Should App Add Virginia Beach, Richmond and Roanoke Stations

[GoApps70]

Should App State pick up these Roanoke, Virginia Beach, and Richmond stations?
Or drop some or all we have?
The following was an announcement from a couple of days ago by James Madison.

Schools Drops All But One Flagship Station

Posted: July 9, 2014

By MATT JONES

HARRISONBURG —On Saturdays this fall, fans in Richmond, Roanoke and Virginia Beach will not be able to find James Madison football games on the airwaves, at least the old-fashioned way.

JMU last week announced that it will focus on mobile access to its sports broadcasts, eliminating all but one radio affiliate. The Dukes will keep their flagship station, WSVA-AM550 and WHBG-AM 1360 in Harrisonburg, as the lone over-the-air presence.

The decision was largely monetary. Because Madison paid affiliates to carry the Dukes, it will be able to reallocate a “significant” amount of money to other projects, JMU deputy athletics director Geoff Polglase said Tuesday.

“While we liked having the affiliates, we are meeting the needs of all listeners in so many different ways that we were no longer going to be able to have the affiliates as a luxury,” he said. “We chose to eliminate them so we could redirect those dollars.”

That money – JMU paid six figures last year to radio affiliates to broadcast football and basketball games, Polglase said – will be redistributed to other projects. Exactly how much money Madison paid radio stations was not available Tuesday. Polglase said he could not provide the figure, and athletic director Jeff Bourne did not immediately return an email.

Polglase said JMU has already shifted some of the money it previously paid to affiliates to a service that allows fans to send text messages to the video board at football games.

“Are we saving money on what we were spending on radio? Absolutely,” Polglase said. “We’ve redirected those dollars a number of ways to enhance some things we’ve been doing over the years. In the end, we’re not saving money. … We’re just not spending it all on radio anymore.”

Jon Shomby – the operations manager for MaxMedia of Hampton Roads, which includes former Madison radio affiliate ESPN 94.1 – said he was not surprised by JMU’s decision to not renew the contract. He was contacted early last week and learned that the Dukes would no longer offer their games.

“We had a long relationship with them,” said Shomby, who noted that 94.1 and previously 1310-AM had been JMU affiliates for at least the past 12 years. “In this day and age in the college football sphere, things change because of money. I would’ve loved to have them back, but I totally understand what they’re doing.”

94.1 also broadcasts Old Dominion University football games as well as the Norfolk Tides, the Triple-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. Shomby said the ratings for JMU football games were “fair,” although he admitted that ratings for play-by-play broadcasts are often tough to determine.

“It was good revenue for us,” Shomby said. “But we’ve got to figure out some other way to make that up, and that’s our problem, not theirs. I always felt there was a consistent demand for the product. The demand for JMU football was there; we felt it.”

Station managers for the other two former affiliates – WREJ-AM 1540 in Richmond and FOX 910 in Roanoke – could not be reached for comment.

JMU hopes its new media strategy, one that focuses more on mobile technologies, can keep existing listeners and gain new ones.

Polglase said it will help that all JMU audio and video broadcasts will now be offered for free via the school’s website (through computer, tablet and smartphones). Previously, users had to purchase a season audio pass for $4.99 on iPhone or Android or a video pass for $9.99 through JMU’s iPad app. Additional audio broadcasts will be available for free through third party apps like TuneIn Radio and WSVA’s website.

“We think radio here locally is very important,” Polglase said. “We have a tremendous relationship with WSVA. We think they have tremendous value to us and not only in the play-by-play they provide. Anytime we’ve been thinking about this, there has never been a question that WSVA was a key player and something that we wanted to maintain.”

WSVA general manager Susanne Myers said the station is excited entering its 39th year as the flagship station for the Dukes. She said interest is as high as ever for JMU sports on the station.

“We get a lot of calls about it and we hear about it in the marketplace and we don’t have a struggle selling advertising,” Myers said. “It’s as strong as it’s ever been. There’s just more interest in JMU in the last few years.”

WSVA’s radio feed – with the long-time Voice of the Dukes, Mike Schikman – will be available on-line.

Cutting out radio affiliates, Polglase said, was an option JMU had been considering for several years.

