Thanks for reminding me about Gresh…I need to see if we’re paying for enough Nielsen granularity at RIPR to see how well Gresh is doing on 630/99.7. I’d like to know: it seemed like a smart move at the time. There’s a real lack of sports-talk that is local to Rhode Island, so in theory it could do well. The rub is that both WEEI (via WVEI-FM) and The Sports Hub (just via 98.5) cover a lot of RI pretty well and have far, far more resources to deliver a better overall sports-talk product. The only advantage Gresh has is that he’s in Rhode Island.
I have no idea if that’s really enough of an advantage. Rhode Island no longer has any professional sports (the PawSox weren’t all that big a draw before, and most of the state is taking a “you’re dead to me” attitude towards them now, even though they’re still here for two more seasons). For the most part Rhode Islanders care about Boston sports overall (Sawx, Pats, Broons and Celtics) and there’s a good-sized NY Giants contingent here from the days before the Pats existed causing family dynasties of fandom towards the Giants. There’s very little interest in URI sports. There’s SOME in the PC basketball games, maybe the hockey, but not a whole lot.
Oh yeah, I guess there is a pro team: the P-Bruins minor league hockey about whom literally nobody cares. Which is a shame, they’re a good team, usually.
So there isn’t the caring about local teams that a local guy could capitalize on. Still, he’s local, and Rhode Islanders are famously provincial. So maybe it works?
