Plan D - Part Four

Just throw some more money at it why not

You risk damage to your brand when you do big things on the cheap. That way always costs more in the long run. The Curly R's four part series on Dan Snyder's media empire concludes.

Part One: Out of Suitors
Part Two: Overestimating
Part Three: Underwhelming
Part Four: If You Can't Beat Em, Buy Em

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Plan D: If the fools won't pay us ten million and our signal is weak and then no one noticed when we boosted it then we shall buy the greatest sports talk nation in all the land! Muwahahaha!

If a game is broadcast in the city and no one tunes in, does it make money? That was something of the quandary faced by Dan Snyder after the 2007 season. The 2006 season broadcasts had been mostly unheard on terrestrial radio due to the weakness of the signals of the three stations comprising Triple X ESPN Radio. For 2007 Dan Snyder's Red Zebra Broadcasting made a deal to air game broadcasts on a DC classic rock station. Arbitron shrugged, there was no measurable change in aggregate ratings for the games.

Again Dan was faced with a problem, how to make a bigger splash, after all the Redskins ARE Washington, how can you make money off broadcasting the Redskins if no one can hear it or putting them on a given station does not improve the ratings profile for that station?

So he did what any good business man would: the thing he should have done in the first place.

And so did Dan Snyder go to Clear Channel and make a deal to buy SportsTalk 980 WTEM, the original and flagship sports talk station in the Washington DC for the past 16 years. A 24.5 million dollar deal, one that also included two other stations, the area left talker WWRC 1260 AM and a right talker WTNT 570 AM. WTEM will now be the flagship station with games and at times probably other content simulcast onto the other five stations (op. cit.).

WTEM had orignally been on 570 AM and went by the moniker The Team. Tony Kornheiser debuted as a local radio host here in 1992, it was almost completely local talent, on the strength of talking Redskins alone you can make money in this town.

In 1998 the station moved to 980 AM, broadcasting 50000 watts, 10 times the 570 AM signal strength. Dan Snyder had snagged WTEM general manager Bennett Zier to run Red Zebra, it had been Bennett that negotiated WTEM's original three year deal with then living Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke to air games on The Team, Bennett is now gone and replaced with former ESPN Radio general manager Bruce Gilbert, between Bennett and Bruce that's a lot of talent.

For years, for the entire span of WTEM's life it had the superior Redskins pregame and postgame shows. The WJFK pregame show was always so noisy and seemed to be so reluctant to go outside itself for insight, all homerrific all the time. Meanwhile over at WTEM they drill way down.

The Redskins now return to The Team, a station essentially premised on the existence of the Redskins.

Awsum right? Perfect marrying of the business interests and the marketplace, all those sports fans listening on the radio, like ticket holders at Redskins Stadium just waiting until their next opportunity to pay seven dollars for a beer.

Not exactly, this is a risky purchase. SportsTalk 980 has been tough on the Redskins at times, host Steve Czaban is regularly harsh on the team and last season after the Redskins lost a lead at the half giving up 21 unanswered points and losing to the Giants on the last play SportsTalk 980 contributor and former Redskin tailback and return man Brian Mitchell got into it with current Redskins tailback Clinton Portis.

Not that the SportsTalk 980 guys are antagonistic except maybe for Czabe, the point is that SportsTalk 980 covers the Redskins at arm's length, the team previously had no seat at the editorial table and therefore the station had no incentive to shade its coverage toward the happy side or out right to blow sunshine up area skirts.

Right off the bat the Washington Post, a media entity still independent from the Redskins, reported on unease on the SportsTalk 980 staff (op. cit.). Then the firings and content and schedule shuffling began.

First, Hall of Famer, Redskins legend and drunk John Riggins lost his show (op. cit.), although he will stay with the network as a contributor, he is out as a host. Of course that had nothing to do with John's occasionally brusque coverage of Dan Snyder, right? Then WTEM Redskins beat reporter Jerry Coleman got the axe. While I never had the opportunity to enjoy Jerry's work, Jerry was respected enough that Ryan O'Halloran used Washington Times real estate to lament it.

Then and as predicted the ESPN slate of coverage moves back to WTEM, where it had originally been until Dan Snyder's Red Zebra had snatched it from WTEM in 2006. Dan promptly put the ESPN content on the three Triple X stations where no one could hear it.

And while all the local hosts, former Georgetown Hoyas basketball coach John Thompson, himself know to be tough on the Redskins from time to time, former Redskin Rick Doc Walker, perhaps best known before his start in broadcasting as the H-back tight end that sealed the left side for Riggo on 70 Chip, that 4th and 1 piece of NFL lore born during Super Bowl 17 and Andy Pollin and Steve Czaban all stay, there is certainly less room now for local talent and I tend to think the bloodletting is not yet over. If I had to bet I would say Czabe and Doc Walker are short timers, Czabe is downright caustic to Dan Snyder and Vinny Cerrato and Snyder is not partial to former players from before his time.

There is legitimate cause for concern, for fans about the objectivity of the coverage and for Red Zebra about the value of their investment. If area sports fans do not believe in the coverage they will not listen, forcing advertising rates and revenue downwards. At least smart guy with some relevant experience said

"This is a terrible thing for fans," said Charles Warner, a former radio station executive and journalism professor at the University of Missouri, who now serves as an industry consultant. "When a team owns a radio station, I don't think fans' needs are served at all. It's a terrible idea."

Yeah this ought to be great for fans that have not always been in er agreement with the way Dan Snyder runs the team.

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Back in January 2007 when I was writing baseball at The Curly W there was a mini controversy over the objectivity of the reporter assigned by Major League Baseball to cover the Washington Nationals for mlb.com. I can't bring myself to block quote myself, if you go read it you can hear in the reporter's attitude overtones of Dan Snyder a year in, bunkering down against accusations of polluting WTEM and driving out the best people. You can also hear overtones of fan opinion of a team run media outlet, the biggest one in the market.

And this particular story revolved around a less popular sport in town (baseball) and fan concerns about objective coverage by an entity one place removed from the team itself (the league). Apply this situation to the most popular game in town and make it about the objectivity of the dominant sports talker in town and you have a recipe for PR disaster.

Add to the 24 million dollars for this purchase the 33 million for the original three low power Triple X stations and you have a 57 million dollar layout in the past two years, so far with no serious ratings improvement and now risking the credibility and popularity of the established sports talk station in town.

Expect a new sports talk station in the DC area to be announced any day.

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Dan, I do not approve of your owning WTEM even though I do not listen to it because in theory I would if I did not have Sirius and XM in my car but that is beside the point. You make the product, the market naturally will try to prevent you from controlling the message within the fan base of Redskins products and services. Therefore I expect WTEM to decline in influence and listenership, not a deadly amout, enough to annoy you and make the overall aggregate investment look poorly executed.

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Epilogue: as I put the finishing touches on this post for today, the Brett Favre story threw my schedule off and then I have been training camp crazy, I noted in today's Washington Post a humorous take on Dan Snyder's media ownership by longtime and former WaPo sports editor George Solomon:

That station had been known for the last 16 years as WTEM -- "The Voice of the Fan" -- before Redskins owner Dan Snyder's Red Zebra media company bought most of the radio stations in town, as well as Qatar's Al-Jazeera (WJAZ) and North Korean State Radio (NKSR)...

...But gone from Snyder's Triple X is John Riggins's afternoon show -- the Hall of Fame fullback being slotted into ESPN-980's programming as a "commentator," according to Red Zebra chief Bruce Gilbert. "John will be integrated into our programming all week, as well as postgame and day-after game roles," Gilbert said.

Translation: Riggo lost his gig.

Nuff said.



Image from here.