Major Changes at WEEI
Thursday, February 17, 2011
They’re feeling the heat! Officials at Entercom in Boston will try to convince you otherwise, but they are feeling the heat.
Sportsradio WEEI (850 AM in Boston and 103.7 FM in Providence) announced some major changes yesterday. The changes are clearly a reaction to the major strides made be newcomer 98.5 – The Sports Hub in the ratings.
Michael Holley, co-host of the “Dale & Holley” midday show on WEEI, will be moving to “The Big Show” as a co-host with Glenn Ordway from 2-6pm Monday through Friday. In addition, long-time midday host Dale Arnold will have his role reduced and be taken off of the midday show in favor of two new co-hosts – reportedly Mike Mutnansky and Lou Merloni.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWEEI brass maintains that these changes are meant to keep things fresh and improve upon their already solid product which is true. But it’s only half of the truth.
After years of no competition in the Boston market for the coveted 25-54 male demographic, WEEI now has that competition and is reacting to it. The Sports Hub’s “Felger & Massarotti” show in afternoon drive is that station’s best and this is clearly an effort by WEEI to compete with it.
Pairing Holley with Ordway should be interesting in that both are very talented hosts. How they fit together remains to be seen. And, more importantly, what WEEI decides to do about the rotating co-hosts in “The Big Show” will also be interesting to watch. Will they still bring two guest hosts in each day or will they reduce it to one? Or, will they eliminate them all together?
WEEI’s decision to go with Mutnansky and Merloni in the midday is curious at best. Mutnansky’s style is quite vanilla or, in clothing terms, he’s like a 42-regular which you can get off the rack anywhere.
Merloni is a name in the market because of his local upbringing (Framingham, MA) and his time spent with the Red Sox. However, his personality is not a colorful as the man he will be replacing in that spot – Holley.
Arnold has apparently been told that he will be hosting a regular weekend show on the station and be used as the primary fill-in host for when the regular hosts take vacation. He will also be doing some play-by-play fill-in for Red Sox baseball when Dave O-Brien is doing national broadcasts for ESPN and fill-in for Sean Grande on select Celtics broadcasts.
GoLocalProv.com has also learned that WEEI may be positioning Arnold to take over as the radio play-by-play voice for the PC Friars on 103.7 FM. Arnold already hosts the “Keno Davis Show” and has done fill-in play-by-play for PC's long-time radio voice John Rooke.
What’s surprising in all of this is Entercom’s apparent ignorance or reluctance to move their sports talk programming to one of their FM signals in the Boston market.
The company currently owns Mike 93.7 FM and WAAF – 97.7 & 107.3 FM in the Boston market and putting WEEI on one of those signals should not only be done now, it should have been done years ago.
Listening to talk radio on the FM dial is so much easier on the ear than AM radio which is a big part of The Sports Hub’s success. Why WEEI hasn’t figured this out yet is a mystery.
While The Sports Hub replaced midday co-host Gary Tanguay last year with Andy Gresh, these moves by WEEI represent the first major move by either side in this competition.
How they work out will be determined in the ratings.
