SPORTS RADIO FILLS AIRWAVES : 2 New Shows Ready for One on One With KFMB’s Leaders

Good morning, sports fans. With two new teams in the audio ballpark, squaring off against the perennial champ, this season’s pennant race for San Diego radio stations with sports talk shows promises to be a heated one.

Once again, KFMB-AM (760) is the odds-on favorite to capture the division title. The adult-contemporary station fields two call-in sports talk shows, “Ted Leitner Padre Talk” and Dave Campbell’s “Tenth Inning.”

After eight years, the wordy Leitner is still his team’s star attraction. According to the latest Arbitron survey, his show, which airs from 6 to 6:45 p.m. before each weekday Padres game, draws a whopping 10.9% of available radio listeners and is the top-rated local radio program, period.

This season, however, a pair of rookie teams are hoping to beat the odds and wrest the pennant from KFMB.

In June, Vista news-talk station KVSD-AM (1000) persuaded verbal pinch-hitting veteran Jerry Gross to come out of retirement to host “Jerry Gross Hotline Sports,” which airs weekdays from 5 to 7 p.m.

On Aug. 31, oldies station XTRA-AM (69 XTRA Gold) plunged into the race with “San Diego Sportsnight.” As the show’s host, former Phoenix sportscaster Lee Hamilton goes up to bat at the telephones each weeknight from 6 to 8.

KFMB’s victory used to come easy: The station’s two sports talk shows were the only ones in town.

But this year, with two new teams in the league, it’s a whole new ballgame, said KFMB program director Mark Larson.

Still, Larson added, he’s not the least bit worried.

“Every once in a while, you see two or three new sports talk shows in the market, but they rarely make much of an impact, and eventually they go away,” Larson said.

“It’s a cyclical thing, and because KFMB’s commitment to sports radio is so much longer, and stronger, than any other station in San Diego, we continually beat the competition.”

Another reason KFMB has consistently “beat the competition,” Larson added, is that the station’s two sports talk shows are directly tied in with live broadcasts of Padres baseball games.

Both Leitner’s pre-game and Campbell’s hourlong post-game shows, Larson said, begin and end with the March-to-October baseball season.

“By tacking our talk shows onto live sportscasts, we make a kamikaze run,” Larson said. “We zero in on a specific audience and talk about stuff that’s happening that day.

“Dave talks about the Padres, while Ted’s conversation might shift to the Chargers, the Aztecs, or his marital life. But both shows are successful because they’re topical.”

Other stations, Larson added, “try to go year-round with sports--and that’s something you just can’t do in this town.”

“Without a hook, without a sense of immediacy, you’re fighting an uphill battle,” he added. “And by tying in with the Padres, for example, we’re able to talk about something a majority of people are interested in, right when it’s happening.

“Broadcasting year-round, on the other hand, is the kiss of death for anyone who’s hosting a sports talk show. If you go (on) every night, sooner or later the only thing you’ll have to talk about is some college basketball team back East and what size shoes they wear.”

Larson’s counterparts at KVSD and 69 XTRA Gold disagree.

“The reason we started ‘Jerry Gross Hotline Sports’ is because we sensed a tremendous void in this market for a general sports talk show,” said KVSD program director Gary McEvoy.

“San Diego is the nation’s seventh-largest city, and we have major-league teams in every major sport. That’s why Jerry talks about anything that’s hot in sports--not just about the Padres.

“One day he might do a remote from the Chargers’ training camp; the next, he might cover a Len Bias story in Maryland. San Diegans are very sports-conscious, and I’m convinced they’re interested in a lot more than simply the Padres.”

McEvoy’s views are shared by Jim LaMarca, program director of 69 XTRA Gold. The station recently signed a $6-million contract that gives it exclusive broadcast rights to all Chargers games for the next five years.

And even when the football season is over, LaMarca said, he’s confident Hamilton, who also does play-by-play for the Chargers, will have plenty of things to talk about.

“San Diegans who are interested in sports aren’t single-entity fans,” LaMarca said. “So the way we designed the show, the listeners pick the topics.

“If they’re bored with baseball, we’re going to talk about basketball; if they’re bored with basketball, we’re going to talk about football, or whatever else they want to talk about.”

Hamilton is even more succinct: “There’s more to sports than the Padres. And if Mark Larson disagrees, tell him to call me in six months and say what I’m doing isn’t successful.”