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Introduction

A Brief History Of Sports Talk Radio

All About Rome

The Importance Of Being Jim Rome

The Long History Of Sports Talk Radio In Madison

How Madison Won A Tour Stop

Now The Real Work Begins: The Setup

The Big Day: Anatomy Of A Jim Rome Tour Stop

To The Winner Goes The Spoils

Click For Pix

When Jim Rome announced that he was coming to Madison, no one familiar with Madison's long history of sports talk radio should have been that surprised.

In 1976, back in the Prehistoric days of sports talk radio, Capitol Times sportswriter Mike Lucas began broadcasting a weekly sports talk show on WIBA AM. Almost 30 years later, Lucas still hosts the show which has had various different names and various different co-hosts. Lucas is often called "The Dean of Madison Sports Reporters" and for good reason. Aside from being a sportswriter and a sports talk radio host, he also does color commentary on the radio for University of Wisconsin football and basketball (along Matt LePay, who CO-hosts the radio show and does play-by-play) and had previously done radio broadcasts of Wisconsin hockey.

Lucas had started doing hockey broadcasts in 1976. That same year, he and his broadcast partner, Chuck Kaiton, started the sports talk radio show which included some call-in from listeners.

"I can't tell you how consistent we were," Lucas said. "Chuck and I used to try to get things going every week.

"I am the main root, the deepest root. I was part of the show then. I am the common denominator."

Kaiton left the show in the mid 1980s and was replaced by Bill Brophy and later, Vic Feuerherd before LePay came aboard 1994. According to Lucas, there are people who still call the show who have literally been calling since 1976. He said sometimes it feels like he has had a continually ongoing argument with some of them for all these years.

However, sports talk in Madison would not evolve further until after the birth of WFAN, New York, the nation's first all sports radio station. In the late 1980s, WIBA launched the city's first nightly sports talk show, "The Sports Review." The show was hosted by Steve "The Homer" True for a short time before he was fired and took his show to Milwaukee. Brian Posick replaced True and hosted "The Sports Review" until August, 1999.

For several years, "The Sports Review" was the only game in town, not just for sports talk, but sports in general. WIBA, with sister station WTSO, had been the long time home of Badger, Packer, Brewer and Bucks broadcasts. Billed as "Madison's only nightly sports talk radio show," the biggest change during this period for "The Sports Review" was when the 45 minute show was given an extra hour.

Then Madison's sports talk radio scene changed forever in 1994, thanks to Mark Grantin who, at that time, was program director at WHIT AM.

According to Grantin, WHIT switched to a sports format as a way to make more money. He said the station had had many formats and most recently had been simulcasting country music from FM Q106 which really wasn't very profitable because the same commercials were running on the two different stations.

"Before we became an all-sports station," Grantin said in a 2000 interview with The Mike, "we did a research project on the market. What we were looking for was to do a separate format to make more money. By far the biggest void was a sports format. There was incredible success in larger markets."

Thus the decision was made and in August of 1994, WHIT became The Team. And the rest, as they say, is history.

However, The Team had to take baby steps back in those early days. There was no local programming at that time, and WHIT, due to FCC regulations, was on the air only during daylight hours. National programming is what helped build The Team's rating base, specifically one show: "The Fabulous Sports Babe."

"She was the most popular show for a long time," Grantin said. "Madison was one of her best affiliates in terms of placing calls on her show. I think originally we built her into a cornerstone. Her's was the original show we did that with."

Grantin said that after awhile, however, the ratings for "The Fabulous Sports Babe" began to slip. It was time to make another move, again drawing from the pool of available national talent.

"There was this guy from California who had twenty affiliates," Grantin said. "We decided to take a chance on him. That's Jim Rome. He very quickly became our most popular personality. What Jim has been able to do is take us to the next level. That's why we hang our hat on him and commit to do it live."

The Team finally was able to broadcast 24 hours a day starting in October of 1998. WHIT had been purchased and was merged into a radio group which also owned WTDY 1480. WTDY had gotten an expanded band and was simulcasting on another frequency. This opened the door for expanded broadcasting hours for The Team.

"We saw the success of 1550 during the day and wanted to expand it to the night," Grantin said.

The merger also allowed The Team to draw from the pool of talent from the ESPN radio network, along with One On One and Premier which carries Jim Rome. WTDY had originally been the ESPN affiliate, before the merger.

Local programming began at The Team in August, 1997. Actually, according to Grantin, The Team had always done some local programming, but in a very limited sense. From the beginning, they ran a one hour Badger pre-game show which expanded to two hours a year later. The show, however, did not take phone calls.

Grantin said The Team moved into facilities which allowed them to become a full-fledged talk radio station. Immediately after that "Team Talk," was born, running on Fridays from 3-6 PM. In the spring of 1998, "Team Talk" started running on Mondays as well, during football and winter sports seasons.