“If the affiliates weren’t charging us, then I don’t think we’d be at this point,” said Poglase, who heads an external operations group of 10 people from different departments that make decisions on media. “But they have a business to run. At the end of the day we made a decision based on business but also because we think we can improve what we’re doing in a variety of ways that makes the experiences for our athletes and fans that much better.”

With a recently redesigned website powered by SIDEARM Sports and a new partnership with streaming service Stretch Internet, Polglase said that Madison will be able to stream more content cheaper, especially because it is no longer doing the streaming in-house. He said Stretch Internet makes it “extremely affordable” to stream events, meaning more MadiZone HD Sportsnet broadcasts are planned for JMU’s website.

“The fact that eliminating the cost of actually streaming it is a major benefit for us,” Polglase said

[WVAPPeer]

Yes ---

[AppinVA]

AppinVA says YES! Though it's not really pratical.

[asu66]

JMU is looney-tunes pure and simple!

Add stations, yes! Drop stations, hello no! Wish we could add Sirius-XM.

[GoApps70]

If us going FBS might make them lower priced to pick up it might be great adds.
Especially if low price from stations being desperate this year for programming and a little money.
We never have recruited well or hard in Virginia, but are only a few miles from Virginia.
Lot of coaches say best retained recruits come from within 4 hours of school.
Virginia only had two FBS schools before ODU just became FBS transitional like App.
NC has @ 9.5 million and Virginia 8 million population.
Might not be what administration wants to do, but thought I would point it out to them
as a possibility. Especially if radio stations would do it for a year to see if we get results.

[AppfaninCAALand]

As a Richmonder, I'd love to listen to App on the local radio. But I can also listen on TuneIn or through the school's site so I'd say its probably a waste of money. Though I do think I read Richmond's App Alum base is something like fifth largest outside NC, and see App stickers on the roadway at least once a week, so it wouldn't be an aweful idea. Maybe if we could get them cheap? If shopping for more affiliates, I'd look to Atlanta, Charleston, and Washington before Virginia

[Saint3333]

Three letters, ODU.

[GoApps70]

ODU would be a prime reason to expand into Virginia.
Fighting fire with fire. Plus not near as much competition now.
Our fans who have to work on Saturday, like people with kids games,
would probably benefit most, especially while driving and whole family
could listen and grow up fans.

Georgia would be a good place to have radio stations also.
Especially with so many recruits from there.
Georgia Southern has been expanding their radio network.
Here are 2 pages of radio stations GaSo broadcasts from in Georgia.

http://www.freqseek.com/ncaa/socon/geor ... twork.aspx

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

So we pay radio stations to air our games like JMU does or did? Basically like a infomercial. Do we keep all the ad revenue or split the difference or pay just enough so the stations sell enough add space to make themselves happy? Would having higher ratings help App in a very real $ way.

Is this common at all levels of college sports? To be honest I assumed the radio stations paid us a small amount of money to carry our games and then sold their own ads to cover their air-time. Maybe we did some ad sharing much like network TV does.

I am asking for two reasons, one reason I have been asked to not say much about, so you might know what I am getting at.

[AppinVA]

I thought it was at no cost to either party, with half of the spots being network spots, and the other half local.

[GoApps70]

Would imagine it depends on the school and team. How much ad sales they figure they can make
off a particular school's broadcast. Maybe they would pay us.

[Maddog1956]

It's a waste of money to pay any radio to carry the game. If there is demand they would pay us and if there is no demand why pay someone to carry us. Push free internet access and you reach the people you want to reach at a very small cost. The chance that anyone is going to turn to a Va station (or almost any station) randomly and hear an App game and become a fan/recruit is slim to none.

Spent the money to push out more free internet content and use it to make money on ads, etc.

[ASUMountaineer]

I'd rather use the money we'd pay radio stations to carry our games to get a better provider than Neulion, to be honest. Additionally, if we have the money to pay radio stations to carry our broadcasts, we should make video streaming on AppStateTV free for Yosef Club members.

[GoApps70]

Would think it could be a huge fan booster to make AppState.TV free.
If advertised would help hook some new fans and donors would think.

[bcoach]

Yes

[BeauFoster]

This looks like a waste of money to me. I vote no