Does anyone think the U.P. will get with the times and put an ALL SPORTS station on the FM Dial??? 93.7 in Cadillac went to FOX Sports Radio to gives northern Michigan it's first all-sports format, Grand Rapids has two FM sports stations with 96.1 and 107.3, and Detroit has 97.1 on the FM Dial. So when is an all sports format going to come to the U.P.?? 97.1 in Escanaba carries the Packers and Redwings, 104.7 carries the Detroit Lions, 102.5 has Nascar, 100.3 has NMU sports, and a bunch of different stations carry HS sports on the FM, but in the summer we are left trying to find the Tigers on the radio (which is hard to do once you leave Marquette on what seems to be getting weaker, 1320 station.) NOBODY carries MSU on FM or AM and the kicker to all this is that ALL SPORTS ESPN 970 AM station carries ZERO play by play and is the voice of NOTHING.

Will any of the radio stations swoop in and finally put all of these sports on one station? I bet there is a lot of money to be made especially with the turn around of the Lions and the Tigers if one of these stations would just take the bull by the horn!

Thoughts?

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Speak Softly But Carry A Big Stick

Ok, I see that Casey Ford of ESPN 970, Jay Fisher of Radio Results, Kent Smith owner of the Eagle, and Dave Danis of the Eagle, all post on this site, and nobody has a comment or input on this this matter? I kind of find that hard to believe!

Ty

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Speak Softly But Carry A Big Stick

For some reason I am just now seeing this. To be honest, I don't have much input on this matter. I would love for ESPN to go FM, but that's not my call, I don't own the station nor do I know what its like to own a station. For being an AM station, we have a lot of loyal listeners who tune in on a daily basis.

I'll bite... Sort of. Not my call either. I LOVE football and baseball personally. But I also love music formats. Do I think one would fly. Yup. Do i think someone will do it? Have to ask an owner. They make decisions to blow up stations and try again. There are a few signals..... I digress.

I would love to see a 100k FM station in the UP go all sports, but I don't think any owner is willing to take the risk. It's not like they would have any real competition on the FM dial!!
FYI - if you are in the Iron Mountain area, you can catch the Tigers on Talk 1450, WMIQ and the Brewers on 100.7 WOBE.
I am not sure if any of the Esky stations still carry the Tigers and Brewers!!

See that's the problem, and my point. A lot of people seem to be Tiger fans, but there isn't a solid station to listen to them on. 1320/1240 in Marquette/Ishpeming don't do the Tigers justice, and obviously 1400 in Houghton doesn't come in for more than 30miles in any direction. I saw they were on an FM station in the Soo on 94.5, but obviously that doesn't come in here in the Central UP. I am frustrated and surprised at the same time that all these FM stations (see above) carry sports but no will put the Tigers on.

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Speak Softly But Carry A Big Stick

For many years it was nice to have the Tigers on 104.7 WYKX in Escanaba. They did a good job of covering the central UP!! I think AM600 WCHT in Esky might have the Tigers now. I know in Marquette county the signals for WMMJ and WIAN is very weak. Not needing to have a board op to run the games in studio anymore, you think someone would give the much improved Tigers a shot on the FM dial!!

Keep in mind that many who live in the U.P. for that very reason, that it's behind the times. I'm even considering a move to there because of that myself.

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Please bring back Motorola C Quam stereo, and dump IBOC! Radio could be fun again.

Think about it... Talk/Sports on FM when it's expensive enough to put up a radio station in a market that is gigantic and sparcely populated. I think the motivation is to find 1 of three formats in the U.P. (Classic Rock, Country, or AC/Lite rock) and cover as much of a demographic and geographic area as possible. The $$$ per person from an all sports station would probably dig into revenues adversely.

What's wrong with a 10 or 50kW AM sports station? Seems like a better use of bandwidth to me. I hate talk and sports on FM. There are too few choices for good music on FM which actually needs the fidelity. Sports/Talk can work just fine on AM.

Plus, would someone in Iron Mt. care that Negaunee and Munising are playing JV basketball? Probably not. HS sports actually draw the ratings in the U.P. You've seen TV6. It's by no accident. The real issue is you have a part of the U.P. that is not sure if they are Detroit or Green Bay/Milwaukee/Wisconsin fans and there you go again dividing the demographic that would actually appreciate your suggestion.

If the west/Central UP ran anything like the Eastern UP where the downstate stations have satellites up north you'd have Green Bay holding the deck on the programming in the West/Central U.P. and your idea might actually fly.

Here's another point to ponder. I have no idea of what costs what in the radio business. But why hasn't the UP jumped on the HD radio bandwagon yet? Seems like that could be a way to get extra programming out that isn't financially feasible with analog, especially with the big 50-100K antennas out there (Q107, Magic 97, Point, WJPD, Fox103, etc...) From what I've seen you can actually put out three signals on one frequency. Just for the record, 91.5 Radio X in Marquette just upgraded to HD recently and can put out a clear HD signal West of Ishpeming, and for those in Marquette that can't get Public Radio 90 clearly they can now tune to HD2 on Radio X and listen crystal clear. Public Radio 90 also has an HD setup that they choose not to use, but they could put Radio X on their HD2 and gain so much more coverage that way. Seems like the HD2 and HD3 would be a good place to put some of these "experimental" formats around here.

I will have to do some investigating, but I just got back from driving 6.5 hours to and from Grand Rapids this weekend. I got to listen to the Detroit Tigers baseball on the FM radio. They were on 94.5 just east of Munising (just like Newsguru said) but I also found them on 93.9. once I got downstate. I have no idea what format those stations are, but games are a lot easier to listen to when broadcasted on the FM dial. Also the Milwaukee Brewers are on 100.7, which I can listen to in Gwinn but not MQT, so if the brewers are on FM shouldn't the tigers be somewhere in the Central UP? With the HD stuff, that has been a major FAIL in a lot of places especially downstate. A lot of people aren't going to the stores to buy HD radio's like they do for HD TV.

Just curious, but how do they market HD radio downstate? We basically have nothing going on in the central UP other than the aforementioned NMU station. The only long distance HD catch I've made is the public radio station out of Green Bay. I would think they would have to give listeners a heads up on the regular analog stations in a form similar to "This is W***, your classic rock authority...but with an HD radio you can hear some blistering heavy metal on our HD2 and the Tigers baseball on our HD3!!" The radio stations would need to create a desire to have these HD radios by informing the listeners of what they are missing by not having them wouldn't they?

No one cares about HD.

You would get more listeners with internet stream.

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Both Democrats and Republicans are "liberals"! The Republican ideology is classical liberalism, while the Democrats is welfare liberalism.

Only thing with internet stream is you are bound to the limits of your wireless router or cellular data availability and caps...not to mention the monthly charges that go with. Also, you can't always stream radio stations when they are airing pro sports or protected programming due to contractual issues. That's the good thing about radio is that once you buy the equipment that's it (except for batteries maybe.) HD radios really are not that expensive anymore. You can get a walkman at Best Buy for like 50 bucks and a boombox with Ipod dock for under 100. I got a killer Pioneer deck in both my cars with Ipod controller and built-in HD for 250 each.

HD might work ok until you go over the next hill.

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Both Democrats and Republicans are "liberals"! The Republican ideology is classical liberalism, while the Democrats is welfare liberalism.