The Strange Saga of Chicago Sports Webio

You may have seen ads on RadioInsight over the past few months for ChicagoSportsWebio.com, the internet sports talker founded by former WSCR morning host Mike North and David Hernandez. Early last week rumors started swirling that the webcaster would soon add a traditional AM simulcast. By Friday, North, his wife, and Jeff Schwartz another partner in the site were fired by Hernandez after North questioned why paychecks were bouncing.

The story got stranger over the weekend as the FBI and SEC announced that Hernandez had prior convictions and was under a criminal investigation that led to the discovery that Hernandez was running a Ponzi scheme. As of this writing he is reportedly missing and ChicagoSportsWebio will shut down later today, while North’s morning show will continue its TV simulcast on Comcast Sportsnet Chicago for now. ChicagolandRadioAndMedia.com and Ed Sherman of Crain’s Chicago Business have been all over the story.

Disclaimer: The advertisements for ChicagoSportsWebio.com on RadioInsight and its affiliates were purchased via Google AdSense and not directly to the site.

Where’s The Vertical Integration CBS?

Earlier this week CBS announced that its CSTV network would be rebranded as “CBS College Sports”. This follows up on last years rebranding of Sportsline.com as CBSSports.com. One thing seems to be missing from this picture. Where’s the radio integration?

ESPN, Fox Sports, and Sporting News promote their radio networks and personalities heavily on their sites. Sports Illustrated is integrating Dan Patrick’s program into its FanNation.com. However, a glance at CBSSports.com features nothing from any of CBS’ radio portfolio. And with the exception of a score ticker on a couple sites, there is no mention of CBSSports.com anywhere on these stations sites

CBS has nine all-sports stations covering many Major League markets, along with a few sports programs on other market programs? There’s no money to be made from a section on CBSSports.com featuring the content of WFAN’s Mike & The Mad Dog, WSCR’s Mike North, WJFK’s Junkies, WFNZ’s Mark Packer, and that doesn’t even mention the fanaticism of Philadelphia’s WIP.

Many of these stations have begun personality blogs and offering podcasts of segments of their shows online, wouldn’t a national repository of this content bring more eyes and ears to this content and potentially expose more listeners to these stations and more viewers to CBSSports.com? Seems like an easy piece of vertical integration between two divisions of one company.

New York Shuffle

Not since 1996 has there been a shakeup in New York City radio much like we’ve seen so far in 2008. New PD’s have been installed at WBLS, WLTW, WWPR, and WRKS. The PD’s at WXRK, WCBS, and WWFS have been let go with no replacements named as of yet. The GM of WXRK resigned. WKTU and WCAA have new morning shows. WQCD flipped. A Low-powered TV signal will debut as a full-fledged radio station this week with some well-known names in the market.

In 1996, the format changes at WAXQ, WPAT, and WYNY were brought on by station sales as consolidation took hold. Now, we’re seeing the effects of consolidation’s wrath. Having to answer to stockholders more than listeners as radio became big business, costs were cut. The days of one staff per station have given way to one person having duties at as many as 6 stations just in New York along with responsibilities elsewhere in the country. WWPR’s new Program Director, Cadillac Jack is also Operations Manager of Clear Channel’s Boston stations. How is that any way to focus attention on building and maintaining a station, er. “brand”.

Bonneville Launches Seattle News/Blog Site

Leveraging the power of the internet for broadcast radio’s use is something that the industry has been fighting for years. While the majority of commercial radio seemingly fears what the internet means to its way of life, a select few are finding ways to integrate on-air content with online content.

One such example is Bonneville’s Seattle cluster, which has merged the sites of News/Talk 710 KIRO, Talk 770 KTTH, and Classic Hits 97.3 KBSG into one site located at MyNorthwest.com. MyNorthwest has built a blog network out of the local on-air hosts of the stations, but the best feature may be the integration of KIRO’s on-air news reports into local headlines. They are also making archives of their talk shows available in MP3 form. It’s great to see a radio station (or in this case group of stations) make their content available so freely.

Unfortunately, It looks as though there may be a financial restructuring at the stations to bring the increased web staff onboard, as a number of staffers at KIRO were laid-off today.

Day 1

One of my goals with the new design is to open the door to what’s going on behind the scenes at RadioInsight. That said, the first full day of the new design went off pretty well. The server is holding up even better than I expected as there hasn’t been any bumps at all.

I was asked whether there was a way to view to posts on the site the old way, with all categories mixed together. If you’d like you can do so by going to http://radioinsight.com/2008/ as that will list all posts made this year.

Thank you to the person who discovered us using Mandy Moore’s Search Engine. I hope you found the information on “99.7 The Boulevard” that you were looking for.

Happy Belated Trogday!

And We’re Off…

Welcome to the new RadioInsight.com. What you are seeing on this page is the result of almost three years of planning, learning, and building. There were many obstacles along the way, including having to start a new website from scratch along the way. Plenty of software changes and enhancements have certainly made life easier.

Here on the front page you’ll see all of our headlines in the left column. The middle column features excerpts of all of our recent NetGnome entries and our new Blogs section. The right column features our Broadcast Buzz and Blogger Buzz as well as the recent entries on the boards. At the top you can see our new board navigation menus as well.

This is just the beginning of what we have planned. In the next few months you will see additional content including a revamped discussion board system, audio programming, and some other surprises.

Thank you for your continued support of RadioInsight.com