Gough: Now it’s nothing but radio silence for Quincy when it comes to high school sports broadcasts

QUINCY — For the first time in nearly 80 years, you can’t listen to Quincy High School or Quincy Notre Dame sports on your radio (if you still have one of those).

Muddy River News learned last week that WTAD-AM, one of five local radio stations owned by STARadio Corporation, has dropped its high school sports programming.

WTAD is approaching 100 years of broadcasting and began carrying the Blue Devils’ and Raiders’ games shortly after World War II. KZZK-FM and WQCY-FM, both STARadio stations, carried Blue Devil basketball in the 1990s and early 2000s. WTAD had been the home of QND sports for decades, with the company being committed to carrying all boys basketball and football games until the last few years.

Bill Jones, general manager for STARadio Quincy, recently told staffers the station would not carry games this season. Last season, WTAD carried Friday night high school football games and sporadic basketball games for QND and QHS, with a “Game Night” broadcast team consisting of play-by-play announcer David Adam and color analyst Chad Duesterhaus on the air along with producer Bruce Terstegge.

Jones, who lives in Alabama and visits STARadio properties in Quincy and Kankakee occasionally, did not return messages left by Muddy River News inquiring about the reasoning behind ending the station’s long-standing tradition of high school sports broadcasts.

STARadio also appears to be facing a staffing crunch. Longtime Program Director Steve Boll retired in December. He handled the bulk of the scheduling and organization of the production of local broadcasts. After his retirement, that task fell on the shoulders of Quaid as the WTAD program director.

Paul Aberli, known on the air as Quaid, recently left STARradio after 23 years to go across town to TownSquare Media.

WGEM-AM first went on the radio January 1, 1948. Its last air date was June 24, 2022. The FM station switched its programming to sports in March 2023, but it no longer carries high school sports broadcasts. The company streams Quincy High School football and basketball on its website, and it also carries Quincy University football and men’s and women’s basketball on the radio.

Quincy always had a stable of outstanding radio sports announcers, including the late Bill King, who called games on WTAD before eventually being the voice of the Oakland A’s and the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s and 80s. Jim Roberts, Boots Bush, Jeff Myers, Mike Lawrence, Mike Moyers, Jeff Dorsey and Ron Kinscherf called games for decades, some WTAD and WGEM and some on both. Many of them ended up in the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Quincy Notre Dame has created “The Raider Sports Network” on YouTube, and veteran broadcaster Eric Ervin provides the play-by-play on those games via Internet streaming. QND created that network last season for basketball, and it will stream football games this year for the first time.

Central Illinois Sports provides a video stream of area games on YouTube. So does the BC Hornet Sports Network. (There may be others. Let us know who we might be missing.)

TownSquare Media broadcasts high school games on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, primarily for Hannibal and Palmyra teams. However, long-time broadcasting staple KRES-KWIX-KIRK out of Moberly pulled the plug on its sports broadcasting earlier this year and most of its local radio content.

While Muddy River Sports has no intention of entering the live game streaming realm, it will debut Muddy Night Lights, a two-hour live show about local high school football games at 10 p.m. Fridays on the MRN YouTube and Facebook pages and MuddyRiver.tv starting Aug. 30.

Local radio station operators have claimed they “haven’t made money” on local sports for years, but they have also greatly reduced their local news content, shifting primarily to nationally syndicated programming.

They forget they were given the public trust of the airwaves to serve their communities.

When radio stations cut to the bone and fail to provide information and content the public wants and needs, perhaps the Federal Communications Commission should review them and determine if they are still worthy of having their broadcast licenses.

J. Robert Gough is the publisher/general manager of Muddy River News.