KIRO’s AM radio station to go all-sports.

[MikeNearMcChord]

FRANK HUGHES; [e-mail]
Published: November 14th, 2008 12:05 AM | Updated: November 14th, 2008 02:11 AM
There is finally some competition in the world of all-sports radio.

On Thursday, the owner of KIRO radio announced that it’s switching to an all-sports format on its 710-AM station beginning April 1. The station’s news-talk programming will remain on 97.3 FM.

The AM station has partnerships with both of Seattle’s professional sports teams, the Seahawks and the Mariners, after the Mariners left KOMO 1000-AM following their 2008 season. The Mariners open the 2009 season April 6.

Having both pro teams prompted the station, owned by Bonneville International, to compete with KJR 950-AM, which has been the only all-sports station in the market for 18 years. It also now has an affiliation with ESPN, and will be called 710 ESPN Seattle.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/331/story/537288.html

[maxsolomon]

1. people turn to escapist entertainment in a depression

downtrodden men will need more refuges from the real world that just the obese morons at KJR.

to bad there's not a successful local team to root for. maybe UW basketball. no, the blazers don't count. yet.

[Lagomorph]

2. Opiate for the masses.

I've listened to all the sports talk I can stand to hear. I'll pass.

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. Looking at the other side of this story though

I think it's significant that they think their talk programming will do better on FM, and I applaud them for it, though I'm not a KIRO listener. If only KPTK would take the hint and get an FM station. Two reasons I rarely listen to AM 1090. The first is the fact that they delay Randi and Malloy, but I still listen in the mornings to Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartmann. But it's usually on the stream, because AM reception completely sucks.