How Rich turned an AM Classic Country Radio Station into the home of the University of Arizona Wildcats. 

Citadel Broadcasting / Fox Sports Radio 1290 KPI

• Build a 24-hour-a-day sports station in Tucson, Arizona, with little to no invested resources. 
• Build content that can be used to drive traffic. 
• Win the play-by-play rights for the Univeristy of Arizona Football and Men’s Basketball. 

KCUB AM1290 was a heritage classic country radio station in Tucson, Arizona. In 2001, Citadel Broadcasting purchased the station from a local operator and changed the format to sports radio. It signed on a new Fox Sports Radio affiliate. I joined the station shortly after and was the first Program Director of the new station. After being a national and major market talk show host for years, it was my first programming role. I was given the keys to the station and asked to build a world-class sports station that would be capable of bidding on the rights to the University of Arizona broadcasts a few later. The trick was that I was given little to no resources to start this new venture.

I built the station from the ground up, including our imaging, station promotions, programming, and sales programs. We started a local afternoon sports talk show and began actively covering all U of A sports to create a connection to the athletic department. We gave little-covered programs a platform. We invited the Volleyball, women’s golf coach, and anyone else we could find to come on the air. We gave the baseball and softball coaches their own radio shows, just like the flagship did for football and Men’s Basketball. We started doing our pre-and post-game shows without having the play-by-play rights to demonstrate our capability of being the flagship one day. I hired Larry Smith, the former Football Head Coach, and Jason. Stewert, a former Wildcats basketball player, works at the station.

We began attacking the incumbent Wildcats flagship and disrupting the market. We used the positioning statement “Fox Sports Radio 1290 The Home of the Wildcat Fans”. We began broadcasting shows from popular bars and restaurants right off campus. We ran appointment-setting promos reminding fans to tune into “The Pregame Show on 1290”. We took as many shows on the road to leave our signage and banners all over town. Fans began asking what station carried the games.

We partnered with IMG/Learfield to bid on the rights to the U of A and were awarded the play-by-play rights in 2004. In just three years, I built a station from scratch that took the rights away from the heritage station that had had them for 25 years.