Mike Heller and Joe Hecht originally hosted the show. Hecht left in 1998 and, after a few different hosts tried and failed, including Jennifer Briggs, Madison's first and so far only sports talk radio host, Rob Reischel became permanent co-host.

Many Madisonians might remember Heller as a sports anchor at Channel 15 during the late 1980s. Grantin said he had known Heller for a long time and that Heller had left Madison to become a sports director and anchor in Memphis.

"He'd been down there a couple years and decided to move back for family reasons," Grantin said. "I talked to him about working part-time."

According to Grantin, the jump from one to two days a week for "Team Talk" had to do with money, and in general fiscal concerns has a lot to do with the expansion or contraction of local programming.

"We added the Monday show because the Friday show was sold out," Grantin said. "I hate turning down advertising. Can Madison support five days a week, 52 weeks a year? Peter Brown and Papa Joe talking national issues in July as opposed to a local show where all they talk about is how bad the Brewers are. What is more listenable?

"This is a business and local talk is expensive. And so when I say we add local shows responsibly, that's what I mean. Quite frankly, national programming costs less."

In 1998, Madison sports talk radio final expanded. A year later it would explode.

WIBA added a second show. "Sports Central" followed "The Sports Review," Monday through Friday. That would be small potatoes. In the summer of 1998, another player entered the fray.

Craig Karmazin, son of Viacom CEO and media consolidation and conglomeration activist Mel Karmazin, purchased a group of three stations in Beaver Dam. One of the stations, WTLX FM, had a signal strong enough to reach Madison. He declared it a Madison radio station. WTLX was a mostly all-sports station, running two Monday-Friday local shows, Sports Fan Radio Network programming and pro and college football and college basketball. The only non-sports programming was Howard Stern.

According to Karmazin, the decision to enter the Madison sports talk market had to do with filling a need rather than attempting to cash in on The Team's success.

"We felt Madison was a great sports town with a great sports population," Karmazin said during a 2000 interview with The Mike, "that was being underserviced in a few important aspects, one being entertainment, which is where Howard Stern came in, and the other being coverage, a place where people can talk about their local teams, which is where 'The Madhouse' and 'The Sports Drive' come in (the station's two local shows).

"WHIT has its place, but what our station is doing is different. We don't sound like any other station."

Then, in 1999, Tim Scott came to town.

In 1976, when Lucas began his foray into sports talk radio, Scott was just a kid growing up in Melrose, Wisconsin, about 30 miles north of La Crosse. The population was 505. There were two bars, two car dealerships, a convenience store and three churches, one Catholic, one Methodist and one Lutheran. Scott's graduating class was less than 30 students.

"At seven o'clock at night you could walk down the middle of the street because there's be nobody out," Scott recalled during a 2000 interview with The Mike. "You didn't lock your doors at night. If three cars came by your house, it was a busy day. If you saw a fire truck, you'd go chase it because you knew a neighbor's house was on fire."

Scott went to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to study broadcasting. Three months later, in 1986, he got his first job at a commercial radio station, WKBH, La Crosse. The job soon became full-time and Scott realized he was maybe stretching himself a little thin. Plus, communication classes seemed redundant, so he dropped out of school and ended up getting associate degrees in business management and marketing.

The station provided Scott with the opportunity to do programming, and when the sports talk radio wave came his way, he hopped on. In 1992, two years before the birth of The Team in Madison, Scott converted an AM station at his ownership group to all-sports, utilizing the programming of the Sports Entertainment Network, the precursor to One On One Sports.

"We were one of the first affiliates," Scott said. "At the time, in 1992, sports talk was in its infancy and we were one of the first small market stations in the country to go all sports. It was unheard of for us to do it."

Eventually, Scott hosted a local show which ran one hour, but quickly jumped to two hours because of the response.

In 1998, after 12 years at the station, he moved to Madison to serve as operations manager for WTSO and WIBA AM. He did not have an immediate mandate to create an all-sports station, but knew it was something that made sense, especially considering that the two stations are the play-by-play homes of all the Wisconsin teams.

Finally, Scott was able to sell his superiors on the idea. His biggest selling point was that whatever the other guys were doing, he could do better.

In the summer of 1999, WTSO became ESPN 1070 Radio. "The Sports Review" was replaced by Steve True's show from Milwaukee. "Sports Central" was scrapped. Former "Sports Central" host, Aaron Sims joined Scott to CO-host "The Bullpen," Monday through Friday on ESPN 1070 Radio.

Knowing the station needed to carve a niche to survive, ESPN 1070 Radio placed special emphasis on local interest. Network "SportsCenters" were replaced with local versions, done by in-house talent, focusing on local stories. The station also broadcast high school sports.

