Will WJR switch back to Michigan now that Michigan has a better bball team and football team than MSU?

Wasn't there some weird underhanded move that won the contract for MSU?

not underhanded, MSU paid them to carry the games, taking the risk of selling the ads themselves.

Is a mere shadow of its former great self. It used to be a beacon for the tigers, red wings and um that you could hear in much of the country. Now it's just another clear channel mouthpiece.

Como?  Brief explanation of what WJR is? (Bad feeling I'll come out looking dumb here)

Given the historical dominance of MSU over Michigan in both Basketball (they trail 75 to 94) as well as football (they trail 32 to 67 with 5 ties) I'm sure WJR views the current state of affairs as nothing more than a temporary and quickly overcome setback.  Clearly with MSU dominating as they have in head to head meetings athletically coupled with their national reputation academically it's no wonder a radio station that broadcasts over half the USA at night would want to carry the Spartan torch.  And then when you add in the obviously higher per-capita income of State fans over Michigan fans well - you have an advertising trifecta that's tough to beat.

Here in backwards universe the decision makes all the sense in the world.

I'm sure they're getting soooooo many more listeners for msu games. How long was the contract with msu for?

1.) They have a contract.. its not like at any time they can just say oh UM looks good this year lets switch.

2.) Yes the basketball and football teams look to be trending upward...but they haven't done squat yet. The bball team hasn't made it to the 2nd weekend in the tourney and the football team hasn't made it to the B1G title game in a terrible down time for the conference.

3.) Why would UM even give them the rights back after they trashed us when they switched..they are a nobody am radio station..The internet has made them irrelevent and UM sure doesn't need the money.

This was all about money (as most things are now) instead of better programs and records. 

MSU spent a ton of money to take WJR away from us.  And basketball will never be bigger than football, so I have a hard time believing any rationale that MSU basketball was going to bring in more listeners.  Especially when you take into account that MSU basketball circa 2006 was nothing compared to their 1998-2001 years.   

Great Voice of the Great Lakes....it is on an old fashion AM station on something in the 80s we called radio.

I missed the J in WJR and assumed it was a question of if WR Drake Harris would switch to Michigan now that we're better in both. 

WJR used to be something of royalty in the broadcast universe when JP McCarthy and Ernie Harwell graced the airwaves. That station used to carry a LOT of clout. All the major Michigan sports were broadcast on "the Flamethrower". Now? No so much.

I can pick up WJR in an hour and a half east of buffalo. It would be cool to hear some UM on the radio again.

We need a better raid deal... I prefer Frank and Jim to the TV guys but I can never get a non-staticy 950 signal in my house. Going to FM was the right move, we need to sign a long term deal for football and bball on 97.1 

This has to be the most pining for radio that I've ever seen take place on the Internet. Especially for a site that makes fun of newspapers and bundled cable as much as we do. Radio is dead, it has no money, no audience, and no appeal.

Radio was as good or even better than the newspaper on getting the latest and greatest sports info. I remember when I was a kid listening to JP McCarthy interviewing Bo often during the 70s. They were pro UM way back then. That station really fell on hard times after JP died and the station became a shell of what it use to be. I would always listen to the Tigers with Harwell and Carrie, Red Wings Hockey with Bruce Martin and Sid Able, and Van Patrick then Reynolds did the Lions games! It use to be a great station years ago.

WJR was a bastion of journalism, a decent forum for divergent opinions, and was extremely popular, but saw themselves becoming obsolete thanks to the internet.  Consequently, they "went Sparty."

This is almost exactly what has happened to the freep, except WJR got bought out by CC intstead of going bankrupt.

Really? In Detroit? . . . Oh, never mind.

Too bad what happened with Martin overreaching with WJR. Pride goes before a fall. You know, I'm not a businessman, but there is one sales principle I often look for in situations like this. In the long run, it is always better to pay a fair price for something. Someone is always going to be very unhappy if they are paying too much or getting too little.

It may not happen quickly, but I'd love for Michigan to be back on WJR. Their reach is awesome. It was a royal pain driving from Cleveland to Chicago after Thanksgiving and not being able to catch the Michigan game easily. With WJR, you could tune in almost that whole distance.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/2012/12/clear-channel-facing-...

Losing WJR was bad for UM in terms of audience reach, just like it was for the Tigers and Red Wings. WJR's signal strength is crazy; I've heard of people clear across the country picking it up at night on random occasions. Back in the 60s through the early 90s it was THE mainstream radio station to listen to in Detroit, but it's a shell of its former self. I haven't listened to it at all since they dumped UM. Now it's just another station carrying a mix of spittle-flecked radio ranters, endless ads, and irrelevant sports programming.

