By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
February 13, 2015
As first reported here earlier this week, Detroit Sports 105.1-FM parted ways with program director Jason Dixon, whose tenure at the station was an abysmal failure.
Dixon — who was in charge of WMGC’s transition from Adult Contemporary to Sports — came to Detroit from North Carolina during the summer of 2013 and never could figure out this market.
Dixon’s tenure included the bizarre decision not to pair Drew Lane with a sports addicted co-host — meaning the station’s centerpiece program lacked any in-depth sports knowledge. Instead, the afternoon drive program quickly and predictably devolved into a 1990s nostalgia shit show.
To make matters worse, Dixon kept an ESPN national show on during morning drive (Mike and Mike) that nobody in Detroit cares about; hired perennial ratings failure Ryan Ermanni; and then gave a show to a man (Matt Dery) who spent the previous two decades telling anyone who would listen that he NEVER wanted to host a sports talk program.
The station never branded itself as a worthy alternative to 97.1 and has constantly received a ratings beatdown from the CBS Radio juggernaut. The station’s ratings have topped out at a 1.4 and have vacillated between that figure and an anemic .8.
The “sports talker” was doomed from the day they went on the air in August of 2013. The plan to take a chunk out of 97.1’s audience was to attack WXYT-FM for never discussing SPORTS. Of course, you couldn’t do that with “Lowest Common Denominator and the Homophobe” discussing pressing topics like Michael Jackson and the JFK assassination.
So now 105.1 is on the lookout for a new PD and you’d hope Greater Media has learned its lesson. Maybe it wasn’t a wonderful idea to hire an out-of-towner with zero Detroit experience and no feel for the pulse of this very provincial market.
Nope. From what I have heard, Greater Media management plans on going down this rabbit hole again. Rumors are heating up that they plan on hiring ANOTHER non-Detroiter.
Great idea, fellas. It sure worked the first time!!!
But what do I know? I am just the dude who wrote for YEARS that WDFN should have switched from 1130 to 106.7 and how that move would have ended 1270. Did they listen to me? Nope.
Of course, CBS finally moved WXYT-AM to 97.1 and they have been living off that gravy train ever since.
Hell, I even attended the introductory press conference at the Greater Media compound and asked pointed questions about Dixon’s plan to team Lane up with a lackey (Marc Fellhauer) instead of a knowledgeable sports guy and gave reasons why Mike and Mike would fail.
But don’t listen to my advice. Just keep doing what you are doing. Why anyone would uproot their life, move to Detroit and take on this project is beyond me. I can’t imagine things getting any better on this current trajectory and when Lane’s contract expires in August I could see Greater Media pulling the plug entirely.
The strange part about all of this is that I heard rumors that Greater Media was going to flip 105.1 to sports way back in 2011. At the time, I called the program director at the station and asked him if there was any truth to this ongoing rumor.
He assured me that the speculation was baseless and made a compelling case why GM would never switch 105.1 from Adult Contemporary to sports. His reasoning was that GM already owned 94.7 and 101.1 and both of those rock stations attracted a male-only audience.
105.1 was doing well in the ratings at the time and it was GM’s only entity in town that marketed to a predominantly female audience. Give up that niche, he said, and the sales staff would be fighting each other over the same scraps of meat.
Essentially, Greater Media would be cannibalizing itself. Well, he was almost right. He believed that 105.1 as a sports station would take listeners away from WRIF and WCSX. They haven’t.
Detroit Sports 105.1 is the second lowest-rated FM station in Detroit — only ahead of Wayne State’s signal — and based on the innuendo regarding the next program director, I can’t see things getting much better.
Tigers and Red Wings Radio News
From the moment 105.1 flipped to sports, there was speculation that they would make a run at the Tigers/Wings radio package when negotiations for that deal started this spring.
But from what I have heard, Greater Media doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with CBS Radio for those lucrative rights.
But that doesn’t mean CBS is going to breeze through those negotiations and steal the Ilitch Family jewels. Especially when a majority of 97.1’s ratings success can be directly attributed to their ability to carry Tigers baseball for half the year.
Sources have informed me that Cumulus Media might get in the ring and attempt to swipe the city’s baseball and hockey rights away from 97.1.
The plan, I am told, would be to simulcast the games on WJR (760) and WDRQ (93.1).
As you might remember, WJR — and its 50,000-watt blowtorch signal that can sometimes be heard from as far away as TEXAS — used to carry Tigers games back in the day.
Hopefully, someone will make CBS Radio pay through the nose because more money for broadcast rights should equate to a continued high payroll for the Tigers.
I can’t say I am not rooting for Cumulus to outbid CBS, though. I’d love to see the ratings plummet for Doug Karsch, Terry Foster and others once they didn’t have that Tigers crutch.
The Worst Detroit Sports Media Personality Tournament
And then there were two ….
The Fucked-Up Four semifinals are complete. We are all set for a final matchup featuring Scott Anderson and Lynn Henning. That epic battle to crown the WORST of the worst will start Monday at 12:01am with voting lasting until 8pm.
We will have comprehensive coverage of the tournament this weekend but, in the meantime, here are the semifinal results and the updated bracket!!!!
1] Lynn Henning 71%
3] Drew Sharp 29%
2] Scott Anderson 53%
5] Ryan Ermanni 47%
