After five years broadcasting live from the Hootie & the Blowfish Monday After the Masters Celebrity Pro-Am, ESPN’s Mike & Mike radio show won’t be returning this upcoming April.
Instead, at least four Westwood One sports talk radio shows on CBS Sports Radio and NBC Sports Radio running from morning to night will take its place on April 11 at the Barefoot Resort Dye Club.
Marketing cooperative Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, which sponsors and helps operate the Hootie MAM, is referring to the series of shows as “radio row.”
Radio shows scheduled to broadcast live from the event are CBS shows Gio & Jones from 6-9 a.m., Tiki & Tierney from 9 a.m.-noon, and Doug Gottlieb from 3-6 p.m. One of NBC’s daily sports talk shows will also broadcast live, though it hasn’t been named. Golf Holiday president Bill Golden said it might be a new show that has yet to be announced.
“Working with ESPN was great for Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and great for the event. We felt it might be time for a change,” Golden said. “The idea was to create a radio row atmosphere so we’re not relegated to one particular window. We’re capturing the morning audience, midday and afternoon audience. The idea was to spread it out throughout the day with different personalities and different shows.”
Mike & Mike, which is aired simultaneously on ESPN Radio and the ESPN2 television network, has broadcast its 6-10 a.m. show for the past five years from the back of the Dye Club’s first tee, though it was forced inside the Dye clubhouse in 2014 by inclement weather.
The presence of the sports talk radio shows at the Dye Club is part of a media advertising purchase by Golf Holiday that also includes more than 1,500 commercials and mentions during Westwood One sports shows. Some will be specific to the tournament, some will promote Myrtle Beach as a destination and others will feature specific Golf Holiday members.
The change is an attempt to capture a different and maybe larger audience. Golden said the new media buy with Westwood One will reach 187 markets compared to 180 with ESPN, and 667 station affiliates vs. 424 with ESPN.
“ESPN does a wonderful job and Mike & Mike are iconic brands in the morning radio marketplace,” Golden said, “but we felt this was a more efficient targeted buy for us. It provided us additional spots, provided us additional opportunities for our member properties to participate and gain exposure, and it’s something different. We always need to keep pushing it and try to understand how we can do things differently and target different audiences and times of day, and do something different at the event itself.”
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