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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

Click For Pix

There are two versions of how Madison, Wisconsin snared a Jim Rome Tour Stop, the romanticized tale and the truth.

According to ESPN 1070 Operations Manager Tim Scott, he and Aaron Sims, his then co-host for the station's local sports talk show, "The Bullpen," were in New Orleans for the Super Bowl week festivities. They were there to broadcast from Radio Row, but also to have some fun, do some business and do a bit of celebrity gawking. But then there was a chance meeting. Scott and Sims were relaxing in the media lounge when they spotted none other than Jim Rome.

"He and Travis (Rogers, producer of "The Jim Rome Show) were talking with somebody else," Scott recalls. "Aaron was like, 'that's Jim Rome. You gotta go say hi.' He was in a conversation with somebody else, but Aaron's like, 'man, you gotta go talk to him.' So we went over and introduced ourselves.

"The cool thing about it, and you have to realize how studious this guy is, when I said where I was from and what station I represented, he knew instantly who we were, not personally, but as a station. He knew he gad gone up to a big signal."

Scott used the opportunity to pitch Madison as a possible site for a Tour Stop, which is something Scott had been working on ever since ESPN 1070 had started carrying the Jungle in January, 2001, after Premier Radio's contract with WHIT The Team was not renewed.

"It was like five minutes, maybe ten minutes," Scott said. "We planted the seed and said, 'here is what we would like to do. Statewide Tour Stop. Bring everybody in. We're the state capitol. we're in Madison. We've got the Badgers. We're centrally located. Milwaukee's ninety minutes away, two hours from Chicago.'

"He liked the idea and said, 'yeah, it's good. I like the idea. That could work. Nice. Let's see if we can make it happen. Contact my people.' So I contacted people at Premier."

Eight months later, Rome would shock the Jungle by announcing that Madison would host Tour Stop 29 on December 7, 2002.

Scott, however, insists that the chance meeting in New Orleans probably had little to do with the selection.

"From our standpoint," Scott said, "it was like, 'it's Jim Rome.' It was just about meeting Rome. When you're down at the Super Bowl, it was one of those things where Aaron and I were more sitting there watching people go by.

"We went to get our ID stickers that day. The security guard pokes Aaron in the chest to get him to back up for a minute and Deon Sanders walks right in front of us to get his picture taken. We talked with Dan Patrick, Chris Berman, Jerry Kelly. Really nice guys. We went to a lot of press conferences. Like I said, to be honest, it probably had nothing to do with it. We like to think it did. We like to make it out as more than what it was. I'd assume he wouldn't remember me. Remember, it's not him, but his people."

Apparently, a little encouragement can go a long way. Scott stepped up his efforts, though he knew it was likely an uphill struggle. Madison is not a market the size of Houston, or Detroit or Kansas City, which have hosted Tour Stop. Granted, Des Moines and Green Bay had also hosted Tour Stops, but that was a long time ago.

"A Tour Stop back then," Scott said, "was like Papa Joe Chevalier's appearance at Tony Roma's. He wasn't as big as he is today. The big Tour Stops, once they became an arena show, they had not been done in small markets. They had left the the smaller markets behind because big markets, big affiliates, they could fill arenas. It makes sense to go there."

When Scott returned to Madison from New Orleans, he contacted Rome's people at Premier once again.

"I said to them," Scott said, "'if you are interested in us, we would sure like to have a shot.' It was basically following up as we had every year."

Then came the major shock. In May, Premier called and asked if Scott was still interested in hosting a Tour Stop. Scott said yes. Premier asked him to put together a proposal.

"Well, everything from the building, the description of the building, the area, market size, the outlying markets that could participate," Scott said, describing what had to go into the proposal. "It's almost like a college thesis. 'Why Jim Rome Should Come to Madison.'

"I put together a guest list, all kinds of stuff. When you put something like that together, you just throw as much stuff as you can into the project. We put down everybody we possibly knew that we could somehow bring in. We thought, well, if we do this and this, maybe we can bring him in. And we just sent it in."

In July, Scott said, Premier called and said they were looking for a small or medium sized market to host a Tour Stop and once again asked if ESPN1070 was still interested. This time that was a much more loaded question because it meant ponying up some big bucks.

