Why the Reds moving to a new station is unlikely

[titoisradio]

The situation in Cincinnati is much different than it was in St. Louis, lets take a look at the major stations and their ownership with likelyhood of being sold.

WLW - Clear Channel - will not be sold by Clear Channel. only option for new Reds ownership with this station is a possible Joint Venture.  

WUBE - Infinity - again don't see Clear Channel or Infinity selling any of their top stations in the market as a single signal.  Nor do I see the Reds having enough leverage to purchase an entire cluster from Infinity or Clear Channel.

That eliminates the following stations:
WKFS
WEBN
WCKY
WGRR
WKRC-A
WKRQ
WOFX
WVMX
WAQZ
WCKY
WSAI

Radio One is also unlikely to sell and I believe the Susqhehanna group was recently sold to I forget who.

The Max-FM stations would not be a viable choice as you would be unable to hear the station(s) inside the stadium.  

Not sure if WNLT or WAKW would sell or not.

What stations are left that would have the facilities to A) feed the network including XM B) That would have the signal and visibility to reach the entire metro area.

Trading Sean Casey was one thing, the risks could be mitigated by signing Matt Morris, but trading Marty to a weak signal would not be a smart move.  Plus could you imagine the response by the Clear Channel stations on-air...Reds would have to win a World Series or they would be on the recieving end of the next Portune lawsuit.

[Oscar]

Not a good idea to move from WLW period.

[js]

Many of us never thought that The Reds would leave WLWT/The Reds Television Network.  Certainly not to go to cable!  They gave up a ton of publicity & coverage.  5 promoted them in nearly every break on game days.

[Oscar]

Part of the WLWT deal was that they were getting docked by NBC for pre-empting network shows.  The games went to Channels 12 and 64 there for a while, then FOX Sports bought the exclusive rights.

[11south]

> Not a good idea to move from WLW period.
WLW is a much better station than KMOX.  60% of KMOX audience is 55+, the Cardinals needed to do a couple of things:

1. Aggregate all their sponsorship assets so their internal sales staff would have all things Cardinals to sell.

2. Control the environment their product is heard in. They had no control over the rest of KMOX.

WLW certainly brings a younger audience into play for the Reds vs. what KMOX has. However, the need to aggregate all their sponsorship assets may outweigh the other.  The only solution would be to do a "time buy" on WLW vs. a rights fee situation, where the Reds own all the inventory.  It is confusing for the sponsor to have several sales staffs selling similar products.  More and more pro sports teams are doing this. The reasons vary from; what I mentioned above, to broadcasters shying away from large rights fees, as they don't want the liability in case they can't make the broadcasts profitable.

The Indianapolis Colts are doing something along these lines with WFBQ in Indianapolis. They (the Colts) own the inventory, FBQ pays a promotional fee for the games. The promotional fee is a whole lot less than the rights fees.

Easier to do with 20 football games on Sundays, than it is to do with 150+ baseball games at all kinds of different times through the week.

Bottom line...WLW is still the best choice IMHO.

[titoisradio]

> Part of the WLWT deal was that they were getting docked by
> NBC for pre-empting network shows.  The games went to
> Channels 12 and 64 there for a while, then FOX Sports bought
> the exclusive rights.
>

Also there is virtually no difference in households that have over the air TV and Cable/Sat TV so moving to cable actually can offer more benefits than free TV in terms of sports programming.