By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

Only too happy to trumpet their accomplishment in originally arranging an 11-station, multi-state, multi-million-dollar deal, Entercom has been mostly silent in confessing that the deal is dead.

As Scott Fybush reported (No. 10A in his countdown) and Clea Simon furthered (with Lou Mercatanti’s reaction), Entercom and Mercatanti’s Nassau Broadcasting will not be doing business together and the WEEI empire will remain as is, at least for now. It seems that true-survivor WCRB 99.5 FM also will remain intact – at least for now.

As of late Thursday afternoon, Entercom was still working on what must be a carefully crafted/much scrutinized statement to explain (or excuse) how the deal that was originally trumpeted with a letter of intent announcement on August 16, 2007, ultimately fell through. As recently as late-October the deal was still a “go” and Nassau had designated its New Hampshire line-up shuffle which was to commence this month.

At the time of the LOI’s revelation, John Dennis and Gerry Callahan were in the midst of an increasingly-public (and uglyish) holdout and rumors were flying about all sorts of new and exciting opportunities for D&C.

However, when the Nassau deal was announced by Entercom somewhat smugly and smack dab in the middle of the D&C nastiness, it is believed that D&C’s best other option (Nassau) dried up. The saga didn’t end for another three weeks when D&C finally took a nice long beach walk hand-in-hand with Jason Wolfe and Julie Kahn into the New Balance building, but the Nassau Coup sealed everyone’s fate and ensured a D&C kiss-and-make-up with Entercom and ‘EEI.

That “coup” by Entercom is now likely to be viewed (at least here) as nothing more than a diversionary tactic that got D&C locked up for multiple years and did the equivalent of a Four Corners offense by stalling Boston Sports Talk Radio’s evolution for an entire business quarter (Oct.-Dec.).

Maybe Entercom really intended to go through with the Nassau deal. But they were much more concerned with retaining their Morning Men and when that happened, the expansion into new territory took on less importance.

The result could very well mean that the quickly-stifled WBOS 92.9 rumblings may re-emerge and it could also mean that 890 AM – weak signal and all – will now be worth something to someone who could relieve Jessamy Tang of her stagnant and seemingly sinking ESPN-affiliate. ‘EEI would have been dominant in the new configuration, instead they remain simply pervasive and, in the eyes of some, vulnerable for a challenge from a well-resourced competitor (which Tang’s Gang clearly isn’t).

. . . Wolfe and Kahn, for once, have very little to do with this bungled situation (see: METCO, Howie Carr, et al). Deal-kyboshing happens at a much higher level than in the Wolfe’s Den or in Kahn’s Castle and this arrangement had to have broken down because someone got greedy or someone got frugal. Or both.

. . . One of the spins we heard on Thursday was that there was some FCC snafus in New Hampshire that held up the deal. The delay then allowed one of the parties (likely Entercom) to reconsider and re-assess.

We found that far-fetched.

We did some poking around at the FCC site but weren’t able to sniff up any pertinent documents involving Nassau or Entercom for the time period between August and now. Feel free to scavenge around.

But the above-linked announcement from October would seem to indicate a November or early December dissolution of the deal.

• The NECN.com launch clearly has come too early as the ‘Blogs’ tab is still “Coming Soon,” upon click-through and the Sports page is a compilation of stories you wouldn’t watch on TV, never mind seek out on the Web.

Said NECN GM Charles J. Kravetz to the Herald: “This is not simply a rehash of what is on NECN.” When complete, he said, “it will be a standalone, legitimate news source. . . ”

That’s great, but for now it’s a must-skip destination and one that has very little potential to lure us back if past blog attempts on the sports side at the station are any indication. Just because you do a re-launch and throw around some buzz words and shekels, it doesn’t mean you become a viable website. It surely doesn’t mean that you should unveil a new product before it’s ready for public consumption.

. . . Very doubtful that NESN would follow the NECN tactic and launch an independent site of its own. Too many tangled webs with the Sox and the Globe.

• Don’t tell Steve Buckley, but the apathy toward UMass basketball is pretty stunning, as Shots witnessed on Wednesday night.

• One-time Shots’ radio partner Mike Salk makes his national ESPN Radio debut on Saturday night from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. (EST) on the mothership’s Weekend GameNight offering. Salk will be taking the spot of another Boston-Guy-Gone-Bristol, Ryen Russillo and will team for the marathon shift with Amy Lawrence (or better yet, here).

The NFL playoff weekend, six hour stint will be both a great opportunity for Salk and a great test of his surgically scraped right vocal cord.