"There is a big financial commitment," Scott said. "I'm not going to quote a number to you, but there was a big nut we had to crack to make this happen."

Essentially at this point, it seemed that Premier liked what Madison could bring to the table, but now needed proof that the affiliate could raise sufficient funds to put on a show consistent with Tour Stop quality.

"The problem you run into with the Tour Stops is that you can't charge admission," Scott said. "So you really have to be creative to make it happen. Markets such as Kansas City, they went out to find a big corporate sponsor. Denver, they did the same, but when you are in Madison, Wisconsin, the market size is smaller. It's not as attractive to a major corporation to come in just because the population isn't big enough."

The conversations with Premier continued. Apparently, Scott must have somehow convinced Rome's people that ESPN1070 would be able to garner enough sponsorships to make the Tour Stop a success because when Rome announced that Tour Stop 28 would be held in Sacramento, he listed Madison as among the finalists.

"I'm driving along and I'm hearing this," Scott said. "Knowing full well in the back of my my we're in some serious negotiations with these guys. We were just haggling over production costs and this kind of stuff. Jim doesn't really deal with that. He's got his people that deal negotiations. Jim has the final say in every Tour Stop. If Jim doesn't want to go, Jim doesn't. You can put all your heart and effort into it and have a deal struck and Jim says no, because it's Jim's show. Jim has not given up control of his show. Jim checks off on everything. It's pretty amazing how much he's in the loop.

"I almost literally turned the car around and I came back and I called his people and I said, 'listen, I got a great idea. I know how close this thing is to happening, okay. Here's what I want to do. I want to go on the air this afternoon and say, okay, you heard Jim say Madison. He let the cat out of the bag. We're going to be honest with you. We're going to tell you flat out, here's what we've been trying. We're in the final four.'

"And the thought being that if we didn't get it, if the deal fell through, we'd just turn around and say, hey we didn't get it."

Scott made his announcement that day on "The Bullpen" and urged Madison listeners to let Rome know they wanted him to come to Madison. He said call the show. Send e-mails. Let him know why he should come to Madison. The response was immediate and overwhelming.

"Jim has this affiliate meter on his website," Scott said. "It was like overnight. Madison was like the number one affiliate. It just exploded. Jim and Travis Rogers, they were both blown away with the response."

Next, Debbie Petrasic from Premier came to Madison to see the proposed site for the Tour Stop, to get a lay of the land. She inspected the Coliseum at the Alliant Energy Center which had been chosen over the Kohl Center due to scheduling conflicts with Badger hockey.

"Debbie came through," Scott said. "We went though everything. Then she called me and she said, 'do you want to do Tour Stop Twenty-nine?' And again, I said, 'silly question.' And she said, 'you got it.'"

According to Scott, he had gotten the word about six weeks before Rome made the official announcement. That meant Scott needed sworn secrecy from both his on-air and advertising staff, but, at the same, time, they had to go out and sell sponsorships.

Meanwhile, publicly, Scott continued to implore his listeners to let Rome know that Madison wanted him, except by now, it was a done deal and that was now all about promoting the event.

This brings up the question of why Rome ended up choosing Madison. Did Madison's response to Scott's call to arms actually matter?

"I think it's one of the situations where it probably would have happened anyway," Scott said, "but as I said, Jim checks off on it at the end. And Jim saw this response coming from Madison. And it wasn't just Madison. I mean, it was Green Bay, it was Milwaukee, it was La Crosse. It was all over the state."

Rome, in fact, confirmed that the listeners' response did affect he decision to come to Madison, as he said at the post Tour Stop press conference. He also said Madison's proposal came at just the right time.

"I've reached a point now with the show where I like to go places that are interesting to me," Rome said. "We haven't been to the Midwest in awhile. The Green Bay Tour Stop was absolutely phenomenal. We had a real good time, to see the NFC Championship game, to be in Lambeau before the game, to get a taste of Green Bay. I'm a Los Angeles guy. I've been to a lot of places, but I've never been to a town like Green Bay before and we always remember that day. That was one of our favorite days.

