Maine sports radio about to change as WEEI finalizes Portland deal

The rumors and stories about Boston sports radio powerhouse WEEI moving into other markets has been rumbling since last October. At the time, Nassau Broadcasting had intended to have ‘the Entercom Sports Radio Leader’ begin simulcasting on 11 new New England stations. One of those at the top of the list was Portland, ME, but the January 1st switchover never happened and the deal was seemingly dead…until today.
It was announced that beginning on September 1st, all-sports station WJAB will begin simulcasting WEEI throughout Southern Maine. The deal, which runs through 2013, was obviously never fully dropped as a region that totals nearly 1/4 of the state’s population will begin hearing the familiar sounds of Dale and Holley, Dennis and Callahan and The Big Show in less than two weeks…in full FM glory, no less.
(Side note: Atlantic Coast Radio is also converting another FM station to simulcast WEEI, a hip-hop station that will likely be missed by all of 12 people. Sorry guys, but hip-hop and Maine isn’t a dream match. Word.)
The expansion to Portland is another major move for WEEI as their group of personalities will now be front and center in a market that bleeds red, blue and green year-round. It’s clear that this announcement and future simulcast deals put Entercom’s Boston baby in the fast lane to become a full media power like NESN as yesterday, they announced major dot-com staff additions including former Deadspin ace Will Leitch. Make no mistake: this move to push simulcasting is absolutely brilliant in the New England region. Why staff your own station when we can give you the signal at a lesser cost? Because of the success of the Red Sox and others, that is why this plan by Entercom can work. They have resources where others do not.
And unfortunately, that is the other side of the sports radio coin. WEEI isn’t taking over an empty frequency, but rather displacing eight daily hours of local content along with some national filler (Jim Rome, Sporting News stuff). However, Morning Jab hosts Dave “Shoe” Schumacher and Joe Palmieri and PM Jab host Chris Sedenka aren’t out of a job, but merely are moving to the AM side of the dial, also owned by ACR. This is equatable to leaving a traffic-rich downtown storefront to a difficult-to-reach shop in the heart of an industrial park. So in a sense, the company that owns both frequencies will be competing with each other in the arena of sports radio.
Unfortunately, I think we can see how this is going to end up. All three local hosts are going to have their work cut out for them competing against the biggest dogs in the Boston sports yard. They don’t have the advantages of being able to appear on Comcast New England or NESN on a nightly basis like Mike Felger, Mike Adams or others. In the changing media landscape we’re in, you have to cross-pollinate with other entities or else you’re going to get lost. With no producers or call screeners to assist, this WJAB group was already up against it to begin with. Now they’ve been placed on a harder-to-receive radio band and their company has brought in the nation’s top sports radio network into town with them. Yikes…that can’t feel good even if they’ve known this has been coming for a while.
As a soon-to-be-returning Portland resident, I’m kinda happy about this as I like listening to WEEI a few times a week. However, I was also saddened by the news. As I wrote last Friday, I was on WZON (Bangor, ME all-sports station) and off-air, I talked to my buddy Pat about how I actually had begun tuning in via the internet to listen daily to the show. He was a bit surprised and I explained how I liked to feel connected to what was going on back in my home state from time-to-time. I felt the same way about when I had the chance to listen to WJAB’s local guys. Were they polished? Not really. Did I get tired of hearing the same stuff I heard on WEEI? Yes. Did I often shake my head at what I heard for the wrong reason? Certainly. But did the guys try? Absolutely. I think that effort goes a long way toward presenting a great product but you have to have resources and I never got the idea that WJAB had a fully-healthy horse in the race.
Now as the sun prepares to rise on another beautiful Portland day, the guys are going to have to try even harder to keep their shows alive. Good luck, fellas….you’re going to need it.
UPDATE: So I got my frequencies mixed up a bit….see if this makes sense to you:
WEEI: moves to 95.5 FM and 95.9 FM
WJAB: moves to 96.3 FM/1440 AM
WLOB: moves to 1310 AM
WRED: see ya!
So the guys at ‘JAB will still have an FM frequency, just a few clicks away from their competitors, errrr, partners at WEEI? This just seems odd, doesn’t it?
Josh Nason started Small White Ball in 2007 and is the main contributor of content for the site. A long-time writer, his work can also be read at sites like RopesRingandCage.com, EmailMarketingGuy.com and others. He also does radio appearances and was on TV once, albeit for a lame public television game show. He can be reached at josh@smallwhiteball.com.

Labels: Atlantic Coast Radio, maine sports radio, Morning Jab, PM Jab, The Big Show, weei coming to portland, WJAB