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The new KBWF homepage
So, how do you like ‘dem apples?
Entercom switched KBWF‘s format from country to sports radio today, though the station is only playing loops of clips and sports-related rock right now. The Sharks will come along for the ride, though it is unknown if the Sharks broadcasts will switch over from sister station KUFX starting tomorrow, or if there will be a simulcast for the time being. Either way, this is FANTASTIC news for the A’s and anyone who wants an alternative to KNBR. It’s pretty horrible for the country programming folks with the old format, though that’s the way the business works. This will also allow KUFX to hone on expanding its excellent ratings in the South Bay to the Greater Bay Area. It’d be a good idea for Entercom to figure out a way to strengthen signal south of San Jose, as that’s a weak spot for KBWF right now.
Update: Relevant links:
- Susan Slusser (SFGate)
- Joe Stiglich (BANG)
- A’s Press Release
- Entercom Press Release
It’ll be interesting to see what other content is brought in. Entercom’s biggest sports property is WEEI in Boston, which like KNBR is an ESPN-affiliated (but not operated) station. I would not be surprised if some of the WEEI talent came to SF as part of the transition. Unlike former KTRB parent Pappas, Entercom has the resources and reach to take Cumulus’s KNBR head on. They also have the enough inherent corporate bureaucracy to make running a station serious drudgery if they want. I’m looking forward to it.
More from Susan Slusser at The Drumbeat:
If this station picks up Stanford and if the A’s ever get permission to move to San Jose, Entercom might have positioned itself well as a South Bay alternative to KNBR. In addition, the A’s and Sharks have fan bases that feel particularly under-served by KNBR, so that gives 95.7 FM some hungry listeners from the get-go.
Walker tells me that listener studies show that 80 percent of those who listen to the radio stay on the FM side and never switch over to AM at all. He and Entercom believe there are plenty of sports fans in general who are listening to FM radio and who are currently under-served. SportsRadio 95.7 FM is calling itself the biggest large-market all-sports station in the country.
“We’ll be talking A’s and Sharks, two winning franchises that aren’t getting as much attention as they could,” he said. “But we’ll also be talking Warriors, Giants, Earthquakes, SaberCats.”
One other observation. To Ken Pries, Ken Korach and Lew Wolff: This is a damned good Plan B. Stations that switch to sports radio tend to be stable there as the content is cheap and limitless. Well played.
Update 2:10 PM – The first programming announcement is the addition of KCTC-AM afternoon drivetime show “The Rob, Arnie & Sports Show” to the 4-6 PM weekday block. KCTC, an ESPN affiliate, is owned by Entercom.
newballpark.org 
Awesome News is Awesome!
Bite that haters
Great news for A’s fans/non-Giants fans. Bad news for my wife – big country music fan.
hopefully the first of a series of announcements for the A’s about what the future holds….
RICK TITTLE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
Finally some good news for A’s fans. It’s been awhile.Hopefully, to add icing on the cake, BS will make the right call son on the A’s staying in Oakland.
YES!!!!!!!!
Awesome news! Hopefully they pick up a football team as well.
I love the fact that the signal for 95.7 is the same all day and night, no drop off. It’s great.
It would be nice to Get marty back to do his baseball radio shows.
Outstanding! Finally an alternative to that garbage on KNBR! Now they just need to strengthen their south bay signal for the A’s future home.
Great news for all sports fans in the Bay Area who want an alternative to KNBR. I hope they pick up the Dan Patrick Show and run it live. This is the best move by the A’s since Bill and Lon signed on to broadcast A’s baseball in the 80’s.
sounds as 95.7 is talking with stanford which who knows how much longer they’ll be on 860 especially if it goes silent and they’re also talking with cal too. also 95.7 in talks to move the sharks to move 95.7 too.
maybe they’ll bring in the raiders too. there was talk that 105.3 could go to a sports radio format but they got beat by 95.7 today. there could be scheduling conflicts but sure they can work on a station maybe like 1550 or 105.3 itself to air any of the teams in a scheduling conflict.
anyway this is great news. to have a company like entercom helps too as it has experience with sports radio stations unlike what we had with 860 when the a’s first arrived.
