So why in the world would a large radio station in Pittsburgh known primarily for news, talk radio and traffic reports want to take a head-first dive into WPIAL high school sports?
“That’s an easy question to answer,” said KDKA radio boss Michael Spacciapolli, whose official title is Audacy Pittsburgh vice president and market manager. “People here say all the time that high school sports mean so much to communities and they are basically the heartbeat of some communities. And that’s what KDKA has been over 100 years: the heartbeat of some communities. So it was a natural marriage.”
A marriage? Maybe. But natural? Not quite.
A number of smaller radio stations in Western Pa., have been airing high school sports contests for ages. But it’s not often you see, er, hear large radio stations in bigger cities get so involved in high school sports coverage. KDKA (1020-AM) was the first commercial radio station in the country, has been around since 1920 and is a 50,000 watt station. Although it’s AM, it can be heard far and wide — and the station added an FM signal (100.1) two years ago.
Spacciapolli, known to everyone simply as Spacc, grew up outside of Buffalo (Fredonia, N.Y.) and has only lived in the Pittsburgh area since 2007 (he is also the boss of The Fan 93.7). But in his time in Western Pa., he noticed what has a certain niche market — high school sports. So, it was about five years ago that he started getting ideas about KDKA getting much more involved in the coverage of WPIAL sports. It’s not like KDKA is now up to their neck in high school sports. But they are certainly at least waste high and testing the waters more and more.
And get this: They even got former TV sportscaster John Fedko out of retirement to host a high school football pregame show on Friday nights.
Fedko is just one more example of KDKA’s desire to do more with high school sports. And it’s nice to see a station of KDKA’s size trying such a venture.
Get a load of what KDKA is doing this school year:
• There will be a Friday night football game of the week. The schedule has already been decided and the slate includes some top-notch contests with strong teams and well-known players. Dan Zangrilli, who also does Pirates pregame and postgame shows on The Fan, and John Lee will be the announcers for the games. But part of the station’s game-of-the-week coverage will include videos and other posts on the station’s social media platforms.
• Fedko will host a pregame show from 6 to 7 p.m. every Friday.
“John kind of revolutionized high school football highlights on TV around here, so we took a shot at getting him and it worked out,” Spacciapolli said.
• A high school football show will be broadcast every Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. The show, which yours truly will be part of, will be aired live on location from Shooters Golf in McCandless and players and coaches from one WPIAL team will be on the show every week from Shooters.
• KDKA also plans to broadcast a high school basketball game of the week on Fridays. The station started a basketball game of the week last season, which was unheard of for a large Pittsburgh station. It went over so well that the station hopes to expand coverage this year.
• KDKA will also pick a “Super Seven” all-star team for football and boys and girls basketball at the end of their seasons. The “Super Seven” will consist of a player of the year for all six WPIAL classifications and the City League. A banquet to honor the players also is in the works.
“We think this is as close as you’ll find to college GameDay coverage on the high school level,” Spacciapolli said. “And we have some ideas to make it bigger in the future.”
With things such as music streaming and AirPods, one might wonder if many teenagers ever turn on the radio much these days? But that is exactly the audience KDKA is after. But it’s not just using the radio station to try and reach the younger audience. KDKA also is available on the Audacy app.
“From the level of awareness and engagement, we can reach such a wide demographic with high school sports,” Spacciapolli said. “We’re introducing KDKA to a younger audience that may not have known we even existed. We’ve introduced KDKA to a middle-age demographic that might have listened here and there. Plus, it touches our older demographic that we’ve always had. And we can reach with many different platforms. We have a whole staff of people working on different platforms.”
But two main questions are: Is anybody listening and is high school sports programming worth it financially for the station? Spacciapolli answers with a resounding yes to both. KDKA secured Allegheny Health Network to be a major sponsor for the game of the week this year.
“That partnership took us to another level,” Spacciapolli said. “I don’t want to get too specific with ratings, but the high school related programs have been double and sometimes triple the ratings of traditional programming that would’ve normally been on.”
Spacciapolli said the station was shocked at how well the basketball game of the week was received last year.
“There were packed gyms when schools knew they were the game of the week. The engagement blew us away,” Spacciapolli said. “I mean, Royce Parham [of North Hills] made the Post-Gazette Fabulous 5 and he said in the Post-Gazette article that the most memorable moment of the season was when they beat Pine-Richland in the KDKA game of the week. How great is that?
“I don’t know if high school sports works everywhere. But it works here.”
Mike White: mwhite@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mwhiteburgh
First Published: August 25, 2022, 9:00 a.m.
Updated: August 25, 2022, 10:16 a.m.