Scott had a vision for Madison radio, but sometimes on "The Bullpen," he and Sims almost seemed to come off as the country bumpkins trying to outsmart the city slickers. Except, that's pretty much what happened. The localizing started getting copied by the competition, which somewhat frustrated Scott during an interview with The Mike in 2000.

"My response to those guys," Scott said, "was keep listening guys, 'cuz we're just getting started. There's a lot more things you'll learn by the time we're done."

In 2000, that remark may have come off as more than a little arrogant, but as history has shown, it was downright prophetic. After all, keep in mind this fact: even before ESPN 1070 Radio hit the air, Scott had successfully wrested ESPN from The Team.

As they say, to the winner goes the spoils, and eventually, Scott would win the Madison sports talk radio war, but as the war raged, Madison enjoyed as amazing a volume and variety of sports talk radio as any city in the country. It was an unbelievable cornucopia of sports talk radio.

From summer, 1999, through the end of 2000, Madison had two 24-hour sports stations and a third station that ran sports talk 18 hours a day. ESPN, One On One and Sports Fan Radio all had affiliates in Madison. There were four local shows. Jim Rome was heard live during the day and again at night. JT The Brick had two shows, overnights and afternoons. It was really amazing, but maybe too amazing.

Sad to say, all good things come to an end. In fall 2000, the bottom began to fall out. There are two good reasons. First, Madison was probably oversaturated with sports talk radio and something had to give. Second, national events in the broadcasting scene would impact Madison.

Fox Broadcasting had decided to go into radio. Fox purchased Premier, which syndicates Jim Rome. In the summer of 2000, Fox Radio was launched.

Sometime in 2000 (exactly when is hard to determine), Clear Channel Communications purchased Fox Broadcasting, which meant that the largest radio station ownership group in the country also owned a fledgling sports talk radio network, along with the syndication rights for the biggest names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh and Jim Rome.

In 2000, Clear Channel purchased the radio group which owns WIBA and ESPN 1070. The affect would be felt quickly.

In late summer of 2000, a change was noticed at The Team. "The Jungle" was no longer being rebroadcast at night. Instead, Fox Radio programming followed Papa Joe Chevalier.

According to Paul Braun, who replaced Mark Grantin as program director for The Team, the change was actually an effort to try to keep Rome. Braun hoped that carrying some Fox programming might appease Clear Channel and allow Rome to stay with The Team. This was critical because Rome was a strong ratings anchor for The Team. Also, The Jungle provided a strong counterweight to live sporting events broadcast on WIBA and ESPN 1070.

Unfortunately, appeasement worked about as well for The Team as it did for Neville Chamberlain. Rome's contract with The Team expired February 2, 2001. The contract was not renewed, and Rome moved to ESPN 1070. Negotiations were attempted, but serious headway was never really made.

The Team responded by attempting to go more local. "Team Talk" went from two to five days a week in November, 2000. The Team substituted network sports news breaks with local sports news breaks. Also, as expected, Fox Radio was removed from The Team, replaced with Sporting News Radio which then was the only network programming broadcast by The Team.

Meanwhile, changes were in the works at WTLX. Though subtle at first, it would become clear that WTLX was veering away from sports. It's hard to tell exactly when it happened, but at some time in the winter of 2001, it seemed that the hosts of WTLX's two local shows were talking about sports less than they had. Granted, neither "Madcity Middays" nor "The Sports Drive" ever talked 100 percent sports, but clearly something had changed.

Station management as much as admitted this when "The Sports Drive" was renamed "Steve and Craig" early in 2000. On the station's website bulletin board, "Madcity Middays" CO-host Sean Thompson actually stated that management had instructed hosts to de-emphasize sports.

All this, however, was small potatoes compared to the bomb that dropped in April, 2000.

On Thursday, April 5 at approximately 3:30 PM, without warning, Sports Fan Radio Network sent a fax to WTLX and all other affiliates explaining that all programming, other than the afternoon and overnight versions of "The Brickhouse" and the evening show with Scott Ferrall would be discontinued.

WTLX replaced Sports Fan Radio weekend and overnight programming with CNN News.

The downsizing of Sports Fan Radio occurred due to financial problems suffered by parent company, Winstar Communications. The same day WTLX received the infamous fax, Winstar bayed off about 2000 employees.

Winstar was primarily an Internet and broadband based company, and like many Internet companies, its stock had taken a beating. In the previous 12 months, Winstar's stock had dropped from an all-time high of about $45 per share to an all-time low of $.21.

A class action lawsuit had been filed against Winstar. The plaintiffs alleged that Winstar had misrepresented the financial health of the company to investors and would-be investors.

