And who ended the relationship depends on which side you ask. What’s clear is that Audacy’s WTEM-AM will no longer be the flagship station for the NFL’s Washington Commanders and they will not carry the team’s games.
Audacy posted a statement to the WTEM website from morning man Kevin Sheehan who said, the team and Audacy disagreed on the value of the broadcasts and it is also very important for us as a sports talk station, even as a long-time flagship station for the team, it was important for us to continue to be able to provide honest, objective information and analysis about the Commanders on our talk shows.”
The team issued the following statement to Sports Illustrated stating it was the team’s decision to end the relationship: “We shared with Audacy last week that we would not be moving forward as partners,” the statement said. “We’re very excited about our new radio broadcast partner, who we will be announcing soon, and anticipate this being the largest radio deal in the team’s history.”
Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder owned WTEM when he still had a stable of radio stations in a company called Red Zebra. He sold WTEM to Radio One in 2018 and liquidated the company after previously selling off other stations.
Audacy picked up WTEM in 2020 from Radio One in a multi-station swap that also included stations and brands in Charlotte St. Louis.
So they’ll instead do a deal with Cumulus, who’ll put them on the former WMAL-AM. Big deal. No one wants to listen to a consistently losing team that has also given up on its heritage. Dan Snyder has destroyed a once great team.
Audacy is full of it on this one… they made a strong offer and tried twice to sweeten the pot, even punting on ALL game-day revenue to keep the team. WJFK has been bashing Washington for years, and they continued even after they bought the flagship station. The Junkies were built on bashing The Redskins and ownership, that’s what they’re known for, and that’s a smart thing bc many fans are frustrated over ownership fails. The reality is that airing games, and access to players and events is what grows and keeps an audience. Audacy doesn’t really believe that now because their AM station doesn’t air games, and pre-game team content that they’ll have more audience? That’s insane. They now have the same FM, and an AM that no longer has a terrestrial game broadcast and they are minus a lot of player and team access. This is a net-negative for Audacy. The game-day “replacement” audio of ex-players and fans complaining is not where people are going to go… maybe post-game, but not in-game. That’s what twitter is for….
You were thinking, Sportacy, as a starting point, that David Fields and Audacy know what in “heck” they’re doing, ever?
They’ve pretty much wrecked the stations here in the DFW market, where I live and listen.
Audacy, just another train-wreck of a company, as far as what they “contribute” to the vitality and survival of broadcast radio.