[jammin' jamey]

E. Ridge...

There were several games today involving teams that our stations try to cover including Pikeville, Pike Central, Allen Central, South Floyd, Prestonsburg just to name a few. We were unable to follow those teams to various places whether it was Kenton County or Raceland due to lack of sponsorship dollars.

The Marty Casey Tournament is a fine idea and became a reality after the Massey Invitational Tournament fell off due to lack of dollars from a corporate standpoint. Massey, along with other sponsors, made complete coverage of that tournament possible on our stations. The Marty Casey Tournament doesn't have a corporate sponsor, so it's up to our staff to find sponsors for coverage, unfortunately we are only able to pick a "game of the week" to feature the East Ridge/Belfry matchup on our stations weather permitting. I just hope you understand that from a sponsorship standpoint.

Shelby Valley had a special squad the past couple of seasons which allowed complete coverage of their games whether it was in Florida or on Robinson Creek. Local small businesses made coverage possible and we can't thank them enough!

Speak to your community business owners about sponsorship of games. We currently are trying to find sponsors to feature Pike Central/East Ridge games on 107.5 ZROCK. Please remember that there was a point back during this past regular season of football where we featured every single Pike County school on our stations on the same Friday night. As a matter of fact, it happened twice and we even covered a Floyd County school on the same evening. To be honest, sponsorship for football has grown over the past few years to the point where we even regularly cover Prestonsburg and other Floyd County schools. The interest in basketball however has fallen off. Reasons? There are plenty: not enough home games because everyone wants tournaments at 4:00 in the afternoon which keeps crowds down because working people cannot attend, district games (in Pike County at least) have no real value and neither do district tournaments in Pike County anymore and weather factors in with rescheduling.

Finally, I believe consolidation has hurt the game of basketball because communities don't have that hometown team anymore to rally around...yet those same small communities (for example Millard and Feds Creek) can rally around football now because more kids can be involved which in turn creates more interest and better crowds...plus there are less games/tournaments/bowls which makes going out for a home game or traveling a bigger deal than in basketball. The aforementioned schools were too small to field football squads before. Consolidation has helped the game of football and is causing a slow death to the game of basketball.

I hope this tries to show you that EKB is not partial to a particular school, yet we have to make decisions to focus on schools with a strong sponsorship backing to make the process work.