“Dr. Neil Bhattacharyya took out a peanut-sized (de-shelled), benign polyp about two months ago,” said Salk, who has also begun hosting a hockey show two nights a week at ESPN 890. “It’s the same surgery Dick Vitale and Gerry Callahan had. For the first days after the surgery, I carried around a Dry-Erase white board to talk to people.”

Not exactly a great way to do radio, Salk said. But he managed.

A former cigarette smoker and constant yeller (we’d guess) as an adolescent and young adult, Salk was told his recovery would take “three weeks to talk and six weeks to project.” As a reporter and part-time host at 890, Salk was not able to adhere to that timetable, but he is sounding stronger and less raspy than he was pre-surgery.

Might be worth tuning in to 890 AM around midnight Saturday to see if Salk is using the Dry Erase to communicate with Lawrence.

• Any chance Babbling Bob Lobel’s arm sling could be fashioned into a muzzle?

• Looks like old Peabody chum and Shots Friend of Note, Gary Gulman is getting in cahoots with Original NESN Entertainment (ONE). (The same Joel Feld arm of the Network that brought us “Sox Appeal.”) Probably something along the lines of “Last Sox Comix Standing.”
This from Gulman’s emailing list on Thursday. (Check out the email address for tickets.):

Jan 3rd 2008 8:16pm

Here is a great event for Gary’s fans!

Gary will be hosting a stand-up comedy TV series that is being taped in Boston on January 13th through 17th. The taping will be at 7:30 and tickets are FREE!

To get tickets please email NESNcomedyshow@yahoo.com and please state what date you would like to attend and the number of tickets you would like.

Thanks,
The Newsletter Team

• We reached our What Were They thinkings
• We caught some of Sean McDonough doing ESPN Radio’s broadcast of Wednesday’s Fiesta Bowl and it further reminded us of just how good Will’s Kid is and always has been.

McDonough was so good, in fact, that he was able to make up for the ever-annoying Bob Davie who is constantly trying to sound smarter than he is - and failing miserably with each extended opening of his mouth.

The highlight was when McDonough did everything but call Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops a buffoon for his team’s botched on-side kick. Davie weakly concurred, but it was McDonough (on play-by-play, mind you) who had the sense to call out Stoops.

• Shots was recently reminded of another potential hire for the Comcast SportsNet sports department: ex-Channel 56 (WLVI) sports guy, Mike Ratte. A Rhode Island-native, Ratte is currently at the Hartford NBC affiliate (WVIT) on weekends with fill-in duties during the week.

Ratte would offer a familiar face and a likable presence for the upstart CSN news-gathering group that we expect to see emerge around the time of Spring Training.

• The parade of Patriots to the NFL studio shows continues this Sunday on ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” as New England Patriots defensive lineman Richard Seymour “joins the crew as a special in-studio guest Sunday at 11 a.m. . .”

Pats’ players have been regulars as satellite guests on the NFL Network Game of the Week the over the past month. Probably not helping the “We Hate the Pats” sentiment spreading far and wide.

• Wonder if there will be any fallout from the Herald and Karen Guregian forcing the AP’s hand in announcing the Belichick Coach of the Year award on Thursday. As an AP-subscriber, I’m guessing there was some back-and-forth between Herald folk and AP peeps about the matter.

The spoiler story by Guregian was a well-timed, well-executed bye-week story perfect for a tabloid in any city.

. . . Just to clarify, the Guregian piece ID’d Dan Pompei of being with the Sporting News - Pompei is with the Chicago Tribune and has been all season. A small error, but one worth correcting.

• Probably a good example of admitting they were wrong, the Providence Journal will now cover all of the state university’s nationally-ranked, men’s basketball outfit. Said ProJo editor Art Martone in an email to Shots: “Yes, we’re back on the road with URI starting Jan. 1. Actually, we were also at Syracuse with them. . . and, of course, at BC. The road games we missed were the Florida tournament in November and the just-concluded tournament in Texas. From here on in, we’ll be at every road game. Paul Kenyon’s on the beat full-time.”

• We’re still getting word that the Pats’ radio team will not stay intact over the off-season.

We’re still praying it’s true.

• We’ve got work (Kansas-BC for CSTV.com’s Posting Up blog) and pleasure plans, but you’d be a fool not to get to some portion of Hot Stove ‘08. I gotta admit: Lori McKenna does a lot more for me than Brian Cashman. But that’s me: “Unglamorous.”

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmediaDOTcom.

His work – and weekly college hoops report card – for CSTV.com can be found at the Hang Time blog on Mondays and The Glass Sneaker throughout the week. You can also listen for the weekly Professor’s Podcast, also at CSTV.com in iTunes at The Daily Buzz.