Milwaukee Radio: WI Badgers Football Ink Deal With CCM+E

Listening to Wisconsin Badgers football games on the radio is as much a fall tradition as raking leaves.

And for 86 years, those games were carried on WTMJ 620 AM.

As of the 87th year, football, and all Badgers sports in Milwaukee, will air on Clear Channel Communications stations WOKY 920 AM and WRIT-95.7 FM, according to Dave Dudek at jsonline.com

Clear Channel stepped in this month after Journal Broadcast Group station WTMJ 620 AM declined to renew its contract with Learfield Sports, which owns the broadcast rights to all University of Wisconsin-Madison sports.

WTMJ declined to renew the contract because Learfield required full clearance of all games. But Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers and Milwaukee Bucks games on WTMJ often caused the station to pre-empt Badgers games.

When that occurred, the games often went to WOKY.   When WOKY switched from classic country music to sports talk on Jan. 7, it joined a marketplace rife with sports stations: WTMJ's game coverage and sports talk, as well as sports talk on Entercom's WSSP-1250 AM and on Wisconsin-based Good Karma Broadcasting's station WAUK 540 AM.

The November A.C. Nielsen ratings showed WOKY facing an uphill battle and sliding back down to a 0.2 share from a 0.4 share in October, among listeners 6 and older.  WSSP was at a 0.5 share in November. WAUK is not a Nielsen subscriber, but its numbers are similarly slim. By comparison, the top-rated Milwaukee station, Clear Channel's country music WMIL-FM (106.1), had a 10.6 share.

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