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Unhappy Campers At 105.7 The Fan?
By Dave Hughes, DCRTV.com
There's some stomach churning going on among the staff at CBS Radio's Baltimore sports talker WJZ-FM, 105.7 The Fan.
There are a number of "unhappy campers," we're told, including morning man Ed Norris, the former Baltimore top cop who has been told to talk more sports and less politics. A retooling of sorts for his show, we hear.
A source tells us there will be fewer “serious issues” and more “entertainment” and sports talk in the mornings on 105.7. Norris was the only major holdover when 105.7 switched from more broad-based “guy talk” to sports talk last year.
New promos for the station now say “sports 24/7” when they used to hype “Ed Norris in the morning and sports all day long.”
Also, "four or five" staffers are up for contract renewal soon, and they fear the worst from a budget-cutting CBS. Plus, there's some concern about the station's ratings, which have slumped a bit since the spring and summer.
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Longtime WTTR radio personality Dwight Dingle died Thanksgiving Day. He was the station manager at “Wheel of Fortune” host Pat Sajak's WTTR (1470 AM), but was perhaps best known as a sportscaster for the Westminster, Md., station.
According to the Carroll County Times, Dingle developed WTTR’s Athlete o the Week award to highlight the positive accomplishments of young people.
“It wasn’t always the person who had the most goals or the most points, there were a lot of different accomplishments that got recognized … who could have very well been the athlete of the week,” current WTTR sports director Charlie Beckhardt told the Times. “He wanted to draw the community’s attention to what was going on in the schools and how positive these sports programs are.”
Dingle once hosted the “Sports Voice” Sunday show on the station.
For his efforts as a sports announcer, Dingle was inducted into the Rotary Club of Westminster’s Carroll County Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first non-athlete to be inducted, the Times added.
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As expected, Comcast, the largest U.S. cable-television company, makes the official announcement it will start a joint venture with General Electric's NBC Universal unit, creating an entertainment company valued at about $37 billion.
Sports-wise, Comcast owns its family of Comcast SportsNet channels, include one serving the Mid-Atlantic region, plus the Versus network. Along with its national broadcast TV network, NBC owns the USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC and Bravo cable channels, plus D.C.'s Channel 4/WRC.
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SFMSports.net will broadcast select weekly men's basketball games from six high schools in the Baltimore area via steaming and podcasts on its Web site and via Baltimore sports talker Fox 1370, WVIE. Graham Whaples and Brent Diederich will handle play-by-play.
Steve Clendenin, president of SFMSpoorts, said: "This is media training at its best for these students. We make every effort to include player interviews and features during each game. We want the students to feel comfortable with a microphone in front of them so we work with each player to combat the jitters of giving interviews."
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The Ravens-Steelers battle on Sunday night was the top-rated primetime program of the week among adults aged 18-49, 18-34 and 24-54.
Posted Dec. 3, 2009 |
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