Our full-time land-line distribution system, leased from AT&T, afforded us revenue opportunities in that we could sub-lease the system to others. One such entity was the Kansas City Chiefs. The flagship radio station was Kansas City’s KCMO which made its money off local ad sales and didn’t concentrate on a network. So I approached them about letting us run the Chiefs Radio Network. We put together a group of stations during the summer of 1977 and began selling the product to advertisers. Sales were hard because the affiliate list was anemic, the affiliates were all concentrated around Kansas City (surprise), and advertisers didn’t get KCMO as part of their package; that they had to buy separately.
After one year, I went back to KCMO and negotiated a new deal–one that paid us to simply distribute on Sunday afternoons. They must have done poorly as well, because the following year they returned to us to try to negotiate something more lucrative for them. I passed. And, we were out of professional football.
Unlike college football, professional football seems to be a big-city concentrate. Perhaps its because of the well distributed alumni base, or maybe universities have state-wide appeal in many cases. Whatever the reason, we never returned to selling professional football. It remains lack-lustre to me.