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Aksarben, you around?

I'm here...

Really this is only a radio deal affecting Omaha. There are some issues in the background on all of this that I've been made aware of that I cannot elaborate on but suffice to say the move is probably best for all concerned.

KXSP (590 AM) has a good regional signal that covers parts of six states (Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Missouri) during daylight hours and covers western Iowa better at night than KFAB did due to their directional transmission pattern at night.

Putting the football broadcasts on FM in Omaha is a good thing, I have a pretty good idea why they chose KEZO (92.3 FM) but I think the better move would have been to put them on KKCD (105.9 FM) and carry all of the ancillary pre and post game programming. This is something they will not do on KEZO. As I understand it the plan is to join the broadcast in progress 30 minutes before kickoff and cut away within 40 or so minutes after the conclusion of the game.

The thing that's going to be very confusing for people is putting everything on KXSP and bumping things to KKCD when there is a conflict with a football or men's basketball game (which have top priority on KXSP). One night the women's basketball or volleyball game/match is on 590 AM and the next night it's on 105.9 FM. Why not put women's basketball and volleyball on KKCD all the time? The radio audience for those two sports tends to skew older and older people have a harder time going back and forth...consistency is best in this scenario (trust me my mother will be calling me every game to find out where she should find it on her radio because of the confusion this going back and forth will cause).

As has been pointed out previously none of the announcers or studio hosts are affected by this move, this is strictly a change of broadcast stations that are airing the games in Omaha. Greg Sharpe and company will continue with football, Kent Pavelka and Matt will continue with men's basketball, John Baylor will continue with volleyball, Matt Coatney will continue with women's basketball and Greg Sharpe and Lane Grindle will continue with baseball. All of these folks are employed by IMG College and are not affiliated with any of the network stations.

One thing that will be interesting though is what happens to Jim Rose on KFAB? Jim is an employee of the University of Nebraska Development Office and came on board at KFAB when they reacquired the broadcast rights from the train wreck that occurred between 1996-2001. I'm not sure what his exact employment status is with KFAB so I guess the question there is does he go or does he stay?

This post was edited on 3/1 9:27 AM by Aksarben
 
Thanks for the response. Really appreciate your insight.
 
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