The University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications has signed a seven year joint sales agreement with Entercom.
Effective September 1, Entercom will assume responsibility of advertising sales efforts for Sports “ESPN 850” WRUF and Country “103.7 The Gator” WRUF-FM Gainesville and will provide the school with guaranteed monthly revenue. Entercom already owns News/Talk “97.3 The Sky” WSKY-FM and AC 98.5 WKTK in the Gainesville/Ocala market.
The two UF owned stations will retain autonomy over their programming. The University’s non-commercial stations, 89.1 WUFT-FM and WUFT-TV are not involved in this deal.
It’s curious that these stations are commercial and not public radio stations. Other public radio stations pre-date the public broadcasting act and operated as educational, municipal or extension stations before becoming public radio stations and still hold commercial licenses. But there are a few exceptions. Notre Dame and Loyola University of the South come to mind. Just seems unbecoming for a university to operate commercial stations. Then again, so is big-time Division IA college sports.