Courtesy San Diego Union Tribune

(April 2, 2010) Nearly three weeks after they took themselves off the air in a contract dispute, Scott Kaplan (left) and Billy Ray Smith will return to the XX Sports Radio morning show starting at 5 a.m. Friday.

Jack Evans, vice president of programming and operations for Broadcast Company of the Americas, which owns XX Sports, made the announcement Thursday afternoon.

“After lengthy, good-faith negotiations by all parties involved, I am very happy to announce to you the issues have been resolved,” Evans said on the air.

No specifics were given, but Kaplan and Smith, who claimed they left the air because their contracts had been breached, said Thursday that their contracts would be "lived up to."

"We never asked for one penny more than what the contract stated," Kaplan said. "We didn't use this as a time to renegotiate and get more. ... We're getting paid now what the contract originally said."

Said Smith: "We're going to do the job we signed up to do."

Kaplan and Smith, who started as a team nine years ago Thursday at XTRA Sports 690, signed a four-year contract that took effect at the beginning of 2009.

XX Sports management denied throughout the dispute that they had breached the contracts and said Kaplan and Smith could return to the air at any time.

The hosts said they had three other opportunities in San Diego but ultimately decided to return to a station where, as Kaplan said, "we've got seven years invested."

Added Kaplan: "We had to sit down and put it all on a piece of paper: What are the pros of 1090 and what are the cons? What are the pros and cons of the three other stations that were very much in the game?

"We penciled everything out, what we've done, what people expect from us, where people know we are, the financial ramifications and everything in the end said we have to go back. ... Ultimately we realized that this is our space in the local radio market."

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