With the 2022 National Football League fast approaching, a major announcement was made Wednesday morning regarding the radio broadcast rights to Washington Commanders games in 2022 and beyond. As first announced on The Team 980’s The Kevin Sheehan Show in Washington, D.C., Commanders football games will no longer be broadcast over Audacy stations, including The Team 980 and sister station 106.7 The Fan, along with 910 The Fan in Richmond, Va.
In the announcement, Sheehan cited a disagreement between Audacy and the Commanders organization regarding “the value of the broadcasts” as one of the reasons for the split, along with ensuring that the stations can provide objective coverage of the team. While games will no longer be available to hear on Audacy, ESPN 630 The Sports Capitol, at the moment, will still be broadcasting games in 2022, although that could be subject to change.
After the news went public, The Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan reacted to the news of Audacy dropping the Commanders from their programming lineup, and provided some telling insight regarding the relationship between the team and stations now formerly part of its radio network.
“It doesn’t change our show one bit or another,” said show host John-Paul Flaim. “Like, we’ve done our show with the rights and without the rights.”
Aside from the Commanders failing to win a Super Bowl championship since 1991, the team has had its fair share of issues off of the gridiron, including outrage at resisting to change the team’s name from “Redskins” and team owner Daniel Synder being investigated by the NFL for allowing a workplace culture of unchecked sexual harassment throughout the organization.
Snyder, who once owned the flagship station of the team, has been at the center of debate regarding his responsibility in the team losing various sponsorship deals, such as a multi-million dollar contract with Anheuser-Busch InBev. Additionally, attendance has been considerably lower over the past few seasons at the team’s home stadium, with the apparent lack of maintenance and repairs at FedEx Field making for less than ideal conditions for attendees and players alike.
Junkies host Eric Bickel stated that he did not believe 106.7 The Fan received any benefit from putting Commanders games on its airwaves, and in a particularly revealing remark, said that the station has had no relationship with the team for two decades.
Being able to cover the team in an objective manner while holding the radio rights was something that, purportedly, affiliates were struggling to do without complaints or fear of retaliation from the organization. This morning, co-host John “Cakes” Auville reaffirmed 106.7 The Fan’s commitment to bring its listeners thoughtful and honest commentary and analysis about the football team.
“Look, if the team does really well and then starts making the right moves, we’ll praise them – we’ll be the first to praise them,” Auville said. “If they continue to flail and be mediocre to bad, we’re [going to] spotlight that too. That’s just what we do. We’ve been doing that for 25-plus years, and this news doesn’t affect us.”
“No, it doesn’t affect us at all,” interjected Bickel into the conversation. “It should affect us… We should have probably gotten some better treatment [in the past]. It actually really didn’t help us.”
The Sports Junkies will not be changing the format of their show because of the station dropping the Commanders. Instead, the program will now be able to more comfortably provide objective coverage to its audience.
However, one thing the show hosts hope eliminating team broadcasts will do for them is to allow the station to allocate more money towards the show – something that the hosts believe provides more value to the station than the Washington Commanders.
“Let’s hope they’re assembling a war chest for the Junks instead of sending it on [to] the [Commanders],” quipped Auville.
