Ed Levine, Galaxy Communications President and CEO, Press Conference Transcript
April 23, 2007
Opening Statement on the Galaxy Communications Partnership with Syracuse Athletics
“(smiling) First off, I’d want to say I didn’t have to buy this orange tie. I already had it, so that should tell you something right off the bat. One of the things that (Director of Athletics) Daryl (Gross) touched on is that the lacrosse coverage will be upgraded to our big classic rock station, TK99. That is also where men’s basketball and football will be. WPLA and WSGO, our AM simulcasts at 1200 and 1440, will be where the women’s basketball will be broadcast. Both of those are significant upgrades.
“For our fans in the Mohawk Valley, there is a major upgrade going on. In the Utica-Rome market, the games were on an AM station. For the first time, they will be on a 50,000 watt FM station in Utica-Rome – WKLL 94.9 K-Rock. It is really three upgrades overall.
“Plus the upgrade for football and men’s basketball is that I think we have a 19 hour pre-game show? (laugh) It’s a long show. Basically our attitude is that on Saturday at TK99, it’s football Saturday. That’s pretty much what we’re going to do all day long. We think we do a great job of broadcasting classic rock six days out of the week, but on Saturdays during the season, it’s all about football. I’ve driven to games in the past and there has been no pre-game show on, especially for basketball, as I’m driving to the Dome. During one of the games recently, I think it was an NIT game, by the time I got to my car, which was about two hours away with the great parking pass Daryl gave me, the post-game show was over (laugh). I see that not happening anymore. To me, if you’re driving to the game, you’re leaving two hours ahead of time, and when you are going home, it’s at least an hour afterward. We are trying to make everything more fan aware. That’s really the message from Galaxy.
“I stand up here not as the owner of a radio company, or the CEO of a company, or an SU alum. I’m a fan. I have a group of people over there (at the company), some of whom are SU grads, some of whom are not, but grew up in the area, and they’re all fans. We’ve done a lot of complaining internally over the years about why don’t they do it this way or why don’t they do that. Now we’re going to have an opportunity, with Daryl and Joe Baldini of ISP, to make some positive impact on the program – beyond play-by-play – to make the whole experience better. A major part of that is to elongate pre-game and post-game shows, so you really get a sense of what’s going on with the programming.
“We are going to add some marketing and promotional benefits that are not currently there. There are some things that we don’t have together yet, that we’ll talk about in the future. On August 31 at 6:00 we are going to have a terrific tailgate party up on the Quad before the opening game against the University of Washington. We are currently negotiating with three national acts and we are going to figure out which one we want to have there. We are going to have a national act for free on the Quad for the first SU football game of the year. We are going to do that at least one other time during the year with a national act. For every home game, we are going to have a lot of activity out on the Quad. When I went to SU I lived in Flynn Hall and the Quad, to me, was always where all the action was. We want to bring all of the action back to the Quad. We think it’s a natural place.
“The second piece we’re pretty excited about. Many of you know that Midnight Madness is a fixture in many places throughout the country. I’ve always been mystified as to why we didn’t have a Midnight Madness event to kick off the practice season for the basketball team. This year, with Coach Boeheim having a top recruiting class coming in, it seemed like the perfect time to make a big deal of the first time these guys are going to play together. Coach Boeheim has graciously agreed to do that. With the athletics department’s help we are going to put on a great show for Midnight Madness. During the course of the basketball season, we are going to put on a couple of events in the backcourt area. Some will feature live music, some will feature other things that will liven up that backcourt experience.”
“The other part that Galaxy is very excited about is the fact that we are a locally owned company, we all live right here in Syracuse, this is our focus. We have been involved in a lot of the great events here in the area. We have either bought them or created them or some combination thereof; specifically an event like the Taste of Syracuse, which draws 70,000 people to downtown every June. We want to get Syracuse University Athletics involved in that program. K-Rockathon, the biggest one-day concert of the year, will have Syracuse University Athletics involved. Lights on the Lake is a wonderful event that draws about 120,000 people every winter to Onondaga Lake Park with beautiful light displays. We want to have Syracuse University Athletics involved in that in various ways that we will elaborate on as we go further down the road. This really gives a true meaning to Chancellor Cantor’s initiative of marrying the University with the community. Being part of the community as we are, being locally owned and operated, this seemed like a perfect match. That’s really what we have in store. We have a lot more details that we will be announcing in the weeks and months to come.
“We’re looking at a wonderful relationship with SU. We’re going to treat this like a family. We’re going to have a chance to try some new initiatives that I think are going to be really impactful. Of course, there are great coaches and great teams that are either there already or on the upswing. The timing is perfect. I think things are really getting a lot better and we’re going to come and do our part.”
