Gladiators Tap WKNR

Not like it was any surprise, but the new Arena Football League team in Cleveland will air its games on Good Karma Broadcasting sports WKNR/850 "ESPN 850".

The Cleveland Gladiators and Good Karma announced Friday that WKNR, and sister sports outlet WWGK/1540 "KNR2", will be the Official Radio Home of the team in its first season, which kicks off March 3 at Quicken Loans Arena.

From the release issued Friday by the AFL team:

ESPN 850 WKNR and Cleveland’s AM 1540 KNR2 will air the Gladiators regular season games in 2008. The station will also air a short pre-game and post-game show during each broadcast. The Gladiators have not yet named an official broadcast team for the season.

The team, and station, have not yet announced which games will be heard on "ESPN 850 WKNR", and which games will be heard on "KNR2". We'll assume weekend/daytime games conflicting with other WKNR programming will be bumped to the 1,000 watt sister station.

As we said, the matchup is no surprise. Gladiators president/CEO Bernie Kosar, the former Browns quarterback, has an ongoing relationship with WKNR already...appearing on many of the station's local talk shows.

And the announcement fits with the station's strategy of taking the play-by-play rights for any number of area teams that are not already linked up with Clear Channel's WTAM/1100 (or WMMS/100.7).

The bad news for Good Karma, of course, is that Clear Channel holds mostly long-term rights to all the Cleveland market's major professional franchises...