"I've always said if I could come back, if we could find a way to do another appearance here, I would do it. So when this opportunity came up, the Madison affiliate came forward and came on strong, and by the way, that matters. The station wanted it, said they could put it together and had a great good proposal.

"It went off in my head, like 'Madison. That's a real great idea. Good college town, good sports town'. We hadn't been back since ninety-six and to me it seemed like a homerun, so when it came up, it was a no-brainer."

Scott agreed that, indeed, his proposal was the right place at the right time.

"It was simply a case where we met all the criteria that they wanted," Scott said. "I think it was a thing where we were in the right place at the right time. I don't know if a Tour Stop will ever be in a market this size again and if it is, it'll be awhile. It has to be the right market because you put it in Detroit, you put it in Sacramento, it's not hard to fill an arena.

"You put in in a market this size and I'm banking on people coming from around the state to see this guy. And that's a risk we did and we proved it can be done, but I think if they venture down that road and I don't want to speak on their behalf, this is just my opinion, that if they go to a Kalamazoo or something like that, it's going to have to be something just right.

"In Madison, there not two state universities. There's just one. The basketball team has been very successful. The football team, maybe not this past year, has been successful. It's the state capitol. It's within easy driving distance to Milwaukee and Chicago. Everything just kind of fit. If it's going to be some other places, it's going to have to have all the right component's.

"It was just a situation that they're looking at Jim's show and they're saying, 'okay, where are the different markets that we've either been that have been very successful? Or let's look at all these markets that want Tour Stops. Which one meets all our criteria of being successful?' I think they wanted to do something in a smaller market so that they could then say to all these other smaller markets that are hounding them to come to their town, they can say we did one in Madison.

"I think also for themselves, they found out it works in a smaller market and as I said before, there's a lot of extenuating circumstances that made it work here. I know that Green Bay had said they wanted a Tour Stop because they'd had one before, but let's be honest. That happened because it was the day before the NFC Championship game. Could Green Bay have put on the same event we could? Sure. We would just have people from here go over there, but again, maybe not."

According to Scott, there is one factor he is absolutely certain had nothing to do with Rome's decision to come to Madison. ESPN1070 is owned by Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns Premier Radio which syndicates Rome. The Denver station, which hosted one of the other three 2002 Tour Stops, is also owned by Clear Channel. None of this mattered, Scott said.

"This is a big misconception," Scott said, "that because Clear Channel owns Premier which syndicates Jim Rome, you get him. That has nothing to do with it, nothing at all."

One issue that is a little less clear concerns the fact that Scott had to submit a bid to Rome's people in order to move the process forward to the point where Rome was able to select Madison. The unanswered question is whether or not it was actually a competitive bid, as opposed to Madison demonstrating that it could ante up enough chips to sit at the high stakes table with the big boys like Houston, Detroit, Denver and Sacramento.

Scott said he didn't think it was a competitive bidding process.

"I didn't even know what I was bidding against," Scott said. "I don't even know if I was bidding against anyone. I don't know. They don't tell you that. They don't say to you, 'well, Sacramento is in at this bid. Can you top that bid?'

"I don't think there was a pure bidding process to get this, but I don't know."

Occasionally, local talk show hosts or local programmers will say that Tour Stops are awarded to the stations that pay the most, thus implying that it's all about who can fill Rome's pockets with the most cash.

My gut instinct says this is not true, and that statements like this are made out of jealousy. Rome, time and time again, insists that the Tour Stops are all about his fans, and my sense is that this is true, that Rome is mainly concerned about bringing his fans a top notch show.

One bit of evidence that would seem to support this is the fact that Rome clearly is not particularly mercenary. He endorses very few products on his show. He does not do commercials. He has yet to come out with an autobiography, which surely would be a big seller. The only real concrete example of him selling out in any way is on his website, www.jimrome.com. Broadband content is available through subscription only. Years ago, audio content from his show was free, but to be fair, that may not have been his decision entirely.

Sad to say, I am unable to confirm any of this. As I state in the introduction, nobody at Premier Radio was willing to be interviewed for this piece. Until they comment on these questions, we will never actually know how Madison was selected for a Tour Stop.