Milwaukee Radio: Here's What Caused Demise of 'The Fan'

The cancellation of a Milwaukee sports-talk radio show hosted by LeRoy Butler and Gary Ellerson — as well as the other local programs on WSSP 1250 AM The Fan” — resulted from the financial challenges facing the station’s parent company and the heavy competition among Milwaukee stations for sports-talk listeners and advertisers.

To be determined is whether former Green Bay Packers Butler, Ellerson and the other WSSP on-air personalities will land jobs at other Milwaukee sports-talk stations. Butler, Ellerson and former WSSP staffers didn’t respond to requests for comment from the Milwaukee Business Journal.

One thing that’s certain is loyal listeners and some members of Milwaukee’s sports-business industry will miss the station that ran sports programming for over a dozen years.

One factor in WSSP’s downfall was that since the station launched its sports-talk format, the Milwaukee market has become crowded with stations carrying similar programming.

Lately, audience ratings for the station ranked third behind two full-power FM stations that switched to sports programming in late 2019. Both WKTI 94.5 FM and WRNW 97.3 FM attract larger numbers in key demographic groups — men ages 25 to 54 and men ages 35 to 64, according to a source in the Milwaukee radio industry.

WRNW is owned by radio industry giant iHeartMedia as is WOKY, which carries the Bill Michaels show. WKTI is owned by Milwaukee-based Good Karma Brands and is an ESPN radio affiliate.

WSSP ran a simulcast of its programming on a translator at 105.7 FM for about six years, but Audacy switched the FM outlet to music in October 2020. While losing 105.7 FM likely cost “The Fan” some listeners, the FM signal generated just 240 watts of power, which means it reached a much smaller geographic area than typical commercial FM radio signals of between 6,000 watts and 50,000 watts.

After losing its FM simulcast, WSSP plowed ahead as an AM-only station and kept its program hosts, which also included Bart Winkler and Tim Allen. In Milwaukee, Audacy also owns WMYX-FM (99.1 “The Mix”), WXSS-FM (103.7 “Kiss FM”) and “Hot 105.7 FM.”

Audacy, which previously was known as Entercom Communications Corp., posted a net loss of $11.8 million the first half of this year. While the company’s revenue from its sports stations overall increased the first six months of 2022, interest expenses wiped out the possibility of posting net profits.

Audacy’s stock price has been floundering the past 18 months, and it was trading at 66 cents per share Thursday. The company faces delisting by the New York Stock Exchange because the closing price was less than the required minimum $1 per share for over 30 consecutive days.

After Audacy's revenue growth slowed in the second quarter with future expectations murky due to macroeconomic challenges, CEO David Field warned that the nation’s second-largest radio station owner would institute expense cuts, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal, a sister publication of the Milwaukee Business Journal. Layoffs ensued this week at the Philadelphia-based company, which also eliminated local on-air talent at a sports-talk station in Las Vegas.