Movin’ On Up!

George and Weezy would be proud. The Wolf Pack are movin on up — to a bigger and better radio station. In an announcement today AEG informs the world that the Hartford Wolf Pack games will be broadcast on the WTIC family of stations — 1080 AM and 96.5 FM.

This agreement for the new season obviously ends the long time relationship with WPOP 1410 AM. According to the numbers 1410 is actually larger that 1080 thus the Pack are not "moving up" but moving down the dial. But the WTIC AM and FM footprint is easily larger that the toe-print of WPOP. I believe that 1410's signal dies at the Manchester Exit on Route 84 East; dies at the Bloomfield Exit on Route 91 North, and quite possibly dies by the Park Rd Exit on Route 84 West.

The actual announcement from AEG says that select games will be aired on 1080 AM, and all the games will be broadcast on 96.5 FM. Also, Bob Crawford will continue as the on-air voice of the Pack. (Yay Hawk! Now we'll get more "traveling in the iron-lung" references from the road). And this deal will "include a weekly segment on WTIC’s ‘Sports Talk’". This is going to be interesting.

The on-air personnel who currently work on Sport’s Talk are Joe D'Ambrosio and Arnold Dean. Dean has been half dead on the air for the past 20 years. And Joe D wants to talk UCONN hoop and football all the time. Plus, he is still pissed that the Whalers are gone. I’m not sure that doing an interview with Ken Gernander or Hugh Jessiman is going to meet up to his standards of Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma (pronounced, Are-u-an-enema). I have heard the guy spaz-out on the air over the prospect of interviewing Mrs Auriemma. Perhaps Sport’s Talk will bring in Hawk Crawford to do the weekly show. We can hope.

Overall I think this is a good move by AEG to build a partnership with one of the better known businesses in the Hartford area. It does show they are at least trying to promote Wolf Pack hockey. I hope they are doing this in other areas too.

Update:

I have been forced to learn something I did not know anything about — namely, HD Radio. I knew about satellite radio but not HD. It appears HD radio is an attempt to give local radio stations a chance to put out a better quality broadcast but in a local area.

This radio deal with WTIC 96.5 FM is an HD radio deal. The deal with HD radio is that a special receiver is needed. Wolf Pack season ticket holders are being offered the perk of an HD radio receiver and free installation.

But who in the world has an HD receiver in the ride? I don’t know — maybe everyone but me. But if the game broadcasts are going out on this HD crap I suspect the listenership of Wolf Pack games is going to drop. I know select games are going to be broadcast over the AM 1080 station — but let’s be realistic. How many select games are actually going to be broadcast on 1080.

Second thought. AEG is filled with a bunch of doofus-boys. Give me back ESPN 1410.