What about us in Sacramento? 95.7 doesn’t come in to good if at all up here! Granted if I’m not watching a game on TV I’m at the game, but sometimes I like having the radio on too.
@Lisa Hoffert – It’s sad that Sacramento/Central Valley coverage is the casualty here. KTRB was supposed to be the strategy for the future. Now the A’s are going to have to sell themselves to Sac stations all over again, and historically that has been difficult.
The boards at radio-info are lit up. There may have been a race between Entercom and CBS to launch a sports station, with Entercom having an advantage since it has both the Sharks. Speculation is that Live 105 would make the switch to sports talk, though that would be much harder with no broadcast rights in place. I suspect that broadcasting the Bay Bridge series on KFRC was part of the talks, but when KBWF/Entercom snagged the A’s the deal was sealed.
Ratings target will be higher than the 1.2 KBWF is currently getting. A 2.0 rating would put the station below KNBR-680 but above KNBR-1050/KTCT.
1050 rarely gets even a 1 in the ratings, the highest i think were during football season when the niners were on air and then you got special events like when it broadcast the world cup this past summer.
other than that the programming 1050 provides itself like rome, bruce, bruno and etc gets below a 1 consistently.
i’d gladly take a 2, that’d be by far the highest ratings the a’s would garner on any station. still i think mid 1s is what they’d bring in initially.
I can see the Giants/KNBR not liking this at all: actual semi-competition for the first time. Do you think Neukom will come around and negotaite on TR’s now? I doubt it.
i doubt that. knbr is still the leader here locally. even if 95.7 becomes a legit station it probably won’t get near the ratings that 680 gets. still just to have a local alternative is a huge need for this area.
a’s, sharks, raiders fans in particular have gotten the shaft from knbr and having a station to fills the needs of the fans for those teams is a must. thought 860 could’ve been that but all in all i’d rather have an fm sports radio station 95.7.
Absolutely great news. Love it. I can’t check the details now while I’m at work but is there any word on Chris Townsend’s pro & post-game shows getting expanded? Hopefully immediately starting tonight.
More notes: The nearest stations to KBWF on the dial are rival country station KRTY-95.3 and Portuguese radio KSQQ-96.1. Both are based out of the South Bay (Los Gatos and Morgan Hill, respectively) and both broadcast at less than 10,000 watts, making their footprints relegated to the South Bay. This should presumably allow for KBWF/Entercom to apply for repeaters in the North Bay and East Bay, where the fringe coverage is poor. The South Bay, especially South County, may be trickier.
The winners so far: the A’s and KRTY.
The losers: KNBR and CBS.
@Briggs – Townsend’s pregame coverage starts at 4 PM today.
Oh, and even if it’s far-fetched, I’d really like to see weekly segments for Jose Canseco and Ricky. They’re walking quote machines and they need an outlet. I bet many listeners would tune in just for that, even if it’s not sports-related.
HaHaHaHaHa!!!! Holy f*cking sh*t this is the greatest news I’ve heard in a LONG time! Great post coming off the last one.
yes townsend’s post game show at least will probably go back to what it was last season when we’d get at times 2 hour post game shows. sure a hell of a lot better than the 30 minutes we’ve gotten for most of the post game shows.
like it was mentioned above, townsend will have a extra long pre game show today starting at 4 PM. doubt this will last and think it’s just expanded because of this news of 95.7 going to all sports.
great day, honestly more excited about this news than i was back nearly two years ago when 860 made the move to all sports. think this time it will work especially with a company like entercom working running the station.
also wonder if somehow the a’s can buy into 95.7 too.
Love it RM! Just the beginning of the good news IMHO. Also hope they can snag the Raiders sometime in the future. At the least this should finally put to rest all of the talk of contraction.
I think they should have had some broadcasts / broadcasters in place instead of the repeating 4 songs and commercials.
