The Hook has an interesting report on Mac MacDonald’s on-air announcement this morning that he’s leaving WINA’s morning show. Turns out that MacDonald doesn’t actually work for WINA but, in fact, UVa. It also seems that this may be part of frosty relationship between WINA’s new owners, Saga Communications, and UVa—it’s not clear that the station will retain the contract to broadcast the games, presumably due to Saga’s demands on UVa. Finally, it sounded like MacDonald’s announcement took morning co-host Jane Foy by surprise, if their on-air reactions were any indicator.
MacDonald says that he intends to put his time into blogging and podcasting on behalf of the Cavaliers. WINA might do well to catch up and start doing more of that themselves.
I sincerly hope that UVA contracts with a FM station to carry their sports programming. The fact of the matter is WINA has very limited output so if you live in Lake Monticello or in the county, you can barely hear the station.
It’s worse when they have to throtle back their transmitters at sundown since they are not a clear channel station.
CBHoo, you’re looking for things other than football and men’s basketball, I’m guessing. For those you had 3WV (should we refer to this in the past tense). The Hoos have gone with FM in Lynchburg and Roanoke, but I don’t recall if those affiliates will carry more than FB and MBB.
This is hard to get very excited about – it’s just another nail in the coffin of local broadcasting. Maybe UVa will make WTJU the flagship station of the Virginia Sports Network (heh…just trying to be funny), and the others can pay a licensing fee for the broadcast.
I expect they’ll negotiate with Fox or Clearchannel or someone for a broader syndication.