November 22, 2009
What's Inside:
Local radio station to switch to all-sports format
Last year, local sports fans couldn’t even listen to the University of Missouri football games on the radio.
This year, they’re going to get a wealth of local sports on the radio, thanks to a decision by Eagle Communications, which plans to merge ESPN and St. Joseph sports.
The broadcasting company is shifting the format of KSFT 1550 AM from 1960s and 70s “gold” music to all-sports. The change is planned for Aug. 25.
“It’s a great market to be able to explode the local sports programming and be able to put our stamp on what they’re doing,” said Dave Riggert, who joins the reformatted station as sports director. “I think it’s going go over really well.”
Daytime hours will include ESPN’s popular lineup, such as “Mike & Mike in the Morning,” “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” and “The Scott Van Pelt Show.”
But plans also are to amplify local content significantly. The station expects to broadcast a high school “game of the week,” focusing on the five St. Joseph high schools and Savannah. Riggert also said he plans a Saturday morning coaches’ show as well as an hour-long weekday call-in program featuring local high schools, colleges and Big 12 teams.
“This decision has been driven mostly by the fact that there is no local station covering local sports,” said Gary Exline, Eagle general manager. “We hope to fill that void.”
The other significant factor, Exline said, is the Kansas City Chiefs’ decision to move their summer training camp to Missouri Western. The Chiefs will spend about three weeks in August next year practicing on the Western campus.
“The camp next summer drove part of this decision,” Exline said. “We felt we needed to have a station devoted day-to-day at that camp.”
Riggert is new to Eagle Communications. He’s been at Salina Media Group in Salina, Kan., for nine years and is a graduate of the University of Nebraska. He was the sports director at Salina.
“The format of all sports,” Riggert said, “that’s exciting for me, and I think it’s a great opportunity.”
This story has 12 comments. Click here to join in on the discussion.
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Just out of curiousity, I know it stated that they would broadcast a "Game of the Week" of the five schools in St. Joseph, but when I was a student in a small town around here, our games were broadcasted every-so-often as well. Is anyone through Eagle Comm going to do area schools also, or just focus on St. Joseph? I have no complaints, I'm happy high school sports are getting attention, I was just curious if the other small schools in the area (i.e. KCI Conference) would get any media?
I was wondering if they could broadcast a Union Star football game, they would only be on the aie for 30 minutes, since Union Star hasnt won a game in how many years??????
They can spin this however they want, but I don't think it's a big secret that people simply don't listen to music on terrestrial radio anymore. Stations all across the country are switching to all talk/news/sports formats.
Thank God for Sirius XM Radio.
I think it's great. My family are M U Tiger fans. I for one will enjoy listening to all their games.
810 is a very hard act to follow. What will they have to offer after the ten minutes of local coverage is done?
Unfortunate decision.
Agree isack, satellite radio is about the only good viable option anymore.
I remember when some station under Eagle Radio announced that Union Star won their first game in about 2 years, we celebrated because we won a great game, and then we celebrated even more when we heard Union Star won...haha!
very good!!!
glad to get the tigers local for a change. never understood why all we got was ku&kst. it will be interesting to see how it goes.
Interesting to see how this will play out in this area. The problem of all sports radio stations is that often their listeners are fixed and listen to it no matter what. Often the station owners partner up with the national syndicated programs or in this case ESPN but when they see they get the same amount of listeners they often drop that programming and go with an all local programming. Often they do this by letting someone buy airtime for their program and that person(s) get advertisers.
I am not sure in this area national programs will do well and I do not think a lot of local will work either.
I know at least one Mizzou J-school alum who is happy the Tigers will be available on the radio. It boggled my mind that St. Joseph didn't have a Tigers Radio Network affiliate last season, especially with so many Northwest Missouri kids on the team.
Clinton Thomas
St. Joseph News-Press
Hopefully it won't be all Tigers. KU is an hour and a half closer to St. Joe than MU and a St. Joseph native (Justin Thornton) is a key piece of the KU football team.