Lame Duck Raiders Bad Business for Entercom; 'The Game' (95.7 FM Sports); Gruden Doesn't Do Weekly Show with Damon Bruce Who Is Pretty Pissed Off; With A's Leaving, The Game Has Little Game; Wednesday Sports 415 Media Schmooze

 SPORTS RADIO is quite lucrative to the station because sports in general is huge; big business jock radio dominates the media landscape even if you're not inclined to follow sports; that said, the revenue streams that are generated make gargantuan globs of money for local and national outlets.

The Giants are healthy money makers for KNBR and Cumulus even if the team stinks; they drive the car and butter the bread; so to, the 49ers. Relationships are vital to the cog that brings in the big dough; the GM; the star players and non-star players do frequent interviews on their respective flagship station. KNBR relies on its weekly chat with Kyle Shanahan, 49ers coach; John Lynch; its GM also does the talk circuit. Teams around the league and their home stations have similar relationships. It's called business and it benefits both.

Except for the Raiders and Entercom and its stations; KCBS (all news and carrier of Raiders' football games on Sunday) and 95.7 FM (The Game)

Jon Gruden, that coach racking up the big money (at $10M a year for 10 years) doesn't do a Monday call-in show with PM drive host, Damon Bruce even though he's contractually obligated; by extension, so too the Raiders. It's to the point now that Bruce routinely rips Gruden and the Raiders about this situation --I don't know if that's good business to air your dirty laundry but I applaud Bruce for being honest because the Raiders, even in good times, are absolutely the WORST sports franchise in the world to conduct business with; Entercom and its minions are experiencing this for the first time and are both embarrassed and royally ticked off.

Beyond the obvious discomfort is the fact that the Raiders horrific act on and off the field is bad business for their broadcast partner; try to sell Raiders' football now when the team is one foot out the door in Oakland and headed to Las Vegas probably next year (playing in a college stadium when the new one will be ready, maybe, in 2020).

Damon Bruce

Gruden doesn't do any shows. The worst part is the Raiders organization doesn't care and almost flaunts its giddiness --some things will never change.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

"The Game:" has a lame duck Raiders and a soon-departed Oakland A's who will leave its flagship come 2019. As Susan Slusser of the Chronicle reported the A's will be on a more franchise-friendly station --maybe KFRC if they can buy the current religious station; or snatch up some AM or FM outlet that will actually talk about the team. 95.7 FM hosts rarely talk A's baseball even when the team shined like it did this year.

Yes, frankly in good times, the A's don't generate the same traction as do the Giants but given the fact that KNBR is so embedded with the Giants that's never been surprising.

To its credit, KNBR builds its entire talk structure around the team. The A's haven't been able to garner that treatment with The Game. It's unpleasant if you're an Athletics fan but it's fact.

Then again, with the Raiders about to become extinct on their Entercom client and the A's on a different station for 2019, that leaves the Warriors as the only sports team (and a golden one) left.

Good sports-talk radio is mostly host-oriented but having teams on the domain not only brings in more money and revenue streams, but prestige too. That counts both ways. Just ask KNBR and Cumulus during the Giants' run of championships in 2010, '12, and '14.

ESPN 'MNF' show loses cachet; crew good, but NFL staple just another game; Monday PM pulse

ESPN's signature NFL show, "Monday Night Football", makes a rare appearance in SF tonight as the 49ers play the Arizona Cardinals.

No longer the marquee, appointment-TV it used to command, MNF is now just another football game, albeit the only game on the schedule. While it still possesses a modicum of strong football-fan interest, it no longer has the buzz factor of the Sunday night game on NBC, and it long ago lost any semblance of the 70's, 80's, early-90's inertia of Cosell, Meredith and Gifford.

Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and ex-Raiders/Tampa coach, Jon Gruden, are all adequate and competent broadcasters and ESPN has never seen higher ratings, but the game's nexus is still the game. There is no non-football histrionics and the only pop-culture smidgen of non-NFL minutiae consists of the Hank Williams Jr. opening theme song, which has become contrived itself. (You'd think Williams Jr. could compose something a bit more creative and different as opposed to highlighting the various NFL cities--bet he's got one shot of the GG Bride tonight)

Out of the three, Tirico is the best. His straight-forward play-by-play and strong command of the broadcast is usually very good and concise. On the negative side, Ron, "jaws" Jaworski is way too technical and inside-football, and new-comer Gruden, while obviously knowledgeable of players and the x's and o's, has a habit of over-talking and stating the obvious.

Too bad, also, ESPN lacks the production savvy of NBC's Sunday night game. Just take a look at the replays, the camera angles of the field and the crispness and visual clarity of their performance versus ESPN's. It's not even close, particularly when viewing the games in high-definition.

Nevertheless, the game itself still has a gridiron luster and the New England--New Orleans game a few weeks back drew one of the biggest cable audiences in history.

**ESPN Monday Night Football
5: 30 PST (Comcast Cable channel 38/KPIX-CBS5)
SF 49ers vs. Arizona Cardinals

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