The Detroit Lions announced they would be moving to a new flagship radio station for the 2016 season. Their soon-to-be former home is hitting out at the Lions, claiming they tried to censor on-air criticisms of the team.
The Lions are departing WXYT 97.1 The Ticket after 18 years. The sports talk station naturally spends a lot of time talking about the Lions during the week, and given the fact that the Lions have been poor for most of those 18 years, a lot of that talk is negative. CBS Radio, which owns 97.1, claims that this was a deciding factor in why the Lions switched flagship stations, going as far as to say that the team tried to intervene when things got too negative for their liking.
“It is sad to say goodbye,” said Debbie Kenyon, senior vice president and market manager for CBS Detroit on Friday, via the Detroit News’s Tony Paul. “But in the end it came down to the integrity of CBS — the refusal to be censored in talking about the team and making honest assessments on the air about this team.”
The accusations centered around WXYT’s afternoon co-host Mike Valenti, the station’s top personality. Valenti’s agent, Mort Meisner, claimed the Lions demanded that Valenti be fired as part of any rights renewal. For his part, Valenti confirmed the reports on Friday afternoon’s show, calling the vendetta “personal” and accusing the Lions of caring more about what he says than about the product on the field.
The Lions denied the allegations.
“I know there’s a bit of narrative out there regarding the notion that, somehow the Lions are practicing some sort of censorship,” said Elizabeth Parkinson, senior vice president of marketing and corporate sponsorships for the Lions, also via the Detroit News. “If we were trying to practice any sort of censorship, we certainly would’ve done it much sooner.”
The Lions will move to WJR-AM, a much more placid news talk station, starting next season.
Conflict between teams and their radio partners isn’t necessarily unusual. Airing issues this publicly, even after a breakup, is. The bad blood seems to run deep here. At the end of the day, though, the personalities on 97.1 are far from the only ones who have been rightly critical of the Lions and their ongoing struggles.