A cash-strapped Winstar had been searching for a buyer and/or investor to infuse the company with much-needed capital. One rumored buyer publicly stated that it had no intention of purchasing Winstar.

And apparently, Winstar needed the cash. On April 16, Winstar announced that it would be unable to pay off a debt that it had incurred with Lucent. Winstar also stated it may file Chapter 11 reorganization in the near future.

Winstar's problems meant doom for JT The Brick in Madison. Less than two months later, Winstar pulled the plug on "The Brickhouse." The show would resurface in the fall on Fox Radio, but WTLX was unable to make a deal with Fox to carry "The Brickhouse." Apparently, Fox wanted WTLX to carry more of its programming than just that one show.

"The Mitch Albom" show replaced "The Brickhouse" in the afternoon. This represented a point of departure away from sports for WTLX. Albom is a sportswriter and does a sports talk radio show. However, his weekday afternoon show is straight talk, not sports talk.

Another point of departure came during the summer when "Madcity Middays" was canceled and replaced with "The Don and Mike Show," which is also a straight talk show.

Meanwhile, back on Ski Lane, The Team prepared itself to make a last stand. The University of Wisconsin had solicited for bids for one vendor to handle all Badger sports broadcasts. While it would seem that WIBA and ESPN 1070 had the inside track through Learfield Sports and the stations' long-standing relationship with the University, The Team had acquired a new and powerful ally.

One On One Sports had been been purchased by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen late in 2000. Allen had also purchased The Sporting News. The radio network merged with the newspaper and was renamed Sporting News Radio.

Sporting News Radio put in a bid to the University of Wisconsin, but lost out to Learfield. Thus ended the last battle of the Madison sports talk radio war. Scott, as the last program director left standing, won and secured a preeminent position for WIBA and ESPN 1070. He did it by snaring Rome when his show came available and shepherding Learfield through the bidding process.

Meanwhile, The Team was dead. WHIT changed its format to pop standards and became WTUX. WTDY scooped up what was left of The Team and gave "Team Talk" a time slot, shoehorning the show between straight talk, weeknights 6 to 8 PM. WTDY Program Director John "Sly" Sylvester wasted no time putting his own stamp on the show. Local sportswriters Vic Feuerherd and Tom Oates were replaced with Mike Heller and Travis Fox. Quickly, Fox was canned and replaced with Casey James. James left in 2003 and was replaced by Joe Miller, the original host of "Sports Central" back in 1998 before he was canned and replaced by Sims.

Inexplicably, Heller disappeared from "Team Talk," in 2003, leaving Miller as sole host. One can only guess that Heller's pricetag was more than Sly was willing to pay.

Scott, however, was just getting started. When The Jungle moved to ESPN 1070 from The Team, that was, at that time, the biggest story in the history of Madison sports talk radio. Thanks to Scott, Jim Rome, on December 7, 2002, again provided the biggest story in Madison sports talk radio history when he came to Madison for a Tour Stop. It is likely that there will never be a bigger event in Madison sports talk radio history.

Roughly 10,000 Jim Rome fans swarmed the Coliseum at the Alliant Energy Center. They came from all over Wisconsin, all over the Midwest and, in fact, all over the country. Throughout the fall of 2002, Madison lorded over Jim Rome's Jungle and afterwards, continued to bask in the publicity of an event that was everything Rome had hoped it would be and more.

Scott was not finished. Following the success of the Madison Tour Stop and the subsequent increase in interest from potential sponsors, Scott teamed up with Posick for a morning show. According to Scott, adding a local morning show was something that had always been in the master plan for ESPN 1070 Radio. The show was discontinued a few months later, but not due to any problems with attracting sponsors.

Meanwhile, local programming was expanded in the evening as well. Sims was given his own show, simply called "The Show." However, "The Show" was not to last long. Sims left Clear Channel, according to Scott, though the Wisconsin State Journal said he had been fired. Whatever the case, a new host was needed for "The Bullpen."

On the air, Scott teased the audience with the pronouncement that the announcement for a new host of "The Bullpen" would be big. And he was right; the announcement was big and surprising as well. Midway through 2003, the new host of "The Bullpen" was none other than Mike Heller, formerly of the competition, The Team.

The Jim Rome Tour Stop may have had yet another ripple effect on sports talk radio in Madison. It is impossible to quantify, but it would seem reasonable that if the event increased sponsor interest for ESPN 1070, that interest could possibly have extended to other stations as well.

Midway through 2003, WTLX, which had abandoned sports talk radio, returned to the genre. The station dropped Howard Stern and replaced him with "Bob and Brian" out of Milwaukee. They feature a "guy talk" format and they sometimes talk sports. Also, WTLX introduced two local sports talk shows and started carrying Sporting News Radio broadcasts during overnights, as well as Papa Joe Chevalier on weekday evenings.