They need a local morning broadcast group to catch the listners – not something in the can being brought in from Boston.
Just not Gary!!!
As a refresher for Southern Santa Clara County: 95.7’s signal was good to roughly San Martin in South County. In the western Gilroy hills lot’s of static; not sure about the Gilroy flatlands. Don’t know if that can be improved.
hopefully in a few months we hear the a’s will be allowed to move to sj. be a great moment if the a’s finally get to build a new park in sj to finally end this nonsense and the a’s org and a’s fans can move on and concentrating on on the field matters instead of off the field.
although not counting on that being announced anytime soon.
if the a’s were really serious, they’d buy into 95.7 and csnca too.
Wow… KTRB… Talk about a lesson in how not to over play your hand.
@Tony D. – No improvement without a repeater or a boost. KRTY has repeaters in Scotts Valley and New Almaden just to take care of the valleys. I suppose Entercom could apply for a 30 or 50 kW license, but cost-benefit may be problematic. Up the dial a bit, KYLD-94.9 broadcasts at 30 kW and doesn’t really improve range that much.
@crister I learned that lesson long ago. Considering the change in format of the Wolf, this is quite fitting.
if somehow ellison were to buy an nba team, likely the hornets, maybe 95.7 can broadcast their games although that seems unlikely if the sharks are brought in as you could have three teams in a schedule conflict at times. although sharks could go broadcast their games on their current sj rock station if need be and if all three teams were to air at the same time, don’t know how likely that ever is, one of the teams could move to the stations i mentioned previously like 1550 which we know can have an emergency spot for a sports team as they did with the a’s during spring training.
a’s, sharks, raiders or possible nba team, and either cal or stanford. sounds good. hopefully in the next few weeks we can actually get some local shows too.
I think Mychael Urban is looking for a radio gig, he’s not with KNBR any longer.
Just my opinion, but the A’s and Sharks logo’s look great side by side ;o)
Update 2:10 – The first programming announcement is the addition of KCTC-AM afternoon drivetime show “The Rob, Arnie & Sports Show” to the 4-6 PM weekday block. KCTC, an ESPN affiliate, is owned by Entercom.
Ahh, Rob, Arnie and no Dawn! Ought to be good.
great news…the dominoes are starting to fall in place for the a’s! p.s. see ya’ll at the game today!
please no urban, last thing this team needs is a schill from the other station who got fired. his sf homerism in recent years was sickening.
i’d rather have tittle or townsend with a a’s related show.
Awesome! Way to stick it to the giants the day after that little BS segment with Phil Taylor. Hopefully Raiders, CAL and Stanford coming soon …
Urban fired? Where was I?
well he was fired from his post game duties on radio. think lurie has taken over on the weekends.
i don’t watch the other teams tv post game show but the few times i turn the channel there at least this season haven’t seen him.
townsend sounds as he’ll have a show on the station. dont know when but be nice as he has the local knowledge being here on radio locally in some way since the late 1990s.
listening to townsend talk about A’s and Sharks = Awesome.
Congrats to AN’s own optimist prime for being Townsend’s first caller on 95.7 sports radio.
new group of shows will air monday.
it was mentioned a show previously, never heard of them before, but read that 95.7 will air sporting news radio programming. pretty sure there has to be a local show or two. for starters would like to see tittle and townsend get a show.
maybe tittle’s show from 9-12 if 860 drops it and townsend from 12-4?
also the more and more i think 95.7 will go hard after the raiders. don’t know when as i think the raiders are signed up with 1550/105.3 thru next season at least but once their deal runs out, def can see 95.7 trying to land them.
this is freakin GREAT!!!! very happy, efff you knbr!
Foss and Kuip talking Sharks and downtown San Jose. Kuip to Foss, “you like it down there don’t yah.” “Oh yah!” responds Foss.
