The time Rich launched two radio stations in 10 days!

Before the 2019 baseball season, Entercom Radio and CBS Radio merged into what is now known as Audacy Radio. With the merger, the San Diego cluster that was the Padres rightsholder gained new stations. 97.3 FM became a talk station that year. Originally named 973 The Machine, the station became 973 the Fan after the Machine stubbed its toe coming out of the box. Rich had spent months after the merger building the station. However, after some initial controversy, the nontraditional format was a hybrid of classic rock, hot talk, and sports play-by-play. Rich was asked to regroup and relaunch a traditional sports station 7 days later. He re-wrote all the imaging on the fly, retrained the staff into the new format, and got baseball on the air. The result was 973 the Fan.

After the first season of Padres baseball on the Fan, Rich added high school football to the format to create grassroots marketing opportunities for 973 The Fan. It was a huge success. At that time, Rich identified hot zips for the station, including one in the outlining section of San Diego County. Rich looked through the high school football schedule and found a date for the station to broadcast a game from that hot zip. Rich reached out to the local officials at the High School and made numerous visits to the community. The small town embraced the idea of having their team showcases on the radio station for all of San Diego to hear. The School made reverse calls to the entire community to tell them to tune into the game. The local weekly paper wrote articles about the station’s midday host. The locals took Rich around to meet local officials. He learned that there was a recent graduate from the School who was diagnosed with cancer and needed a bone marrow transplant. The town was too small to have anyone help with a bone marrow registration drive. Rich contacted the National Bone Marrow registration organization and offered to be the media sponsor of a drive to raise awareness of their needs. Rich committed to bringing all the local talk shows to town to make it a day-long event to give it an ESPN Gameday feel. 973 the Fan jumped into the Top 5 in the market for Men 25-54 after his promotion and grassroots efforts. 

Rich continued to raise the station’s ratings, keying on hot zip codes and building his database. He used micro-targeted social media contests based on research in hot zip codes using prizes like Las Vegas trips, UCLA Sideline passes, and Rolling Stone tickets to win listeners to drive ratings.

The station brought Jim Rome back to San Diego for remotes to further establish itself as the town’s most prominent sports station. By 2019, The Fan had overtaken all-sports radio and established itself as the number-one ONE RADIO STATION MEN 25-54 IN THE MARKET.