Wednesday, September 26, 2007

BREAKING NEWS: Ex-ESPN Host Patrick Picks Up Local Affiliate

UPDATE 9/26/07 3:35 PM: AllAccess points out that Dan Patrick's new show, which will debut on WARF and other early affiliates on Tuesday, October 1st, will actually air live 9 AM-noon Eastern Time.

Any affiliate that carries the show in Patrick's former ESPN Radio time slot (1-4 PM) will be carrying it on delay.

We're curious if this "changes the game" for former affiliates of that show, who could presumably carry the show before Jim Rome. For WWGK/1540, Good Karma's "KNR2", that'd mean replacing part of shows hosted by FOX Sports Radio's Steve Czaban and ESPN's Colin Cowherd.

But as we note below, the Good Karma folks are pretty tied to the ESPN branding, and we're not sure Bristol would like such a move. Or, for that matter, if the folks currently on Broadview Road are considering it at all...

----------

OMW hears - and we mean literally, on the station - that Clear Channel Akron sports talker WARF/1350 "SportsRadio 1350" will be one of the first affiliates carrying the new afternoon show hosted by now-former ESPN Radio host Dan Patrick.

An on-air announcement during a local football-oriented talk show Tuesday evening says Patrick will air on WARF in his old ESPN Radio time slot, 1-4 PM Monday through Friday. And we believe that so far, only WARF has announced his carriage in Northeast Ohio's largest markets.

OMW reported a while back that Patrick's Cleveland affiliate in his ESPN Radio days, Good Karma sports WWGK/1540 "Cleveland's AM 1540, KNR2", has already announced that it's staying with the network's own replacements for the former SportsCenter anchor, who is a native of the Dayton area - by the way.

Those replacements would be "Monday Night Football" voice Mike Tirico (1-3 PM) and ESPN basketball talk contributor and sportswriter Stephen A. Smith (3-4 PM, a one hour national simulcast of his show on ESPN Radio O&O WEPN/1050 in New York City).

We can't find the earlier announcement on the station's ESPNCleveland.com website, but we have no indication that 1540 is dumping the Tirico/Smith combo for Dan Patrick. For now, at any rate. One wonders how ESPN Radio would feel about it if they did...

3 comments:

OMWFan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
OMWFan said...

Czabe is on from 6-9A, so he wouldn't be affected.

Out of Bounds (FOX) is on from 9-10A.

Cowherd is on from 10A -1P.

What could happen is that they dump Out of Bounds, air DP from 9-11A, and the Herd from 11A-1P.

But more than likely, 1540 will stay status quo.

850 ain't happening, beacuse that's Rizzo time, and he goes NOOOOOOOOOOOwhere (to paraphrase the Hammer).

Ontario Emperor said...

In Los Angeles, Patrick will be aired on a semi-Fox affiliate live from 6-9 PT. KLAC is already jettisoning its existing morning show. It's an interesting market out here - while there's a solid ESPN station, the supposed Fox station airs hardly any Fox shows (most programming is local), and the Sporting News outlet switched to Korean programming (which means that Tony Bruno isn't heard over the air out here).