Vegas NHL team to get the silent act
In April, the Las Vegas Golden Knights announced their games would be aired locally on radio stations owned by Lotus Communications, namely its Fox Sports Radio affiliate that has signals on both the AM and FM dials.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Lotus beat out bids from CBS Radio Las Vegas and Beasley Broadcasting for the right to air the NHL expansion team’s games and related radio content such as pregame and postgame shows.
CBS Radio Las Vegas apparently has not gotten over this rejection. Last week, operations manager J.B. King sent out an email to all CBS Radio Las Vegas employees telling them that, in their world, the Golden Knights do not exist.
Longtime Las Vegas broadcast journalist Ron Futrell posted the email on his website:
To: CR Las Vegas All Employees
“Just wanted to pass along this info….a decision has been made that effective immediately, there are to be no further mentions of the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team on any CBS/LV radio stations or any of our social media platforms. This includes, but not limited to, on sale ticket mentions, player/coaches interviews, plugging locals to sing national anthem, TV broadcast schedule, etc. It is now the responsibility of the Golden Knights’ chosen radio partner to help accomplish their goals, not ours. We are asking you to include ‘show’ pages, as well. We need to show a united front on this issue. If you have anything already planned around the team, please cancel. If you have any ‘best of’ bits around the team, please do not air and find another piece of content.
“Thanks, Have a great week. JB.”
According to Futrell, only one of CBS Radio Las Vegas’ six stations deals specifically with sports, and it does not have much in the way of local content, instead delivering CBS Sports Radio’s national shows and, strangely enough, broadcasts of Chicago Cubs games. But still, the six stations will ignore Las Vegas’ first professional sports team.
“We have a lot of other things to cover, the Knights don’t work into our coverage,” Tony Perlongo, general manager of CBS Radio Las Vegas, told Futrell. “We have an amazing amount of content. We support their [the Golden Knights] success in the marketplace, but that will depend on their partnership that they’ve already developed.”
Not even the team’s scores?
“We don’t really give the scores of sporting events as it is,” said Perlongo, although Futrell notes that his stations do indeed mention Cubs scores and those of other Las Vegas sports teams (UNLV and the Las Vegas 51s minor league baseball team, for instance).
Irish throwbacks
Notre Dame unveiled throwback uniforms as a tribute to legendary Fighting Irish coach Knute Rockne on Friday.
The Rockne Heritage uniforms — which will use the Notre Dame logo inspired by the one Rockne wore as a player in 1912 — will be featured when the school faces Navy on Nov. 18.
The uniform will include Rockne’s famed “Win one for the Gipper” speech on the sleeves of the jerseys, three stars on the back as a nod to Rockne’s three national titles as coach and brown cleats that simulate the leather cleats used in the era.
Rockne, who served as an assistant after his playing days at Notre Dame, led the Fighting Irish as head coach for 13 seasons (1918-1930). In March 1931, Rockne died in a plane crash in Kansas. He was 43.