Restructuring of Horn FM Highlights Trouble for Future of College Sports Radio

Z

zztx1

100+ Posts
If you have been on vacation, you will come back to an Austin sports radio scene that is completely different than what we have seen in recent years. 104.9 is gone. 101.9 is the new FM station out of Williamson county so it may not reach many of us. 1260 AM is probably more reliable for most of us. Only Rod, E hogan, and Patrick Davis are left. The rest have lost their jobs in the restructuring. If you go to hornfm.com you can listen to the last shows. Craig Way's show is most informative. The pandemic caused lack of people in their cars because of remote work which caused decrease in advertising, which caused financial pressures on the business model. If Texas cannot have an independent local sports station, can any college have one? Personally, I realize than the pandemic might have transformed local sports radio. But I wonder if this ownership group was simply not the right group to fight back. I wanted to raise some possible questions.

1. Will new home of Longhorn sports simply take over local talk radio for the Horns? UT and Learfield announced that 1300 the Zone and 98.1 would carry football and basketball. Will 1300 moves its national programming back to local? Is this an indication that UT and Learfield thought HornFM was not a good financial partner? I tried to push HornFM to make its twitch stream more interactive and they simply were not interested. There are many national sports radio stations on twitch now that radio listening is down. You would think UT has enough fan interest nationwide to support a twitch stream but we will never know.

2. Should CDC create an inhouse radio network and license it around the state or on the internet. It is an interesting possibility for maintaining interest in the programs. If softball and womens bb lose the radio streams, this will be a major blow to the sports and their fan base. You would think we could have at least a morning and an evening show five days a week. The issue with a UT owned broadcast is the lack of independence in thought but it is better than nothing. I am concerned about HornFM even though they keep saying we are not going out of business. They were recently evicted for nonpayment of rent so clearly finances are an issue.

3. Is local sports radio a dying dinosaur. I would hope not but my family keeps telling me you are the odd person who listens to talk radio. Maybe this medium need to find a new forum such as the internet or twitch otherwise it will go the direction of the newpaper. This is troublesome for many reasons. I would hope that it could find a way to survive. The loss of Bucky, Hardge, Jeff Howe, Craig is major in my opinion.
 
Living in DFW I cannot comment on #1. However on number 2, in theory, yes, but it depends on Texas' deal with Learfield. #3 started dying when sports radio became "men's talk".
 
I just spoke to a friend at church yesterday. We are both very dismayed by the loss of The Horn as it was. We both agreed we listen all day and we even have the same end-of-day routine where we sit on the patio or porch and listen to Rod and Harge while enjoying a few beers.

I get the financials were not there to keep things going, I will adjust, but I agree with you that the loss of my everyday routine is hard to take. I've been with them since they launched. Also the loss of baseball on the radio as well as other lesser sports concerns me.

Now, did the loss of the contract push them over the financial edge? Or were they already shaky and that is why UT chose to go somewhere else? IDK, but this morning, here in Drippin, I've only got static on 101.9 FM. At one time, Craig Way said they would move the transmitter from Williamson County to the location where 104.9 was broadcasting from, but when that will be, IDK.

Right now, I am just depressed.
 
On YouTube, Ketch has a lineup from 9am to 6pm with Chad and Rod in particular doing shows. I actually prefer it to radio as it really is more interactive, and you can go back and listen/watch later as you wish.
 
You can find hornfm on twitch and on the internet if you are near a computer. I think twitch does not require a signup but it is owned by Amazon so it is easy to sign up. The two stations they are using right now are absolutely terrible for West Austin and Central Austin. Hard to call it radio.

Losing baseball would be crazy as well as softball and womens bb.

I was always surprised at how male focused the talk radio became because women love sports as much as men. Some of it was rough to listen to with children or women in the car.

I agree it would be great to know if UT learfield bail first or after seeing the shaky financials. All I know is that it is hard to believe a station could not make it given the strong resurgence of Texas sports. This will hurt the University as publicity is key to keeping the interest up in Texas sports.
 
I liked the morning shows and Zay Collier made Chad Hastings bearable for me. I like E Hogan a lot, but I'm not really a fan of Rod Babers--too much talk about women, and not in the context of their athletic abilities of course. I've already turned it off this morning. Of course, I'm not exactly their target audience as I'm female and over 60.
 
You would think we could have at least a morning and an evening show five days a week.
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Well, they will have that if only available on the app since right now the 2 radio signals are not strong enough for most people to use. I'm listening to Erin and Rod right now, they go 6-11am M-F and this afternoon I will see what Patrick Davis is about. In the past, I have not been too crazy about using the app as it seems to need to be restarted periodically, but, this morning, it's working fine. However, If you go to the app, you get an alert about programming changes from 2020, so I am still concerned the app is not getting the attention it needs.
 
