Hyde5: 104.3 FM is out of sports business – just 790 AM now – Sun Sentinel (blog)
I got a message today 104.3 The Ticket had retired from the sports talk business, and flicked on my radio to hear some rock song that could be the insipid lead-in to a sports show. Only the song kept going. And going. And is still going.
So it’s true. The sports radio market shrunk, sort of, as the only FM component returns just to being 790-AM The Ticket (104.3 turns to a self-described “alternative music” station, The Shark). As someone who liked having an FM sports component if just for when I parked in my gym’s underground lot and only it could be received, that’s a loss.
“We’re back to our roots! Hear the ticket exclusively on 790! We are … 790 The Ticket!” 790TheTicket tweeted out with strangely ample use of exclamation points.
Show host Chris Wittyngham tweeted out signs of “790” pasted in the studio, joking, “Just to make sure I don’t forget my place of employment.”
The question to play out inside the radio business is how much of 790’s ratings will change without the FM component (if at all). The Miami-Fort Lauderdale market has plenty of sports radio- moving up the AM dial: 560, 640, 790 and 940 – so I’d guess the competitors are pleased they don’t have to go up against an FM rival.
Me, I hate to see any shrinkage in any sports media business. Then again, I haven’t had a regular radio home since kicked off 640-AM (technically 640 quit calling when it went bankrupt and owed me money – so they quit me before I could quit them. Now I just get weekly letters from bankruptcy attorneys, which I seriously wish they’d stop sending.)
2. Have the Dolphins faced a five-game stretch of worse opposing quarterbacks than they will to open the season? Ever? As in, their full 50 years?
The purported opening opponent, Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III, suffered a concussion after being hit six times on eight plays – including three sacks – against a Detroit defensive line without two starters. You think the Dolphins offensive line has problems?
Griffin only completed two passes for 8 yards before that. So depending on Griffin III’s recovery, the opposing quarterback for the first five games will be:
Washington’s Griffin III, Colt McCoy or Kirk Cousins (does it matter?)
Jacksonville’s Blake Bortels (good future – but just second year with a questionable cast)
Buffalo’s Tyrod Taylor (put up three points in a half against Cleveland on Thursday)
Jets’ Ryan Fitzpatrick (got the job because his jaw works)
Tennessee’s Marcus Mariota (rookie).
That’s five teams hoping they have a quarterback. The best of the lot is clearly Fitzpatrick, who did have a 95.3 rating last year with Houston (17 TDs, eight interceptions) and is reunited with his former Buffalo coach Chan Gailey, now the Jets offensive coordinator. But he’s entering journeyman status on his fifth team and was slated as a back-up until Geno Smith’s infamous jawbreaking incident.
The rest of the opposing quarterbacks? Bortels rated as the next best in 2014. He was 33rd in the league with a 69.5 rating. There are, to be clear, 32 teams. So, yes, 5-0 should be the target for the Dolphins to start the season.
3. Preseason is the time players needlessly get maimed – as opposed to getting maimed when something of consequence is on the table.
4. So Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning worried the Colts locker room was bugged when playing at the Patriots Gillette Stadium? “As Peyton talked to guys who played for the Patriots and some of the guys who came over (to the Colts), whether it is true or not, he treated it as true and we didn’t have a lot of strategy discussed inside the locker room,’’ Dungy said on The Dan Patrick Show.
Later, to ESPN, Dungy said, “We had a few ex-Patriots that said you better be careful what you do in the locker room and what you say and that kind of thing.”
This has nothing to do with Deflategate. But when two highly respected pros like Dungy and Manning feel that way it does have to do with league-wide, post-Spygate sentiment the Patriots will do anything at all. I’ll say it again: Bill Belichick is viewed as the modern-day Al Davis, for better and worse.
5. Ichiro, my man, had two hits to move up to 2,921 now.
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