Three local sports talk show hosts -- Stan "The Fan" Charles, Jerry Coleman and Rob Long -- will be without a home at radio station WVIE (1370 AM) as of Friday morning when the station starts moving to a mainly network news/talk format.
The official move by V-1370 to news/talk won't come until July 4th when it goes to 12-hours-a-day Monday-through-Friday programming from America's Radio News, a news service based out of Alexandria, Va., that is carried on more than 100 stations nationally.
The station will have local news, weather, traffic and sports provided by its Maryland News Center. The format is expected to be branded as "all news all day," in synergy with sister station, WCBM (680 AM), a conservative talk outlet.
V-1370 will continue its relationship with Fox Sports Radio for mid-day updates, and evening and weekend programs from Fox Sports Talk. WVIE will be carrying the Fox network this holiday weekend until it joins Amerca's Radio News on Independence Day.
WVIE has been offering local sports talk since 2008. The most recent lineup featured Long from 9 a.m. to noon, with Charles from noon to 1 p.m. weekdays. Jerry Coleman was on-air from 3 to 6 p.m. in afternoon drive.
The Baltimore-Washington market has plenty of sports-talk-radio. It is pretty clear why WVIE management didn't see any kind of future with that format.
But the question is whether it will do any better with news/talk.
Calls to Bob Petit, general manager of WVIE, were not returned Thursday night.