An interesting era in the admittedly paltry history of Washington D.C. sports talk radio began at the top of this month. Red Zebra Broadcasting, founded by Redskins principal owner Snyder and minority owner Dwight Schar, took ownership of Sports Talk 980. This marks likely the first time a U.S. sports franchise owner has had a monopoly of their market’s tacky fun sports talk radio.
Back in June, radio broadcasting and billboards giant Clear Channel Communications sold its’ three D.C. area AM radio stations to Red Zebra. The package of stations were a pair of news/talk stations running mostly syndicated programming, WTNT 570AM and WWDC 1260AM, and WTEM 980AM, aka Sports Talk 980. Prior to the acquisition, which still awaits FCC approval, Red Zebra’s D.C. holdings consisted of the three Redskins Radio stations, WXTR 730-AM, WWXT 92.7-FM, and WWXX 94.3-FM.
Those three notoriously low-powered stations (briefly marketed as “Triple-X ESPN Radio”) currently broadcast syndicated ESPN radio programming, their sole weekday local content consisting of the PM drive-time “John Riggins Show.” Previously, the stations broadcast the one-hour “Redskins Lunch” at noon with former SportsTalk 980 beat-reporter Bram Weinstein and Redskins Vice-President/radio play-by-play voice Larry Michael, as well as sporadic evening and weekend specials hosted by either Weinstein or Riggins’ side-kicks Gary Braun and Kevin Sheehan. Following Weinstein’s departure for a television anchor job at ESPNews this Spring, the “Redskins Lunch” has been replaced by the third hour of ESPN Radio’s often unlistenable “Colin Cowherd Show.” Michael still does a one-hour show of team media highlights which airs on regional cable TV channel MASN (itself owned by Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos) in the afternoon slot where a tape-delayed version of “Redskins Lunch” used to air.
This story yesterday in the Washington Post Style section, sketches out the near-term plan for Redskins Radio. Additoinally, Dave Hughes, proprietor of local broadcasting news and rumor site DCRTV.com, has posted the schedule for the newly-dubbed ESPN980. All four stations will broadcast the same programming.
The local Sports Talk 980 programming stays intact, but Steve Czaban’s morning nationally syndicated morning show is out. “First Team on Fox” broadcast from the 980 studios and syndicated nationally by Fox, will be replaced on the local airwaves by ESPN’s somewhat dull “Mike and Mike in the Morning.” Dan Patrick’s mediocre syndicated show is out, and Colin Cowherd is in from 10AM-12PM. Rick “Doc” Walker’s show, which presently airs between 9-11AM on weekdays, will shift to a 12-2PM slot, taking Colin Cowherd’s final hour. The “John Thompson Show with Al Koken and Brian Mitchell” gets compressed an hour to run 2-4PM and “The Sports Reporters” hosted by Czaban and Sports Talk 980 founding personality Andy Pollin (a.k.a. “Andy Polley” from his frequent stints as Tony Kornheiser’s Senior Radio side-kick) stays in the 4-6PM slot. The balance of the day, currently filled out by Fox Sports Radio’s annoying carnival barkers (with the exception of Reston boy done good Andrew Siciliano) will now be filled by ESPN Radio’s gimmicky twits, with the exception of the audio re-air of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon’s PTI show.
I was busy yesterday afternoon and didn’t hear if Riggins was live on air. Redskins Radio ran a taped “Best of Show” today. It is a bit of a shame Riggins’ show is gone as he is very entertaining, though a bit clunky as a talk-show personality. Hughes writes that Riggins will retain an on-air role on gamedays for Redskins Radio, though that was a separate post from the “official” ESPN980 line-up, so it may not come to pass.
One of the early episodes of the Riggins’ show featured him with guest co-host Dexter Manley in a fun pairing of the two most charismatic and eccentric Gibbs I era Redskins. I imagine the idea was to use Riggins’ name to draw listeners while Braun and Sheehan helped him find his way as on-air talent, the way Koken and Walker guided Thompson at Sports Talk 980 about ten years ago. Despite his struggles as a host and ratings draw, I hope Riggins does continue at Redskins Radio. He may be more effective in smaller doses.
The practical upshot of the deal is it will be easier to listen to the Redskins on the radio, even if the old “turn down the TV, turn on the radio” trick doesn’t work because of the differing signal feed delays between the TV and radio broadcasts. During daylight hours, 980 has good all-around the metropolitan D.C. area signal strength, though it gets shaky in the evenings. The existing Redskins Radio stations are so low-powered they regularly broadcast promotional spots reminding listeners which station has the best signal strength in a particular area. During 2006, the first year of “Redskins State Radio”, the team secured special permission from the NFL to make the internet stream of the broadcast available for free to compensate for these problems. During the 2007 season, the team cut a deal with Clear Channel to broadcast the games on very easy to tune into WBIG 100.3FM. Outside the D.C. area, Red Zebra has been steadily buying a variety of radio stations in Virginia, with the probable goal of trying to own a substantial number of stations in the Redskins listening market.
Back to Sports Talk 980/ESPN980, it would be an exaggeration to say the station is a major force in the D.C. area sports consciousness. The station is not comparable with peers like WEEI in Boston, WFAN in New York or WYSP in Philadelphia. This is a so-so sports town, dominated by a wide, passionate and shallow Redskins fandom, in whose shadow vocal but modest-sized congregations of NHL, NCAA men’s hoops, NBA, MLB and MLS fans grouse. Sports Talk 980’s Redskins work caters to the middling-sized niche of hardcore Redskins fans who can name players beyond Jason Campbell, the late Sean Taylor, Clinton Portis, Chris Cooley and whatever guy they met at at the grocery store. As the team has been an expensive medicority recently, the station has unsurprisingly become a magnet for the most disgruntled of the hardcore Redskins fans.
Many of these same fans called the station as the new broke in early June, voicing concerns that the station would be turned into an all-day version of “Redskins Lunch” where Weinstein used to offer nominal criticism of the team only to be shouted down by Michaels’ unapologetic cheerleading. They want to continue to have an on-air place to complain about the team and have hosts not just agree with criticism of the team, but to help lead it. I suspect that Sports Talk 980’s existence and Joe Gibbs seeming discomfort with the station (his coach’s show was hosted there during the first year of his return) there helped spur Snyder’s creation of the in-house Redskins Radio network. While Riggins, Sheehan and Braun did criticize the Redskins while on Redskins Radio, the criticism lacked the humor and edge all three men showed while at Sports Talk 980. I’m not as worked up about the situation as those who called in, I will find it sad if the Redskins are (again) incompetent this season and there is no Sports Talk station in town engaged in hyperbolic criticism. This kind of talk takes the edge off of bad football. The next best option for potential malcontent Redskins fans is the (formerly Sports) Junkies on WJFK 106.7FM. The guys run a slightly atypical raunchy morning show, but true to their heritage as a cable access “sports bar” talk show, they talk sports more effectively and convincingly than the usual general-purpose morning radio personality.
