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Introduction

A Brief History Of Sports Talk Radio

All About Rome

The Importance Of Being Jim Rome

The Long History Of Sports Talk Radio In Madison

How Madison Won A Tour Stop

Now The Real Work Begins: The Setup

The Big Day: Anatomy Of A Jim Rome Tour Stop

To The Winner Goes The Spoils

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For ESPN1070 Operations Manager Tim Scott, bringing a Jim Rome Tour Stop to Madison was more than just a feather in his cap. It brought real, concrete intrinsic benefits to his radio station.

In radio, you need revenue and you acquire revenue through selling advertising. Or, as the line in The Right Stuff goes, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

A Tour Stop brings in the bucks for the station that plays host, and not just as a one-shot deal of sponsorships to defray the considerable productions costs involved with an event of this magnitude. Rather, Scott's sales staff was able to find sponsors for the long haul.

That's the real prize and that's why a Tour Stop is so sought after by so many of Rome's affiliates.

"You can't put a price tag on hosting one of these events," Scott said. "The residuals you'll have if it goes off well will last you a lifetime. You can't spend the amount of money in billboards and television and newspapers that will equal the goodwill you'll get from hosting one of these events.

"We weren't in this to make money. We were in this, like I said, to promote our product and our station. The residuals, we're still getting those every day."

According to Scott, about 80 percent of the Tour Stop sponsors continued to advertise on ESPN1070. Of those who did not stay aboard, Scott said most likely it was due to the fact that they have small advertising budgets and are forced to be particularly choosy with their continuing sponsorships.

As for the businesses that remained ESPN1070 sponsors, they may have been skeptical about the Tour Stop, but the success of the event opened their eyes.

"We had the right idea to get them in with the Jim Rome Tour Stop," Scott said. "They did it, they saw the success and they stayed with it because of that.

"And at the same time, don't forget there were those people at the Tour Stop who didn't advertise with us. We told them, 'you're going to kick yourself for not being part of this.' These people did kick themselves for not being part of this and now they understand about the power the radio station has, so now they want to be part of the radio station, not because they were part of Rome, but because they saw what Rome was to the people who were there. They're like, 'wow, this station can do this?'"

These new sponsors allowed Scott to do things he had always hoped to do, given the requisite amount of ad revenue.

Early in 2003, ESPN1070 launched a local morning show to compliment "The Bullpen," the station's afternoon drive-time show, a mainstay since the station's inception in August, 1999.

Scott, who had co-hosted "The Bullpen" with Aaron Sims, left the afternoon show to co-host the new morning show with WIBA AM Sports Director Brian Posick. WIBA is ESPN1070's sister station. According to Scott, the Tour Stop allowed this to happen.

"From day one, when ESPN started, that was our goal, to have a morning show," Scott said. "Since our goal was to do mornings and afternoons, it was time for us to expand. We felt coming off the Tour Stop, we'd reached that point.

"We felt it was very important. Initially, it just wasn't right for us to do it, but because of the growth over the last couple of years of the listenership, the response to doing the Jim Rome Tour Stop, now we're able to do things like the morning show.

"It's one of those things that we're trying to grow and evolve and try to put out the best product we can, every minute, every hour, every day, every week. You can't forget about what this is. We're in the entertainment business. It is a business. Again, we're trying to make money here. That's what we're in, we're in the radio business.

"Entercom is in the radio business. Infinity is in the radio business. Midwest Family is in the radio business. I used to work for Midwest Family. There's not much difference between the way they do things and the way we do things here. It's a business. We're trying to make money."

As it turned out, the morning show did not last long. As the station's website explained, it was due to a preference of the listeners for programming from the four best known letters in sports, i.e. the listeners wanted ESPN syndicated programming in the morning, so Scott complied with their wishes.

However, this revert back to the previous schedule was not due to lack of money to pay for local programming. In fact, a few months later, in spring, 2003, ESPN1070 would stage a coup that would shake up the Madison sports talk radio scene. This could not have happened without sufficient advertising revenue.

Sims, had been given sole ownership of "The Bullpen." He also had been given a brand new show of his own. It was more of a magazine style show, featuring lengthy interviews. It was called "The Show" and immediately followed "The Bullpen."

Suddenly, Sims disappeared. "The Show" was no longer on the air and "The Bullpen" was hosted by Van Edwards, better known in Madison as a DJ on WIBA FM, a classic rock station at Clear Channel-Madison which owns ESPN1070.

Scott had told me that Sims had "left the company." However, The Wisconsin State Journal had made a passing mention that Sims had been fired. That seemed surprising, considering that Scott had brought Sims with him from his previous station in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I always got the sense that Scott had great respect for Sims' abilities and somewhat viewed him as a protégé.

(What follows is conjecture on my part, but sometimes one plus one does equal two.)

Sims would pop up in Madison about a year later in February, 2004, when the Madison Mallards of the Northwoods League, an amateur summer baseball league for college players, announced that Sims would be doing play-by-play of Mallards games on WTLX, an FM station based in Beaver Dam which has a signal just strong enough to reach Madison and fades out on Madison's far west side. WTLX's previous local play-by-play effort have tended to be amateuristic, if not childish.

This is hardly leaving the company to move on to bigger and better things.

Meanwhile, flash back to spring, 2003. Scott announced on "The Bullpen" that a new host has been hired. He elected to tease the audience and delayed the announcement a short time, but promised that it is going to be big.

Upon hearing Scott's pronouncement, I knew it could only be one person, Mike Heller, and I had to agree with Scott—that was big.

