Radio and Television
The Packers are unique in having their market area cover two media markets, both Green Bay and Milwaukee, and blackout policies for the team apply within both areas, though they have not come into effect since 1972 (the last year home game local telecasts were prohibited regardless of sellout status) due to strong home attendance and popularity – the Packers have not had a non-sellout in over 50 years.
The Packers' flagship radio station and broadcast producer is Milwaukee-based WTMJ (620) over the Packers Radio Network, with the games airing in Green Bay on WTAQ (1360/97.5), WIXX-FM (101.1), and WAPL (105.7) and WHBY (1150) in Appleton and the Fox Cities. Wayne Larrivee is the play-by-play announcer and Larry McCarren is the color analyst. Larrivee joined the team after many years as the Chicago Bears' announcer. Jim Irwin and Max McGee were the longtime radio announcers before Larrivee and McCarren. When victory is assured for the Packers, either a game winning touchdown, interception or a crucial 4th down defensive stop, Larrivee's trademark declaration of "And there is your dagger!" signifies the event. WTMJ has aired Packers games since 1929, the longest association between a radio station and an NFL team to date, and the only rights deal in American professional sports where a station outside of the team's main metro area is the radio flagship.
The TV rights for pre-season games not nationally broadcast are held by Journal Broadcast Group stations WGBA-TV (Channel 26) in Green Bay and WTMJ (Channel 4) in Milwaukee, along with Quincy Newspapers' six ABC stations in the central, northern and western parts of the state, KQDS-TV (Channel 21) in Duluth-Superior, and in Escanaba/Marquette, Michigan, WLUC-TV (Channel 6), along with their Fox subchannel. As such, these stations are all allowed to use the tagline Your official Packers station in their market area by the team, and also carry the weekly coach's show hosted by WTMJ-TV's Jessie Garcia, The Mike McCarthy Show on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 pm throughout the football season. Until the end of the 2011 season, the team's partner in Green Bay was WFRV-TV (Channel 5), and sister satellite WJMN-TV in Escanaba.
The 2012 TV rights deal expanded the team's preseason network further across the Midwest. Additional stations include the Quad Cities region of Iowa/Illinois (whose coverage area stretches into the southwest corner of Wisconsin), where game coverage is carried by KLJB (Channel 18) in Davenport, Iowa and KGCW (Channel 26) in Burlington, Iowa, both owned by Grant Broadcasting System II, KCWI-TV (Channel 23) in Des Moines, and in Omaha, Nebraska, KMTV-TV (Channel 3), a sister Journal station to WTMJ and WGBA. As part of a large package of preseason football from various team networks, KFVE (Channel 9) in Honolulu, Hawaii also carried Packers state network games in the 2012 preseason. The network also added its first affiliate with Spanish language play-by-play, Milwaukee's WYTU-LD (Channel 63/49.4), a Telemundo affiliate, which airs statewide on the cable systems of Charter Communications and throughout Time Warner Cable's eastern Wisconsin systems, including Green Bay.
Pre-season coverage is produced by CBS, formerly using the NFL on CBS graphics package until the last contract ended as a renmant of WFRV's former ownership by the CBS Corporation itself until 2007. In 2012 the pre-season coverage began to use the NBC Sports Sunday Night Football graphics package due to WTMJ/WGBA's NBC affiliation. The TV play-by-play announcer, Kevin Harlan (also on loan from CBS), is the son of former Packers president Bob Harlan, with Rich Gannon joining him as color commentator. Since the 2008 pre-season all of the Packers preseason games on the statewide network are produced and aired in high definition, with WTMJ-TV subcontracting the games to minor network affiliates in Milwaukee during Summer Olympics years due to mandatory non-preemption policies by their network, NBC (this was not done in 2012 as the pre-season opener was a national ESPN game).
ESPN Monday Night Football games, both pre-season and season, are broadcast over the air on ABC affiliates WBAY (Channel 2) in Green Bay and WISN-TV (Channel 12) in Milwaukee, while the stations airing Packers games in the NFL Network Thursday Night Football package have varied. WBAY's evening news anchor Bill Jartz also serves as the public address system announcer for Lambeau Field.
The team's intra-squad Lambeau scrimmage at the beginning of the season, marketed as Packers Family Night, is broadcast by WITI (Channel 6) in Milwaukee, and produced by WLUK (Channel 11) in Green Bay, both Fox affiliates which broadcast the bulk of the team's regular-season games. The scrimmage is also broadcast by the state's other Fox affiliates. It was aired for the first time in 2011 in high definition.
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Famous quotes containing the words radio and/or television:
“England has the most sordid literary scene I’ve ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy’s writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They’re all scratching each other’s backs.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
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—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)