CHRONICLING ECU & C-USA SPORTS
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View
from the 'ville
Monday,
June 12, 2006
By Al Myatt |
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Network's leap forward
leaves local firm behind
Beasley Broadcasting
blowtorches supplant Pirate Radio 1250
©2006 Bonesville.net
Pirate Radio 1250 has come full circle in less
than three years of existence.
The brainchild of East Carolina graduates Troy
Dreyfus and Jonathan Ellerbe has gone from being a much-needed source of
local exposure for ECU athletics at its inception to dealing with the recent
challenge of exclusion from game broadcasts of Pirate football, basketball
and baseball.
ISP Sports, a highly-reputed and
widely-prevalent sports marketing company which
has acquired the rights to ECU's radio network,
will rely on stations with more powerful signals to broadcast Pirate games
than 5,000-watt 1250 and its similarly-powered sister station, 930.
ISP will be pumping up the volume for ECU fans
in eastern North Carolina with
a pair of Beasley Broadcast Group stations serving as
flagships, 100,000-watt WSFL (106.5 FM) and
WNCT-AM Talk 1070.
Talk 1070 executive Henry Hinton, an ECU
alumnus and benefactor and a regular columnist for Bonesville.net, is being
viewed by many as a catalyst in the Beasley Group's flagship emergence. In
Internet message board postings, Hinton's role in the new developments has
been characterized as everything from shrewd businessman to merciless
villain in the aftermath of 1250's diminished status.
Fact is, Hinton deserves little credit or
blame beyond bringing the broadcast group's CEO, George Beasley, together
with ECU athletic director Terry Holland. Beasley was impressed with
Holland's vision and wanted to get on board. Beasley had already formed a
high opinion of ECU chancellor Steve Ballard from an earlier introduction.
ISP is paying for the rights to ECU games and
made the decision as to who its partners will be. The high wattage of
Beasley's stations simply provided ISP with what it wanted.
The good news for ECU fans is that more folks
will be able to hear the Pirates in eastern North Carolina than before.
"I've said for some time that we needed a
100,000-watt station," said Walter Williams, a devoted and large financial
supporter of ECU athletics for whom Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum is
named.
Williams became a part owner of Pirate Radio
1250 after Hinton's sale of a Greenville FM station in 2002 left a void in
the market in terms of ECU coverage. Pirate Radio 1250 began to fill that
niche in August, 2003.
"When Henry (Hinton) sold his station, we
(ECU) had no support," Williams said. "Troy and Ellerbe had an idea and went
to several members of the Pirate Club. We needed some exposure and we formed
a partnership that served a need up until this issue."
Williams would have liked for Pirate Radio
1250 to have been included in the ISP network but the highly-successful
Trade Mart executive understands business, too.
"I suspect Beasley proposed that they (ISP)
take both stations or none," Williams said.
The original goal of exposure for ECU
athletics that initially drove Pirate Sports Radio 1250 into existence will
still be served by the new network alignment, Williams noted.
Hinton has been involved in annual
negotiations for his stations with the Pirate sports network as it
previously existed dating back to 1989.
"The dynamics changed dramatically with ISP,"
Hinton said. "They're obviously paying the university a pretty good chunk of
change. We made our proposal and everybody else made their proposals. They
had a stated objective from the beginning of getting a 100,000-watt FM for
football.
"Beyond that, it seemed the objective was to
get the basketball and baseball on the strongest signal they could get. It
became clear to me that they (ISP) wanted to deal with a minimum number of
stations.
"At the end of the day, it was 100 percent
ISP's call."
That call left 1250/930 looking like a
sandwich with the meat yanked out.
The circumstances of the events are somewhat
ironic in that Dreyfus and Ellerbe are former employees of
Hinton. Dreyfus was Hinton's sidekick for a number of years during afternoon
drive time on FM radio and Cable 7, a television outlet which Hinton Media
Group still owns.
Dreyfus and Ellerbe began operations at 1250
while Hinton had a non-competitive agreement with the party to whom he sold
his old FM. When that agreement with Archway Broadcasting became defunct,
Hinton launched again with Beasley on 1070.
The Beasley Group has invested significantly
to increase power on 1070 to 50,000 watts as encouraged by Hinton. The move has
obviously paid off in ISP's decision.
"I'm just trying to help East Carolina achieve
its goal of getting its sports on stations that cover the region," Hinton
said. "I'm glad we had the resources with Beasley to make it happen.
"I have a vested financial interest in ECU
athletics as well and I want the best we can get in everything, including
broadcasting. It's clear we have a great AD and now a top sports marketing
firm handling our radio network. Who could ask for more than that?"
Obviously, Pirate Radio 1250 could ask for a
little more, but contracts — for five years — have been signed.
Pirate Sports Radio 1250 founders Dreyfus and
Ellerbe plan to unveil what the future holds for their station this
afternoon at 5 p.m. But don't figure that the station is going the way of
blacksmiths and dodo birds.
"We're still going to be in business," said
Ellerbe, who became aware of ISP's decision late last week. "We're still
going to do what we've got to do."
Bonesville.net provided the network
infrastructure for Pirate Radio 1250's live audio stream and its archived
programs from the time the station went on the air in 2003 until last
summer.
Bonesville.net has streamed Talk 1070's local
programming and hosted its audio archives since its launch. The site also
streamed the live feed of Hinton's previous radio venture, WCZI 98.3 FM.
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02/23/2007 12:30:23 AM
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