Every year, the National Association of Broadcasters hold the Marconi Awards to honor the best in radio. On Thursday night in Philadelphia, WGR – Sports Radio 550 won the award for Sports Station of the Year.
Mind of Joe
Congrats to WGR for winning. However I have to digress. WGR more than likely won this award because their ratings are near the top of the country, even though the Buffalo market is small and continues to be an untapped sports media market with very little competition. Lets not forget only 5 years ago WGR was losing the ratings war to a bankrupt WNSA radio station with a skeleton crew at their disposal.
The high ratings can be misleading because the Buffalo market is so small. For Example, if WGR gets a rating of 7.8 in Buffalo and WFAN gets a 6.0 in NYC, WGR may have a higher percentage of local listeners, but WFAN has more listeners because it goes out to all of NYC.
I’ve listen to my fair share of sports radio, especially in NYC. And the knowledge of stations like WFAN and ESPN 1050, blows away WGR because they can talk about any team and any sport that isn’t in NYC. In other words, you don’t have to worry about tuning in and hearing America Idol recaps. The problem for those stations is they have stiff competition with each other and regional TV sports channels, and the rating suffers from that. WGR competes with 103.3 The Edge. Not exactly the YES Network.
Now am I being a hater? Yes. WGR should be happy with winning this award. But all I’m saying is WGR needs competition in the Buffalo area. If they don’t, they will be plugging the nonsense of Idol recaps and kicking people out of the Sex hall of fame.
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