The Chicago Bears will have a new radio home starting next week, and the station is pulling out all the stops to commemorate the day.
Good Karma Brands-owned ESPN 1000 will be Bears-centric from 5 a.m.-8 p.m. on March 1, the day the station officially takes over the team’s radio broadcast rights.
It starts with Kap & J.Hood from 5-9 a.m. live on location in Indianapolis at the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine. Bears GM Ryan Poles will join the show at 7:30.
The rest of ESPN 1000’s lineup will feature Bears-related surprises on the air according to the Chicago Sun Times.
“We’re coming out kicking and screaming and yelling from the rooftops, ‘Hey, we’re the new home of the Chicago Bears,'” Danny Zederman, ESPN 1000 director of content, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re not looking at the Bears as only 17 regular-season games. We’re looking at the Bears as a product that we’re going to talk about and embrace for 365 days a year.”
Zederman added that after securing the rights to the White Sox in 2021, adding more live game broadcasts was paramount.
“Most people want to listen to live sports in the moment,” he said. “Thats’ why we really want to be where live sports are. It’s destination programming. With the White Sox and now the Bears, we have live sports covered almost 12 months a year.”
The station has it worked out between both teams that when Bears and Sox regular season games conflict, the White Sox will air on WGN. If the White Sox make the playoffs and a postseason game conflicts with a Bears regular season game, the Bears will shift to WGN.