I liked the morning shows and Zay Collier made Chad Hastings bearable for me. I like E Hogan a lot, but I'm not really a fan of Rod Babers--too much talk about women, and not in the context of their athletic abilities of course. I've already turned it off this morning. Of course, I'm not exactly their target audience as I'm female and over 60.
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This is very interesting to me as my tastes (62 YOA White Male) are just about the opposite of yours. I like Chad fine but Zay's laugh was off-putting to me - every time he laughs he just goes way overboard. Plus they talked too much about pop culture and not sports. Now, with Rod, I see what you are saying about talking too much about women, but his knowledge and analysis of Longhorn Football is unparalleled. He always makes sense to me when he talks about what is wrong with our team.

Maybe what men want and what women want in sports radio is incompatible?
 
I don't think it's necessarily incompatible. I want to listen to news and analysis of what's going on in sports and particularly Longhorn sports. I've been listening to sports talk radio for years and it's always been targeted to males. I do appreciate Rod Babers' insight on the Longhorns. I'm not trying to be critical of him, his style just doesn't suit me. I'll continue to check in to see what they're discussing since that's really the only option right now. But I hope that 1300 will give us some other options for local sports talk before too long.
 
ViperHorn said:
#3 started dying when sports radio became "men's talk".
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No kidding. Half (or more) of the shows were devoted to the BS, gossip, and other trashy crap that turned me off. I used to listen to 104.9 quite a bit, but my loyalty tailed off with the rise of the men's talk aspect of things.
 
Uh oh, my kids won't like the death of 104.9. We listened to it a fair amount driving around town for their sporting events.
 
I like Rod Babers and the information he puts out. Unfortunately for me, his voice feels like someone is driving metal spikes in my ears. I can't listen for very long.
 
A *huge* loss for me is the post-game call-in show after the football games. In that forum, Zay Collier was money. It was like I was writing his talking points for him.
 
Its going down on YouTube yall. Look up Texas Sports Unfiltered and Orangebloods. All your favorites are on there broadcasting live throughout the day. Its better than radio. Everything is gonna be just fine.
 
Thanks for the tip, 2003TG. I am running it now. Cool to hear some names I have not heard in a long time such as Brad Kellner, Trey Elling, and Kevin Dunn.

If you are like me and you move around from the office to the shop to the house and back, it can be hard to keep the show with you. What I do is I have an FM transmitter that I got on Amazon a few years ago and it transmits an FM signal that covers my property (about 4 acres) so I just plug my phone into it, running the show, and then I can tune all the FM radios I have to that channel and thereby be able to move about without having to use earphones and keep my phone with me. Just a tip if you don't like having to drag your phone with you everywhere to be able to listen.
 
Thanks for all of the tips on where the radio talent has landed. It may be a transformation of the industry or a temporary landing pad. I see Texas sports unfiltered has some sponsors already.
 
I use my airpods and don't even need my phone on me. I can play the stream live and just listen as I work or do whatever. Pause as needed. Im really enjoying it this week. Im listening more now than I was the previous year.
 
I cannot comment on the Austin area sports talk shows.

However, I can briefly speak to the DFW sports talk shows I listened to in the past. They lost me years ago when many of the hosts got full of themselves and talked less about SPORTS and more about their personal opinions / likes, social elites/ personalities, pimping others, women, their dating / sex lives and other creepy and who gives a **** topics.
 
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WorsterMan said:
I cannot comment on the Austin area sports talk shows.

However, I can briefly speak to the DFW sports talk shows I listened to the past. They lost me years ago when the hosts got full of themselves and talked less about SPORTS and more about their personal opinions / likes, social elites/ personalities, women, their dating / sex lives and other creepy topics.
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Yeah never got into the shock jock pop culture stuff on sports radio. There is a fine line and guys like Kevin Dunn do a great job traversing that line.
 
Sports are of appeal to most segments of our population, but some hosts view the programs as a place to show off their humor or self worth. When you cross that line, you lose a pretty decent segment of the market. I thought with UIL, local programs could interview players more often, but it is possible they are still off limits. Shock jock shows probably have too small a market to survive.
 
I just heard on the BK and Trey morning show (I listen to Erin and Rod in the morning, then spool up BK's morning show in the afternoon) on Texas Sports Unfiltered that Bucky is having a hard time getting home from his vacation and is stuck in Atlanta. However, BK said Bucky will be on the air with him starting tomorrow and will be every day going forward. Trey has just been filling in.
 
OK so Bucky in on the channel this morning. The current lineup is BK and Bucky in the morning for 2 hours and then BK and Trey for an hour midday. Of course you can listen to it later in the day (I do), you do not have to access it live.
 
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