Erie - The Fan

[slocoma]

shimadajoe said:

ESPN radio got dropped.

That was the reason for folding the station?

I guess it's only a matter of time now before I have to buy satellite radio.

[TNmike]

Saw in todays paper ESPN has been droped. I've pretty much stoped listening to any of this companys radio stations. Hope this BOB thing backfires on Joe Lang.

[UnoBomber]

Erie radio sucks period. Unless you like listening to the the same 5 songs all day (i.e. Star 104) I'm actually starting to like WERG (Gannon University). For the majority of the time though, I have the Ipod hooked up while driving.

Besides, who needs crappy AM broadcast of ESPN radio, when you can get it online espnradio.espn.go.com/espnradio/index

[1stDownStorm]

Well, people driving probably need it.

Weren't the Freeze games on 1400 last year?

[TNmike]

Freeze games were on 1400 last year.

[slocoma]

Someone mentioned 550 AM out of Buffalo. If you can stand listening to all the Sabres and Bills talk, it's not bad. No Mike and Mike in the morning though.

[TNmike]

From goerie.com

Silence of fans reverberates over airwaves
These are dark days for Erie sports. The mayor and council have turned a historic municipal golf course into a giant, well-groomed pasture.

A few years ago, a Sporting News survey of America's best sports cities ranked us 280th out of 301 - behind Itta Benna, Miss. (241st), Cape Girardeau, Mo. (257th), and Teaneck, N.J. (263rd).

Our two most established minor league teams - the SeaWolves and Otters - were a combined 30 games under .500 last year, and the Otters are the OHL's worst team.

Lake Erie Speedway is in danger of losing its sanctioning deal with NASCAR.

Gannon's men's basketball team, once Erie's top sports attraction, missed the playoffs last year and, entering Thursday, the Knights were 16-22 since the start of the 2005-06 season.

The Bills, Browns and Steelers all missed the AFC playoffs in a year when you didn't have to be all that good to get in.

Speaking of football, the NFL continues to force-feed our market Buffalo games even though there is plenty of evidence the Bills are a distant third behind the Steelers and Browns in the broken hearts of Erie's pro football fans.

We've lost Pirates and Sabres broadcasts and in certain parts of the county Indians games aren't available on TV.

Need I remind everyone that NFL Network no longer is available through the region's largest cable provider?

And now this.

I'm driving to drop off the kids at school Monday and I flick on WFNN-AM/1330 expecting a little Mike and Mike in the Morning and I get...The Chiffons.

Hello, headache.

If it weren't for Bob Sanders, Eric Hicks and some great high school athletes, you could bury us in a pine box under a gravestone marked, "Here lies the soul of the Erie fan. And to think Fred Biletnikoff was born here."

The loss of sports radio in this town is the last insult, the head-slap that tells us the out-of-town corporate radio types who make such decisions believe we have fewer hard-core fans than people who want to listen to oldies in mono.

"I'm more disappointed as a listener than I am as an employee," said longtime radio personality Chris "Red" Hughes, whose daily sports talk show on 1330 was among those axed when WFNN became WZZZ. "I used to fall asleep to ESPN Radio every night."

The good news is that Hughes, who had been with WFNN since its birth in 1993, will be back on the air in a few weeks.

Jeff Johns, program director for WJET-AM/1400, said Hughes and Mike "Chico" Bormann, another former WFNN host, will collaborate on a daily sports talk show on WJET starting later this month.

Johns said WFNN's play-by-play broadcasts, including the Otters, SeaWolves and Gannon hoops, would eventually shift to WJET.

However, he said WJET has no immediate plans to pick up ESPN programming, meaning the round-the-clock scores, highlights and talk we enjoyed until Monday are gone indefinitely.

OK. So this isn't Armageddon, you say.

It's not the same as losing a Steris or even shuttering a public recreational venue that served generations to plug a hole in a budget that's bound to spring five more by the time the grass at Erie Golf Club starts growing again.

But 24-hour sports radio has value. It gives us credibility. It gives fans a voice. And to people on the outside looking in, it helps complete the image of a city that's serious about games, even if that sounds like a contradiction in terms.

"As long as the genre's not dead, I guess it's not that bad," said Hughes, taking comfort in the fact that at least for a couple of hours a day sports will remain on the airwaves.

Dead, no.

But if ever a town needed sports CPR, it's this one.

Mailbag

From Marty: "I can't believe there isn't a demand for this type of sports talk in Erie. What's next -- no local radio coverage of the Steelers and Browns."

Hey, Marty, they've got to find someplace to put HGTV Radio.

JOHN DUDLEY can be reached at 870-1677 or [e-mail].


Last changed: January 12. 2007 2:37AM

[Tatonka]

Umm, no mention of the Freeze? He cares so much about Erie sports, does he know about the indoor football team?

[TNmike]

John did have an article about the Freeze yesterday.

Hate to say it but he did say "most established". Seawolfs and otters, no matter how much they suck, have been around longer then the freeze (and established a foothold in Erie) and Erie has had bad luck with minor league football teams.

If the freeze are still around in couple of years then I'm sure mentioning the freeze will be has 2nd nature has mentioning the otters or seawolfs.

[123yathatsme]

ya i agree with mike

they have to be around at least a couple more years this and the next to get named with the 2 but really they are the best local team so a lot of people know about them because of this.