I'm quite familiar with the radio business, so I'll chime in with a few odds and ends here...

WJR is owned by Cumulus, not Clear Channel.

And, yes, they are just a shadow of what they used to be, in terms of both ratings and influence.  They still manage to generate a significant amount of revenue, however, due to many older decision makers being among their small but loyal audience.

The relationships between the broadcasters and the colleges are governed by long-term contracts, so WJR would not be able to just "switch back" to carrying Michigan sports.

Also, college football drives these relationships.  Any radio broadcaster is focused on two things...ratings and revenue.  College basketball doesn't generate much of either.  College football does.

There is also a trend toward the teams (whether pro or college) paying the broadcaster to carry the games...and then the team sells the marketing opportunity to the advertisers.  This allows the team to bundle together radio, tv, in-arena, and hospitality. 

Plus, this arrangement ensures that the relationship is profitable for the broadcaster.  Due to increased availability of games on tv, internet, etc., the revenue generated by radio broadcasters for in-game advertising has decreased.  This resulted in many of these relationships being unprofitable for radio broadcasters...as the rights fees exceeded the advertising revenue generated.

Some radio stations, however, are willing to absorb a small loss or be content with a break-even situation...in return for the marketing/prestige/credibility benefits that they receive by associated with pro and/or college teams.

Hope this brief primer is interesting to some of you.

Fortunately when I cannot attend or watch games on TV I am rarely out of range of 102.9 FM. I view the station as a bit of an anthropology resource as I wait for the broadcast. For instance, I've learned that "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.". This seems to be a major theme, as it seems to come up every third or fourth song...

As I clicked on this thread I was scanning my brain to come up with which recruiting target the OP was talking about.



I was on WJR with Joel something or other when I was 5./cool story bro

Those under 35 or 40 might not know that before the mid 80s or so, a team could not be on national or even local live TV more than twice per season (up to late 70s, IIRC) and three times per season by about '80.

So in an 11-game season, you had no choice but to listen to the game on radio to find out what was happening as it happened if you weren't at the game. None. No gametracker on ESPN.com cuz no Internet. No sports TV station.

I remember being at my grandma's house (I think) on the day M lost to Minnesota in 1977. She only had one radio -- a console in the living room, where all the adults were yakking. My only means of finding out what was happening in the M game was to watch the ABC game and wait for scoring updates, which, because UM was #1 at the time, they wound up providing more than usual. (M lost, 16-0)

This is one of the big reasons Bob Ufer was so near and dear to so many M fans' hearts. It's because he (or Tom Hemingway on WWJ) was the one place you had to go to find out how the game was going on 8 or 9 of 11 Saturdays.

The ability to watch a game on TV was a BIG deal. Through 1976 or '77, ABC for its national games would even introduce the players, live, to the stadium and viewers, one at a time. Players who'd just scored at TD used to always wave him to Mom, too, because it was such a rare big deal when a game was on TV.

I suspect that is why radio stations such as 'JR made so much money off the advertising for M games, and Tigers, etc.

FWIW.

Mgoblog must be unique in its demographic makeup. I can honestly say I've never seen a discussion among avid bloggers about radio. IMO who cares it's dead?

An equally relevant question is whether Western Union will retain its exclusive rights to provide telegraphy services in the Michigan press box.

Ah Sparty, trying to control the radio airwaves in an internet age.....how very....uh enterprising of you.

Their next target will be to try an control the telecommunications market by buying up all the landlines in Michigan.

I think I'm the last bastian of the radio generation. It was just a few years ago when sucky bandwidth made it more or less impossible to listen to listen/watch events online. As my family didn't have cable (and even if we did, I'm out of market), I was stuck with the radio for my baseball and most of my football. Of course, I'm an Indians fan, so every night during the season I'd sit with radio next to the biggest impromptu antenna I could find (usually a double-switch light circuit with the light turned off) and by about 8PM I'd start to finally get WTAM-Cleveland. And then of course, being a young kid at the time, I'd invariably fall asleep in bed covertly listening to Tom Hamilton. And I thought my parents never knew.

I honestly think that the difficulty in accessing the games contributed to me being a more rabid fan: it was either you spend a lot of effort listening or you don't listen at all. I wonder if the rise of easy access to sports will decrease the number of die-hard fans.

I wouldn't knock so hard on radio.  When we're stuck with Pam Ward or Beth Mowins, I usually mix the parkinggod highlight reels using Beckman and Brandstatter.  Wouldn't have that option in a radio-free world...