Packers Radio Network

The Packers Radio Network is a broadcast

The Packers radio network was previously with WTMJ, which has broadcast the games since November 24, 1929, and was the former flagship station of Journal Communications until the E. W. Scripps Company and Journal completed their broadcast merger and publishing spin-off on April 1, 2015 (Good Karma took over WTMJ's operations on November 1, 2018 upon Scripps' second withdrawal from radio).^[1] It was one of the few arrangements where a team's flagship radio station was not based in their home market and the local station served as a network affiliate only, as WTMJ's signal to Green Bay and most of Wisconsin's population centers is city-grade. Meanwhile, the rights for Packers games in the Green Bay are held by Midwest Communications's WIXX, with Midwest Communications acquiring the Fox Cities rights to the team in 2022 for WYDR, resolving an oddity in the network where former Fox Cities affiliate WAPL transmits from the same tower site as WIXX.^[2]

In situations where Milwaukee Brewers baseball playoff games conflicted with Packers games (WTMJ and Good Karma Brands originate that team's broadcasts as the Brewers Radio Network) in September and October, WTMJ's FM sister station WKTI (94.5) originated the games in Milwaukee, with other stations in the Packers Radio Network continuing to determine how to carry both games, depending on whether they have a sister station to broadcast both games.

Though its broadcasts began in 1929, WTMJ did not begin paying the Packers for broadcast rights until 1943; it paid the team $7500 to broadcast the season. In the early 1930s, there was no exclusive right given to broadcast games, and WHBY, then based in Green Bay, often sent its own announcers to call the game. From 1933 to 1936, three additional stations carried WTMJ's radio broadcasts of Packer games: WLBL in Stevens Point (a non-commercial station owned by the state commerce department decades before the creation of Wisconsin Public Radio), WTAQ in Green Bay and WKBH in La Crosse. WSAW in Wausau and WJMS in Ironwood, Michigan started carrying the feed in 1937.^[3]

On October 27, 2021, the Packers announced that its longtime association with WTMJ would end at the end of the season, and that it had signed a deal with iHeartMedia to make sports radio station "The Game", WRNW (97.3), the team's new Milwaukee radio affiliate in 2022. Packers broadcasts already aired on iHeartMedia stations in Madison, Wisconsin, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Moline, Illinois. Production of the Packers Radio Network had been transferred from WTMJ to the team in 2018.^[4]

Extended technical details

Two internal

WRNW is the current Milwaukee station airing Learfield coverage of Wisconsin Badgers sports, and its sister stations WOKY (920) and WRIT-FM (95.7) already handle conflict situations between the Badger football and men's basketball teams, giving the Packers contractually-steady coverage throughout the season on WRNW on a full-market FM signal (through full-market stations and FM translators of AM stations and migration of AM stations over to full-power FM stations, Packers play-by-play has shifted to that band throughout the network, as with most of the league's teams). The shift away from WTMJ (whose transmitter is based in the Racine County community of Union Grove, de facto giving Racine and Kenosha a very strong signal) also compelled the team to add a Racine/Kenosha station to the network for the first time in WRJN to make up for WRNW's transmitter position being stronger to the north in the market than the south.^[2]

Announcers

• Russ Winnie: 1929–1957
• Ted Moore: 1958–1969
• Jim Irwin: 1969–1998
• Gary Bender: 1970–1974
• Lionel Aldridge: 1975–1979
• Max McGee: 1979–1998
• Larry McCarren: 1995–present
• Wayne Larrivee: 1999–present^[6][7]

Station list

Blue background indicates low-power FM translator.

References