Update 8/29: 102.5 The Game debuted this morning at 6:00am.
The full lineup as of now includes “The First Quarter” with Darren McFarland and Brad Hopkins from 6am to 10am, Joe Dubin from 1pm to 3pm, Aaron Solomon from 3pm to 6pm, and the syndicated Robert Wuhl at night. The station is currently airing replays of Nashville Predators games from last season in the 10am to 1pm slot until it finds a temporary fill-in. On November 7, WPRT will assume the ESPN Radio affiliation in Nashville and will air Mike & Mike on delay in middays.
Listen to the launch of 102.5 The Game at FormatChange.com.
Update 8/15: Cromwell confirms WPRT will flip to sports as “102.5 The Game” in the next few weeks.
Darren McFarland and former Tennessee Titan Brad Hopkins, who had been hosting middays on 560 WNSR will move to The Game for mornings. McFarland is also a veteran of Citadel Sports “104.5 The Zone” WGFX in Nashville.
Cromwell has acted quickly to remove any social media presence of The Party as its Facebook and Twitter accounts have already been removed.
Update 7/27: Add a few more domains to Cromwell’s registrations. Fiesta1025.com, Talk1025.com, 1025CoolGold.com, 1025TheHeat.com, and 1025TheOldies.com were all registered yesterday. These look like they fit the “Let’s register more domains to throw them off the scent because our first batch was found” strategy.
Original Report 7/24: The Cromwell Group looks ready to bring a second FM Sports station back to Nashville.
Registrations were made by Cromwell head Bud Walters on July 22 for Game1025.com, 1025TheGame.com, and TheGame1025.com for what is currently Hot AC “102.5 The Party” WPRT-FM. Such as move would place the station in direct competition with Citadel’s (soon to be Cumulus) “104.5 The Zone” WGFX.
An important building block for a sports station already exists in the Cromwell cluster. Active Rock “102.9 The Buzz” WBUZ serves as flagship station to the NHL’s Nashville Predators. Nashville had a second FM Sports station from 2004-2009 on Cumulus’ “106.7 The Fan” WNFN.
102.5 The Party dropped down to a 1.2 in the most recent monthly.
102.5 WPRT-FM is still Hot AC as of early Sunday a.m. CDT, but I’m hearing plenty of rumblings of it flipping to sports soon. The RDS on my desktop Accurian HD radio (in my office just southeast of Nashville) just says “HD”, though I don’t think that’s anything new.
104.5 the Zone (WGFX) is a secondary ESPN affiliate, but I could see Cromwell plugging in the ESPN Radio lineup as a primary affiliate. Hearing Chris Vernon from Memphis or Paul Finebaum from Birmingham piped in might be interesting as well, not to mention what might happen with local talent if cuts are made at WGFX once the Cumulus purchase of Citadel closes.