Following CBS’ announcement yesterday that venerable rock station WBCN would be going off-the-air in a station juggle to bring Boston an all-sports FM station, the company also announced that Washington DC’s WJFK-FM would be switching to all-sports on Monday.
WJFK came into existence in 1988 as the second station to simulcast Howard Stern’s New York based radio show. The first station to simulcast Stern’s WXRK-FM broadcast was Philadelphia’s WYSP-FM. Stern’s morning show was also broadcast on WBCN beginning in the late 1990s, albeit tape delayed to air in the evening.
Since Stern’s departure for satellite radio in 2006, the stations in the former Infinity Broadcasting – now CBS – stable of Stern affiliates have been languishing with poor ratings. WYSP has followed the same pattern, having tested and failed at a number of formats before ultimately returning to classic rock in August of last year.
Philadelphia Eagles’ games are currently broadcast on WYSP.
CBS also owns Philadelphia’s sports-talk leader WIP-AM, which has been all-sports since 1987. The station has seen minimal listener erosion due to competition from ESPN Radio on 950 WPEN-AM.
The question is whether CBS would want to take a chance on having to move listeners from the frequency they’ve been comfortable with for over 20-years in order to return WYSP to viability. Given their actions in other smaller markets, it seems that’s a risk they’re willing to take to protect their FM properties.
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Tagged
Philadelphia, Radio, Sports, WBCN-FM, WIP-AM, WJFK-FM, WPEN-AM, WYSP-FM13 Responses to “Another CBS FM Station Goes All Sports – Is WYSP Next?”
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WYSP deserves to go belly up —
Could never stand that station after it sent juvenile muckraker Howard Stern out to dog and harass John DeBella back in the 1980s, and ultimately destroyed what up until then was one of the best rock ‘n roll radio lineups in the nation.
The sweet irony is that Stern is now a nobody on ?? satellite something or other and DeBella is back pumping out some of the best music of all time at MGK.
I believe we’ve found an area of disagreement.
I’d been listening to Stern for 4 years before he hit Philadelphia. All the “popular kids” in high school were into the prepackaged Zoo formula (invented and actually done better by Scott Shannon first in FL and then in NYC) but there were a group of us discovering this AM DJ from New York. From the day Stern hit Philadelphia, DeBella didn’t stand a chance even if Stern didn’t mention him at all.
I’m no longer the fan I once was, but the guy revolutionized radio and left on top. And FM radio has been screwed ever since.
Yeah, my son liked Stern too. (he finally outgrew him)
I listened to Stern also back when he first came on here in Philly.
But after a year, it was just repeats of the same thing: butt bongo, tacky jokes about big boobs, size of weiner jokes, and other stuff geared toward 15-year-old males just getting their groove on.
The Morning Zoo’s might have been canned, but Stern plays to the darker perved side of humanity…. which everybody finds funny in some way …. but not incessantly.
I remember hearing that Stern made some sort of joke out of DeBella’s wife committing suicide: and for me, that was it.
Couldn’t stand him after that.
Actually, Stern made no jokes about DeBella’s wife’s suicide. She’d been on the show. He was upset about it. He did make plenty of jokes about their divorce, though. And then they had a parade over it. DeBella said some pretty classless things about Stern, too, before Stern even arrived in Philly.
What the show became after the movie came out, and especially after Stern’s own divorce, was what you describe. But from 84-98 or so it was consistently topical and edgy and funny. The prurient aspects were never the focus, at least not for the people I knew. It think it had more to do with how we listened to it (like people watch TV shows) rather than it just being something you catch off and on while you’re driving. I taped every day so I could listen w/out commercials. From about 88-96 I was pretty hard core. There were few days when I missed even a few minutes.
(from Philadelphia Weekly, the history of John DeBella)
“When Stern found out that DeBella’s marriage was on the rocks, he came back and staged a “divorce party” on Independence Mall near where WMMR had moved. “Howard played very dirty with John,” says Pierre Robert.
“I remember a flatbed truck pulling up in front of the station loaded with drunk guys yelling, ‘I fucked your wife! I fucked your wife!’.”
“Capitalizing on DeBella’s crumbling marriage, Stern paid DeBella’s wife $5,000 to appear on his show and badmouth her husband. She even went on a faux date with Captain Janks, a North Wales shipping clerk and a devout Stern fan who made it his personal mission to torment DeBella at public appearances and then phone into Stern the next day detailing the verbal harassment he had unleashed on the Zookeeper.”
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http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/john_debella_is_not_an_asshole_anymore-38357794.html?page=4&comments=1&showAll=
Going after someones’ wife is waaaaay out of line, even for someone like Stern.
Wow – you’re on a tear. Not sure how a 20 year old media feud became such a hot-button issue.
Stern gave her $5000, a nice meal and a venue to tell her side? What an asshole! Not sure how that’s “going after” his wife. Better question is why someone would need to do a $5000 interview right after divorcing a multi-millionaire. Couldn’t be that DeBella screwed her, could it? I tend to judge people based on their actions in life as opposed to what they do as part of a show. Mark Drucker, when he was alive, told some pretty compelling stories about DeBella. Being an asshole on the air is one thing. How DeBella treated people off the air is worse.
And I’m sure that, after last fall especially, blaming someone for things said in the audience of an appearance is not valid.
Yeah, but going after (Palin’s) kids or family is as smarmy and low today as it was 20 years ago.
DeBella’s wife was disturbed, and everybody at the time knew it. She had already had a nervous breakdown. It was in the news. Stern took advantage of an obviously sick woman.
As someone who was semi-partially in the public eye for part of my life a, I guess I’m sensitive to incidents when people attack family.
I met DeBella a few times, and he was fine.
In fact I ran into him at the Bensalem (Pennsylvania State Fair at the racetrack) about 15 years ago, around the time all that was happening, and he was very polite and cordial. He took the time to say hi, and was talking with fans, just like normal.
Perhaps it is the way one approaches famous people that determines how they respond.
As for DeBella being an “a-hole” to fans, don’t believe everything you read in the news.
I never said DeBella was an asshole to fans. He had that part down. He was an asshole to those working with – and specifically for – him according to the late Mark Drucker. Kicking around Coke machines because he was pissed. Unloading on everyone as it all came crashing down.
I really don’t know why this has turned into such an issue here. Even DeBella has put it all behind him.
Actually, I think the reason I liked DeBella is because going back to the 1980s and 90s, he was very supportive of the conservative/Reagan message.
He constantly pointed out the folly of the left and the wimpy candidates of the Democrats and openly supported conservatives.
And for that it seemed he got a lot of gutter snipe derision from fellow rockers and from the Philly media.