Went on to compare downtown SJ when the Sharks play to what they experienced last week at Target Field/Minn. And the good day continues…
So what happens during conflicts between A’s and Sharks?
sharks i still think will be on kufx which is the sister station to 95.7.
correction sharks if they move to 95.7 which is what it seems like the station wants, if there are scheduling conflicts they’d probably go back to kfox which is the sister station of 95.7. i don’t see why they wouldn’t stay on the station at this time anyway since the signal for that station down in sj is better than what 95.7 currently provides at this time.
and as i mentioned in another thread, if somehow the station can land the raiders and all three teams are on at the same time, i’d guess a’s would stay on 95.7, sharks would move to kfox, and the raiders could go to 1550 which is their current home and as we saw during the bay bridge series that station is open to helping a local sports team, in this case teams, out when they’re having an issue with their radio broadcasts.
Someone mentioned no to Mychael Urban because he was a “KNBR reject”. Well isn’t Townsend one too? He’s not that great. I’l take Urban over that meely mouthed fool any day. Anyway, I’m hoping they find the right program to keep this station going because I don’t want to look around the radio dial for the A’s anymore.
Memo to Bill Neukom, if your Giant fans are really Giants fans, they’ll still go to the games. Give the A’s back their territorial rights that they gave to you guys to keep you around. Ingrates!
townsend is from sd and a pads fan, he hasn’t been kissing the ass of the other team across the bay for the past few years making excuse after excuse for certain players to the point where you question his view points on the game.
townsend is pretty anti sf and he’s made his feelings known in the past year doing a’s post games which is a good thing for a lot of a’s fans.
His being a Padre fan and not schilling for the Giants doesn’t change the fact that he’s horrible.
and urban is any better? yeah that’s what we need a guy on the radio who makes up silly names for segments like the “unicorn hour” and make excuses for his “buddies” on the team.
least townsend lets callers talk and express their opinions and doesn’t sugarcoat stuff like urban and most on knbr did and still does.
When he covered the A’s, the man had vast knowledge of them. When Townsend was on KNBR he was as big of a suck up as anyone else on there.
The last thing I need is that nasaly voice coming through my air waves. I want someone on there that knows the A’s ins and outs. Not someone who’s had a pre and post game show for two years with us.
The A’s deserve better than that nerd.
ask a’s fans what they think of urban’s “aces” book about the big 3, horrible is the summary i’ve gotten over it from reading a’s fans thought over the years. this was even before he became a sf honk a few seasons back when he was given the post game duties on knbr weekends and failed at it. ask a’s fans about urban’s insiders and the stories he’s gotten from them over the years which many turned out false.
last thing i’d want is a guy who kissed the ass of the team across the bay for years talking about the a’s. when urban left as the a’s mlb writer and lee took over, there was a cheer from me and probably many other a’s fans who got tired of urban treating the a’s as that “other team” he followed while his main job was to cover and pump up the other team here locally.
i’d gladly take townsend who won’t kiss ass, hasn’t done so with the a’s during his year plus as the a’s pre/post game host. don’t know what stories you got on him on knbr but from the times i listened whether he cohosting with krueger or doing the morning shows during his last year at that station, he didn’t sound like one who was a suck up. course you’re gonn have to toll the company line while you’re at knbr but townsend wasn’t more of a suck up than urban has been there in recent years.
add to that urban knows shit about other sports here locally. if he does, he certainly hasn’t done a good job of showing it during the times he’s filled in. you want a host who knows more than baseball and imo townsend blows urban out of the water in that facet.
Anyway, at the end of the day, having this station is fantastic. I’m looking forward to seeing what the programing is going to be. I hope it’s a cut above the competition.
Even though you’re the type of guy who probably thinks Don Imus was better than Howard Stern, let’s hug it out and rejoice that we’re getting out own station.
i don’t listen to etiher of them but if i did i would listen to stern.
and yes just glad we can have an argument on who we want to have on finally our own sports station.
I was stunned at the news. I want our team to be fairly represented. But I also don’t want our station to be what KNBR has become. It’s been like listening to those midwest stations where the homering of the team is just unbearable.