radio home for Salt Lake's new hockey team

[oldiesfunhouse]

I guess it's not officially official, but it sounds like a done deal that The Arizona Coyotes hockey team will be moving to Salt Lake with a different name. My question is, which station will be the flagship for this new team's radio broadcasts? Since Ryan Smith, the owner, already has the arrangement with Bonneville, I would imagine that one of their stations seems like the logical choice. The problem is, the zone (1280 and 97.5) already have the Jazz, the Bees, RSL, and the Utah State Aggies. Should the Jazz or the new hockey team go deep into the playoffs (it could happen again, LOL), there are going to be nights when any and all of these teams might have overlap. There are other markets where a team's flagship is, otherwise, an all music station, and the Weber State Wildcats are doing that on the Wave in our market. I'm wondering how much of a stretch you all think it would be for the new hockey team to be heard on 103.5 the Arrow, or possibly FM 100.3. I think the Arrow would be a better fit. I know all we can do is speculate right now and so perhaps I'm jumping the gun by posting this now, but I am curious what everyone's thoughts are. Obviously 700 would be an option too but there would definitely be overlap with the Utes and, when Ryan Smith took over, he took RSL off of 700. Thoughts?

[amanuensis]

I think it might depend on what happens to the Grizzlies. Will they stay in Utah, perhaps as the minor league affiliate of the new team? If they were to relocate elsewhere, then ESPN 700 might be hungry for games to replace the Grizzlies.

I'm sure Ryan Smith has preferences for who does the radio, but I assume he would go with 700 if they gave him more money than other stations offered.

[CAwasinNJ]

Even though Bonneville manages the Zone stations, Smith still owns them. It seems to me like pretty much a foregone conclusion that the team would end up on a co-owned station.

I'll take your word on what teams have PBP there. Even so, it would be possible to use only KZNS AM/FM and KSL AM/FM and cover four teams. The biggest challenge I see would be making sure splitting KSL doesn't go over the limit for what they can do and still qualify for total line reporting with Nielsen. They can split for up to 33.5 hours per 4 week ratings period.

I suspect the Grizzlies will relocate, but I haven't heard anyone even mention them other than in association with what name the new team will have. (I think the new team should be called the Freezz, which would be consistent with the Jazz and the now-gone Starzz, but that trademark might not be available.)

Much less clear cut would be where the TV rights go. Smith has a TV relationship with Sinclair to air Jazz games on KJZZ and a management agreement with Bonneville to run his radio stations, and the soon-to-be-former Arizona Coyotes have had an agreement with a Scripps station in Phoenix that exported those games to their Salt Lake sister stations.

[oldiesfunhouse]

I wasn't aware the Grizzlies were on 700. I thought their games had gone to YouTube exclusively. Also, what is PBP? I'm guessing one of the p's stands for priority but that's an abbreviation I hadn't heard.

[CAwasinNJ]

I can't find anything on the ESPN 700 website that says the Grizzlies currently have their games on 700. The last sponsorship promotion between them was two years ago.

PBP is a common abbreviation for Play By Play.

Apparently the new team won't have a name for a while. I also can't find anything about who the radio partner will be, but we do know where they will be on TV. According to Fox 13 all of the games will be on Utah 16. (Even nationally broadcast ones?) This past season they were on both 16 and 13.2, sharing with the Golden Knights.

[oldiesfunhouse]

Play-by-play ... I really should have known that. Thank you. Years ago, the Grizzlies were on 860. That's a pretty weak signal at night, though, so I don't know if that would be a good choice. 570 or 106.7 might be an option. 106.7 was airing the Denver Broncos last year. Since iHeart doesn't currently have a sports station in our market, there wouldn't be any "in-house" people to do the pre and post game shows--or the PBP for that matter. I wonder who did radio PBP for the Arizona Coyotes and if he/they might relocate to Salt Lake.

[amanuensis]

It appears that the page I was looking at that said ESPN 700 was the home of the Grizzlies is a stale page from several years ago. So it seems that there was no play-by-play radio coverage of them this last season. Nothing on the Grizzlies website about how to watch or how to tune in. The entire focus of their site is to drive in-person attendance at games.

I did find an article on the KSL radio site stating that the Grizzlies are not moving. kslnewsradio.com/2095231/what-happens-to-the-grizzlies-if-nhl-comes-to-utah/

[CAwasinNJ]

There's a huge difference between 17 games mostly on Sunday afternoons and 82 games mostly at night. Also, NFL radio games get huge ratings and the ratings hockey on the radio will get is TBA. I'm not saying it's impossible that iHeart could get the games, just highly unlikely.

For the last several years the Coyotes have been on Bonneville's sports stations in Phoenix. That makes keeping them on a Bonneville managed or owned property a little more likely.

[oldiesfunhouse]

That makes sense. Another thing I'm curious to find out is who the PBP announcers will be. According to Siri, Matt McConnell did PBP for the Coyotes but it also says he's a faculty associate at ASU so it's probably unlikely that he would relocate but ... I don't know. Didn't Hot Rod Hunley start with the New Orleans Jazz and then move with them to Utah?

[CAwasinNJ]

Hot Rod Hundley did indeed start with the Jazz in New Orleans.

Before looking at who might be on radio I think we'd need to figure out who's going to be producing the broadcasts. If Bonneville produced the broadcasts and they end up producing them again, it would be more likely the announcers remain the same. If the Coyotes produced them and those people are transferring to the new club then it would also be more likely to remain the same. If one of those produced them before but won't be going forward then who knows.

[oldiesfunhouse]

Well ... Matt McConnell was emceeing the celebration at the Delta Center last night introducing the players. I was listening on KSL and Jeff Kaplan introduced him as the Arizona Coyotes play-by-play man. And I guess it was never specified whether he did PBP for radio or TV. So maybe the broadcast crew is relocating here along with the team. I guess the KSL/KZNS AM and FM combination makes sense. The pecking order will be interesting. The Jazz are ALWAYS on 975. 1280, I think is pretty constant for the Salt Lake Bees. They're also the flagships for the Utah State Aggies games. So you'll have the Jazz, the former Coyotes, The Bees, Real Salt Lake, and the Aggies--four frequencies, five teams ... I guess it would be very rare that all five would end up having a game on the same night. I don't imagine KSL would be the "flagship" for the former Coyotes. But, it would be hard to imagine, if the Jazz and the hockey team have a game on the same night, that 1280 would be the only place on the dial you could hear the hockey game. I don't think their signal is very good at night. I guess that's why there's streaming. And, I wasn't even thinking about the fact that BYU games will always have the priority on KSL. I wonder if the Smith group could acquire AM 570 or another FM.

[CAwasinNJ]

I think 1280 is mostly fine at night, at least along the Wasatch Front. Its night signal is highly directional north/south with nulls toward Tooele and Park City, and it probably has a problem in the Magna area.

The SEG acquiring another station is just nuts. Even if the Zone/KSL consortium will be airing the Utah Whatevers, I'm reasonably sure that the situation of 5 teams playing simultaneously will be a very rare occurrence. Regardless, the question would then be what the heck would you put on yet another signal the other 20+ hours a day? I suppose they could affiliate with one of the national sports talk networks but that just feels like meh to me. Is there any off-hours sports offering that isn't carried here that anyone would like to hear?

If they did run out of broadcast space for all the games that would be airing at a particular time it would make more sense to buy a few hours on some other station than to buy an entire separate station.

[oldiesfunhouse]

The network that isn't carried in this market is CBS Sports Radio. Jim Rome is their most prevalent show. They also have After Hours with Amy Lawrence from midnight to 4 AM Mountain Time. It would be nice to have both of them on a local signal.