Courtesy San Diego Union Tribune

(September 17, 2010) I don’t have any idea what will happen at XX Sports Radio in the coming weeks, which puts me in good company. I don’t know anyone else who knows, either.

But I do know this: It’s going to be interesting.

In the wake of the hostile takeover Monday that resulted in the firing of station founder and boss John Lynch (and his daughter Kara, a sales executive), the future clearly is uncertain for San Diego’s leading all-sports station.

Larry Patrick, the new CEO, is managing partner of Patrick Communications, a Maryland-based brokerage and investment banking firm. The company website advertises the firm as “a full service firm offering media, tower and telecom brokerage, restructuring, investment banking, appraisals and management and financial consulting services.” It also says the company is “highly regarded in both television and radio sales and offers fair market and asset appraisals that are the best in the business.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into this — and Patrick was unavailable for comment Thursday and other station employees were told not to speak to the media — but if I was working at XX Sports or its sister stations with Broadcast Company of the Americas, I’d be on the lookout for new owners (Lynch’s equity partners in BCA are Viejas and JMI).

Of more immediate concern, especially to listeners, is the upcoming schedule change on the first Monday in October. Jim Rome’s show is moving to XTRA Sports 1360 that day, which is also the first day XX Sports has additional time to fill due to the end of baseball’s regular season.

Patrick & Co. have options, of course. The easiest would be to move Scott Kaplan and Billy Ray Smith back an hour, from 6 to 10 a.m.; put John Kentera (who can’t be feeling too comfortable with Lynch gone) at 10 a.m., and leave Darren Smith at noon and Lee Hamilton at 3 (or 2:52 or whenever he starts his show).

That would be the easiest move, but not necessarily the smartest.

For one thing, Hamilton’s contract expires next month. I can’t believe the king of rumors and quarter-truths and everything else I’ve complained about for nearly a dozen years has a show in the first place, so obviously I can’t believe he’d be allowed to keep it. But since they don’t pay me to make those decisions (shocking, I know), chances are good Hamilton will return.

Still, there’s no law that says Hamilton has to be on the air during the late afternoon and early evening. Why not put Smith and Marty Caswell in that spot? At least that way XX Sports would have access to Chargers interviews at a time when players are more available. (The Chargers won’t deal with Hamilton.) Plus, people on their way home already have to deal with traffic and the effects of a long day; why make them suffer through Hamilton, too?

It was Lynch who brought Hamilton here in the late 1980s, back at what became The Mighty 690. And it was Lynch who started The Mighty 1090 (XX Sports) in 2003 after Clear Channel moved almost all the 690 programming to Los Angeles. Seemed like a great move.

So what happened? The bottom line is, as always, the bottom line.

Lynch (who did not return a message Thursday) overpaid in 2003 to become the Padres’ flagship station starting the next season, believing it was the best way to establish his station. And while that part of the strategy was successful, the financial aspect was different. There were always rumors about the station having money troubles, rumors that intensified the deeper the recession became.

XX Sports has been paying the Padres about $5 million a year, and production costs added close to another $1 million per season. There is no way in this economy, in this market, that a station can bring in enough advertising revenue to cover that nut.

Lynch boasted shortly after his station launched that it would become “the No. 1-rated and clearly the No. 1-billing station” during baseball season, and the ironic part is that the station is doing well in the ratings — second in its target demographic, Men 25-54, in the most recent Arbitron ratings. But the price he paid to get there was too high.

Speaking of which, there’s still one year remaining on the contract with the Padres, and what happens next will be worth following. Will the new boss try to renegotiate? The Padres could say no, of course, but what if the response is a bankruptcy declaration? Where would that leave the Padres? Are they better off taking a reduced rate from XX Sports, or trying to find another deal in a market where there appear to be few options?

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