Something worth reading---TY!!!With today's announcement out of UND, I think we might be seeing the real reason for this survey/article: informal data collection. Follow along with me...
Several years ago, which university's media contract to go after was a no-brainer for ForumComm(FCC). They had a newspaper, radio station and TV station in Fargo and only a TV station in Grand Forks. Then several things began to change. The purchase of the GF Herald gave FCC a print stake in GF. Then came the initial contract fiasco. NDSU decided to split the media rights and FCC didn't even bother to submit separate bids. FCC ended up losing the TV rights to Hoak. Then came the president's house cluster-f. Remember that the $1 million that was supposed to pay for the whole thing came from Marcil Sr.(owner of FCC). Those two events pissed him the hell off and severely damaged the relationship between FCC and NDSU. The end result was FCC going after UND's radio contract instead of NDSU's. Now the split was complete.
But let's advance a few years. Chapman is gone. Marcil Sr. has handed over control of FCC to his son, Marcil Jr. I believe the guy at FCC that was in charge of the NDSU media contract was pretty old and has probably retired. Our SID and/or marketing director might also be different. But the big change just happened. Even though it was called the Fighting Sioux Sports Network, it was actually produced by FCC via WDAZ. All those games on FSSN and Fox College Sports? WDAZ people were behind it. You can be damn certain that FCC wasn't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts; they were making money on the deal. But buried in the UND/Midco announcement today was the fact that Midco is taking over all TV production. Goodbye FCC revenue stream.
Now FCC has to make a choice. Do they continue with the new status quo of producing only UND radio and backing it up with GFH print coverage? Or do they put on their big girl panties and go after the NDSU media contracts when they come up for bids? I think that's one of the reasons for the survey/poll in the Forum. They're looking for info on which contract could make them more money. There are pros and cons from every side. From FCC's perspective, there are advantages in going with NDSU and advantages in going with UND. From NDSU's perspective, there are advantages with FCC and advantages with Hoak/RadioFM. I think the next round of contract negotiations could get very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see NDSU pairing up with FCC in the next contract.