The No. 2 Ohio State women’s basketball team had the end of its game against Iowa and star point guard Caitlin Clark bumped from the airwaves of 97.1 WBNS FM Sunday as The Fan cut away to the pregame for the unranked Buckeyes men’s game against Michigan. The finish of OSU’s 93-83 loss to the Hawkeyes continued to air on 1460 WBNS AM.
“It’s not something we like to do,” said the stations’ general manager Matt Fishman, who pointed to contractual obligations, “but the other alternative would have to only air the women’s game on the AM and not aired it on the FM at all.”
WBNS’ FM signal is stronger than the AM, and 1460 is the normal home of the Ohio State’s women’s broadcasts.
“I felt like, ‘Hey, let’s get as much of the women’s game on the FM so it can reach the most people,’ ” Fishman said. “Given the choice of only airing it on the AM or airing it on both, knowing that the FM would have to pull away at some point, was the right move to make.”
Tim Hall, who was at the microphone for the men’s pregame show airing statewide, updated listeners on the women’s score even as he previewed the Buckeyes’ eventual 84-61 win over the Wolverines.
Friday, when the OSU women open their Big Ten Tournament run at 12:30 p.m., the game will air where it typically would on 1460.
“And then, depending where they go from there in the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament, will determine what we can and can’t do with all our contractually obligated things,” Fishman said. “But we would like to get this team, as good as they’ve played, on the FM as much as possible.”
“We recognize what this women’s team is doing,” he added. “It’s special.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Why 97.1 The Fan cut away from end of OSU women’s game vs. Iowa
