Archive: Around Town

All-sports radio has been on the air in Tompkins County for years.  But on November 1st a switch was pulled, and the local ESPN affiliate started broadcasting from Lansing.  That was the day the sale of the station closed, putting Todd Mallinson in place as WPIE 1160ESPN's General Manager and co-owner with his wife Tina.  That meant an upgrade for listeners in local programming with an all-new staff broadcasting from a new studio on North Triphammer Road.

"We have significantly increased the local content," Mallinson says.  "We brought in Matt Schultz as our operations Manager and Host of Between the Lines, which airs between 4 and 5 in the afternoon.  It's all local content.  He's interacting with coaches and athletes and other people in media who have say and insight on other teams."

1160 AM carries sports coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  The affiliation with ESPN allows an independent station to do that, along with  New York Yankees, New York Jets, and Syracuse Orangemen football play by play coverage.  Mallinson brought on a new staff including Operations Manager Matt Schultz and reporter Jim MacKay (who Mallinson points out is not related to ABC's Wide World of Sports' Jim MacKay) and a small cadre of part time on-air talent to provide about two and a half hours of local content per day.


'Between the Lines with Matt Schultz' is broadcast at 4pm every weekday.  MacKay joins Schultz on the show to highlight local sports, including coaches, media personalities, and athletes from local teams.  Recent guests have included Syracuse Football Coach Doug Marrone, Cornell Quarterback Jeff Matthews, Cornell Hockey Forward and Co-Captain Patrick Kennedy, IC Wrestling coach Marty Nichols, and Syracuse Play-by-Play Broadcaster Matt Park, among many others.

More local sports reporting is sprinkled throughout the day as MacKay and three part-time interns conduct local post-game interviews, feature local high school teams in 'All Access' segments, and local sports reports each hour.

"People can tune to us and know they're going to get sports 24/7," Mallinson  says.  "There are a lot of sports people here.  Having Cornell, IC, and TC3 all here at the collegiate level, seems to be working well.  High school sports is an area where we spend a lot of time developing relationships with coaches and athletic directors.   Our coverage will continue to grow in that realm."

Mallinson caught the radio bug when he was a kid.  He got an early start at the high school radio station in Maynard, Massachusetts, where he grew up.  He pursued a communications degree at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, participating at the college radio station, WLMN-FM 91.5.

After graduating in 1981 he worked at a Pittsfield, Massachusetts radio station for 16 years, eventually advancing to become general sales manager.  Looking to grow professionally, he took a position with Sinclair Broadcasting in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which led to an opportunity in 1997 to become general manager of WIII and WKRT in Cortland.

That job brought Mallinson and his family to Central New York, and they settled in Lansing.  He managed those stations for a decade.  About four years ago the stations were sold to Cayuga Radio Group, and Mallinson looked for an opportunity to operate his own station.

Pembroke Pines Media in Elmira owned 1160ESPN, and hired him to manage it with an option to buy.  Mallinson thought it needed more local focus.  He initiated changes in the format, managing the station largely from his home in Lansing, while building a client base and bringing  it more n line with his vision.

"I felt that there was an opportunity," he says.  "This area has a strong sports base, and I just needed the right resources to align it.  Part of my goal was to bring on that local staff, and we've done that.  Matt Schultz is from Syracuse.  He wet to Cornell, and after graduation went to the Newhouse School of Public Communications in Syracuse.  We brought him down because of his familiarity with Cornell and Syracuse, and his expertise in sports radio.  Jim MacKay will be doing some of the play by play in the future.  He does a great job of reporting and getting scores on the air for us."

Brian Thomas fills out the full time staff as an account executive.  Mallinson's wife Tina works for the station part time, and co-owns it with him.  At the moment three interns work part time, including Lansing senior Luke Kutler, who is regularly featured on weekends, providing sports reports.

Yankees play by play coverage is one of the major features that gives the station its new focus.  While the new local coverage differentiates his station from all the other sports media, the Yankees provide a huge local fan base and an identifiable brand that attracts listeners to the station.  Growing up in the Boston area and running a sports radio station in New York State, that catches Mallinson in the middle of the ultimate sports rivalry.

"My heart says Red Sox.  My head says Yankees," he laughs.  "To this day it's the single biggest rivalry in all of sports, and it's here in our back yard.  And it plays out on the radio at least 18 times per summer.  It's exciting to hear that, and given what the Red Sox and the Yankees have done in the off season, it will be another exciting baseball season, no doubt."


Mallinson still tries to find time to participate in sports.  He enjoys tennis, and golf, and runs regularly, typically competing in 5K races.  But right now his focus is on building the business, and he is basking in the satisfaction that he and his team have successfully launched an independent sports station in a day when most radio stations are part of larger groups in order to share in the economy of scale provided by shared studios and sales staffs.  In the Ithaca market Cayuga Radio group currently operates seven stations, with 1160ESPN, WVBR and WFIZ (Z95.5) running independently.  The latter actually shares some sales resources with a larger group, making 1160ESPN and WVBR unique as entirely independently run radio stations.

Mallinson made significant technical upgrades in addition to content and staff changes.  Content broadcast from the Lansing studio is beamed to the broadcast tower facility in Trumansburg to provide coverage in five counties.  He is already talking about the future, hoping to add more local coverage and play by play as the new business finds its legs.  At this point Mallinson finds satisfaction in the realization of a dream, to own a radio station and put his own mark on it.  Doing that completes the picture made up of decades of radio experience.

"I started with an on-air passion," he says.  "I was a music director at the high school level, and did on-air work in programming.  In commercial radio you spend a lot of time doing that work and there is traffic, which is inputting the commercials.  You get a taste of the technical end of things.  The passion I have for the business is still there.  Now I have influence over what you hear on the air, and my passion is toward the overall sound and operation of the station.  As we grow it out we'll continue to be able to develop new areas of coverage and features on the station."

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