[zaga_fan]

I think this decision is from Anna Sheppard telling Ricky Thacker what to do but I think Ricky is in agreement with his boss for sure.

But to be devil’s advocate for a moment.

Why can WMDJ not afford to pay the $1,500 fee it now has been reduced to? They have some big sponsors they I guarantee pay them a good amount of money to broadcast with their names advertised on it.

This is coming from someone in the media but someone who isn't necessarily in-the-know when it comes to WMDJ's financials.
Every radio station does this differently, but I can promise you when radio stations started streaming games live they do not make a ton more money but end up spending more money because now they have to pay people to run the camera and the video broadcast.

So they don't make much more money, they have to pay more people to do it, and then the schools ask them to pay a fee (which they are already paying a KHSAA fee to do postseason games to begin with).

There's a misconception going around that radio stations make out like Scrooge McDuck swimming around in all their big sponsor money and cost schools thousands and thousands of dollars at the gate. It's simply not true. Once the radio stations pay for the man hours spent on these games they don't make a ton of money and some of them do the postseason games as a public service and lose money.

Would love to see everyone pick one night and just listen to the games on the radio in protest of this nonsense.

These guys aren’t making Chevy High Country money  by any means I know that but they also ain’t doing it out of the kindness of their heart. I know some sponsors that pay for screen time and it ain’t cheap to get their ads ran on these programs.

No, just like the coaches don't do it for free and the schools don't do it without charging admission and selling concessions.
They provide a service for the community and the advertisers pay to have their commercials and logos on there because they feel there is value to their business by doing that. No one holds a gun to a sponsors head and demands the money.

I can only speak to what things are like over here in Perry County, but they have a list of advertisers and everyone pays ~$400/month to be in the sports rotation (high school and UK sports). Say you get 12 sponsors, that's 4800/month but we'll just round up to $5k. The sales agent who makes their living off of ad sales and such will get a cut for their salary. That's $1000 accounted for and we have $4000 profit. Let's pay for two audio/video guys and two broadcasters per game. Let's say they get $50 each for $200/game total. We'll just do district tournament. For boys and girls that's 6 games and you're down another $1200 and you are at $2800 profit. KHSAA fees - provided you let them link to your stream on NFHS - are $60/game. You're down $360 there to $2440 profit. The $3000 fee would put you in the red. $1500 takes you down to $940 and then you still have to pay rights to UK-IMG to air UK games and you still have region where KHSAA is going to charge $100/game instead of $60 like they do at district plus pay your workers.

So when radio stations say, "We won't pay the fee, we'll just do radio," it's really because many of them will be losing money to do it.
Now, take into account the other months of the season where you aren't paying KHSAA fees and school fees (although there are schools like Letcher Central and Perry who charge outlets a fee per game) and you make some money each month, you may be able to recoup some of what you are spending in the postseason there.

Like I said, I can only speak to how things work over in my neck of the woods. Now, if you think there are more sponsors or they can pay more money, get me a list of em and we'll make this thing work lol. I'm not in sales. I have a day job and commentate a handful of games each month because I enjoy doing it and think I'm pretty good at it (at least that's what my mom thinks). But there's nobody getting rich doing this. We've got a handful of people doing it and being compensated (pretty poorly) for their time, but I think that's fair.