Paul B. Walker, Jr. wrote: > I also think that, sometimes, when one of the other ABC/Disney station has > conflicts in scheduling, the sports get pushed to 1560 simply to make room > for them. > > Paul
No such thing as "ABC/Disney" where radio is concerned these days, of course - but yes, this is basically correct. With a large number of sports franchises in the NYC market and a fairly limited number of useful flagship stations, conflicts are a way of life there, and there's a pretty well-defined hierarchy of which stations get used for which bits of overflow and who takes priority. Baseball and football don't get bumped - there are no conflicts against the Yankees on WCBS (except for the very biggest of breaking news stories, such as the 2003 blackout, which pushed the Yanks to WFAN), and the Mets generally don't get bumped from WFAN. Neither do the Giants (WFAN/WXRK) or the Jets (WABC). (When there's a conflict between a preseason Giants game and the Mets, the Mets usually go to WXRK-FM.) Basketball and hockey do get bumped sometimes. The biggest source of conflict is Devils and Nets on WFAN. The Nets usually go to WBBR 1130 when there's a conflict. If there's a further conflict (three teams at once), WLIB 1190 and WWDJ 970 come into play as well. The Knicks and the Rangers are on WEPN 1050, and that's where WQEW comes into play most often, since it's co-owned with WEPN and makes for an easy conflict-relief choice. The Islanders are on WBBR 1130 and don't usually get bumped, though tonight's game, which conflicts with the NH primaries, moves to Long Island's WMJC-FM. Most of these teams (with the exception of the baseball teams) own their own broadcast rights and simply purchase the airtime from the "flagship" stations, usually contracting with the stations to produce the broadcasts and run whatever networks exist. So if the "flagship" is unavailable because of a conflict, it's generally up to the team to buy the time from a smaller station (WBBR, WLIB, WWDJ, WQEW, etc.) At least at WFAN, there are several backup control rooms that get used during conflicts - you might have the Mets network coming out of the main control room, with the Devils game or the Nets game (or both) being produced in one of the rooms in back and being fed to another station to air. It can get crazy in the rack rooms down there in the midst of all that activity! s _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
