It's no surprise to me that EEI is getting crushed. Like you said, a lot of that is Patriots related, but their shows overall just bring nothing to the table for me personally.
Their 2-6 is somehow even worse radio than F&M which is just an impressive feat.
They really need to get rid of the old guard there and start fresh.
WEEI dug their own grave. I'm surprised they even held out this long and stayed in business with the Sports Hub crushing them for a good 9 years now.
They'll probably get re-formatted to some pop music station and 985 will slowly become the monolith in the market, then refuse to change as Felger and Mazz become the old out of touch blowhards that Ordway and WEEI once were, then in a few years another media group will seize the opportunity to jump in with competition that speaks to the younger demographic and will take them down, etc.
Before Entercom bought CBS Radio WEEI was the cash cow of the entire company, now it is ranked third in the Boston cluster.
WEEI is still overpaying for the Red Sox and they have a lot of expensive talent. WEEI also attracts an older demo that is much harder to sell.
We still have no idea who will be the second announcer on the Red Sox games and will they indeed change from traditional play by play as has been rumored. The clock is ticking....
Red Sox equipment truck arrives in Fort Myers
I am not suggesting a format change is imminent but it is a possibility. A few years ago CBS blew up WODS which had a steady cume of 800,000 listeners but a majority of listeners were over 50. One announcer has been there for 24 years and was given 18 hours notice.
Entercom has options - Mike-FM did very well for them until they needed the signal for WEEI's move to FM. WKAF which was designed to beam WAAF South of Boston was flipped to an urban format and now has more listeners than WAAF itself. I personally think Entercom is looking hard at a country format which advertisers love and talent fees are much less.