaction. WRNW was far from a perfect station (them and WMYX with Entercom had a huge problem with 'popular with programmers but not with actual listeners' artists being overplayed), but WXSS's imaging can grate at times so it was a good alternative.

About the only good thing out of this is Westwood One and NASCAR getting FM homes, but that isn't a top point by any means for any station. And IH is risking WRIT's #1 ranking which includes a move of Badger games on a station that may be strong on local content, but after only 28 days, a full-power FM station, let alone two, seems like a waste of good bandwidth in a market where you still have WTMJ dominating otherwise.