Arguably, Heller has been the biggest name in Madison sports talk radio for a long time. He had co-hosted "Team Talk" on WHIT The Team starting in 1997. The Team was Madison's first all-sports radio station, debuting in 1994. Rome had aired on The Team from 1997 to 2000.

In 2001, The Team suffered a format change, pretty much because it could no longer compete with ESPN1070 and WIBA AM. With Rome on ESPN1070, as well as all the Badger, Packer, Brewer and Bucks game broadcast on both Clear Channel stations, there was little left for The Team to draw sufficient listenership.

Following the format change, "Team Talk" morphed into "Talking Sports" on WTDY 1670, an all-talk radio station at the same ownership group, Midwest Family Broadcasting. Heller left the show shortly thereafter due to an apparent contract dispute.

WTDY Program Director John "Sly" Sylvester systematically culled the holdover hosts from the show's previous incarnation. Heller returned and was teamed up with Casey James. A few months later, James left and was replaced by Joe Miller who had previously hosted "Sports Central" on WIBA AM in 1998 before getting fired.

While Heller was the star of the show, Miller anchored "Talking Sports." Gradually, Heller seemed to get pushed further and further into the background, until he was no longer listed as a co-host.

Why Sly would have done this is a mystery. My guess is that he didn't want to pay Heller's salary. Miller presumably works for next to nothing. He moonlights (literally) as an overnight DJ on 93.1 FM, a new music station launched by Midwest Family in late 2003, presumably to make ends meet.

Scott finally made his big announcement and introduced ESPN1070's listeners to the new host of "The Bullpen," who would also be the new voice of Badger women's basketball. (Sims had held that job before his departure.) Suddenly, Heller's voice was heard on a station that had been the competition. Unfriendly rivals were now colleagues.

And best of all for Scott, he was now able to fire himself as host of "The Bullpen" and concentrate on managing his two radio stations, which is what he is paid to do. Of course, Scott is able to fill in often on "The Bullpen" due to conflicts involving Heller's responsibilities with Badger women's basketball. I don't think Scott minds doing that.

None of this would have been possible without a greater influx of revenue. Presumably, none of this would have been possible if, after studying Tim Scott's proposal, Jim Rome would have said, "Madison? Nahh!"

****

Shortly after Scott was able to bask in the success of the Madison Jim Rome Tour Stop, news hit that the city of Madison was in the running to host the ESPN Outdoor Games. Sad to say, ESPN decided to not to bring the mega-event to Madison, but the Wisconsin Capitol came close.

The summer following the Tour Stop, Madison hosted an Ironman Triathlon.

The following fall, ESPN announced that its ESPN Outdoor Games would indeed be held in Madison in 2004.

Coincidence?

Yes, no and maybe.

Diane Walder of the Wisconsin Sports Development Corporation, which had spent two years trying to secure the Outdoor Games, said the Tour Stop had no effect on ESPN's decision. The landing of and successful executive of a Jim Rome Tour Stop had nothing to do with her organization succeeding in its goal of bringing the ESPN Outdoor Games to Madison.

That may or may not necessarily be true, however, the Tour Stop helped put Madison on the map and may certainly play a role in landing other major events, said Bill DiCarlo, Executive Director of the Alliant Energy Center, the facility where the Tour Stop was held.

"It showed that Madison, for a relatively small market, can host a national event," DiCarlo said. "It demonstrated to the people in the greater Madison area that we have the facilities to do this, that we do have the ability and a proven record of success.

"The spoils are that Madison received national exposure. It will be a part of Madison history. That was an opportunity to prove it on a big stage.

"It's kind of difficult to quantify that (actual ripple effect from the Tour Stop), but when we say come to Madison because we can do an Antique Road Show, a Jim Rome Tour Stop, an HBO championship fight, this is not a penny ante thing. You can do a boat show or an auto show, but when you start to pull out recognized, high quality events, that's something else.

"We have a plethora of good facilities, without the high cost and high traffic of big cities."

Ted Ballweg, Alliant Energy Center Director of Marketing and Sales expressed a similar sentiment, but added that the Tour Stop was symptomatic of how Madison has grown in national recognition and stature.

The average Madisonian can clearly see Ballweg's point. Just a few years ago, Madisonians swelled with pride over being named the "Nation's Most Livable City" by Money Magazine. Consistently, Madison ranks high on all sorts of livability lists.

A few years ago, the Monona Terrace Convention Center opened. Based on a Frank Lloyd Wright design, Monona Terrace attracts events from all over the country and the world.

Later this year, Overture Center opens its doors. Overture Center, funded with a $100 million gift from a local philanthropist, will be a multilevel, multi-track performing arts center, right smack in downtown Madison. In an era of urban sprawl and suburban flight, Overture Center will likely prove the envy of many communities around the country.

What this all adds up to, according to Ballweg, is confidence. The Tour Stop is part of this synergistic process as well. Confidence helped bring Jim Rome to Madison. Confidence will grow out of the wake of the event and help bring other events like it to Madison.

"To me, it's (the Tour Stop) part of the climb Madison has made into the national spotlight," Ballweg said. "Nine or ten years ago, you would often get a glazed over look if you talked about bringing an event like that to Madison. Five or six years ago, I don't think Tim Scott would've taken a lot of time trying to bring Jim Rome to Madison."

Ballweg also pointed out that events like the Tour Stop are helpful because they not only provide national exposure, they help characterize Madison, they help provide the city with a context for people all over the country.

"I think Madison itself captures its identity as more than just a capitol city," Ballweg said. "It shows Madison as a happy place. I put the Jim Rome exposure in that vein of showing Madison as being an active place."