Courtesy the Houston Chronicle

(December 17, 2010) With this week’s departure of radio veteran Clancy Woods as president of Mission Media Group, KGOW (1560 AM) owner David Gow now stands alone at the helm of Sporting News Radio as well as the Houston all-sports station.

And it appears that programming changes are on the way for both entities.

Woods announced Wednesday he would step down as president of Mission Media, which was formed last year as part of the acquisition of Sporting News Radio Network from American City Business Journals. Gow is chairman of the company, which earlier this year moved its Sporting News Radio operations center from Santa Monica, Calif., to KGOW’s Galleria-area offices.

Woods said in a statement he will “devote my time to a number of other business interests and leave the next phase of growth for Mission Media Group in the capable hands of our senior management team.”

Gow said he won’t announce any programming changes until next week but crafted his answer in such a way that it’s hard not to imagine what’s coming.

“It will affect two dayparts, but all the parties involved will be familiar names,” he said.

Well, gee. Clearly, John Granato and Lance Zierlein aren’t leaving morning drive. That leaves the midday slots occupied by Travis Rodgers and Sean Pendergast with John Harris, which means it would be no surprise to see Rodgers and Pendergast appearing both on KGOW and SNR.

“We are looking at a couple of ways to integrate our talent and put them on both (KGOW and SNR) platforms,” Gow said. “We want to capture the right balance between local and national.”

There is a fine line to be drawn here. Fox Sports Radio for much of the day is essentially a Los Angeles station with nationwide distribution. It would not behoove Sporting News Radio to be perceived as too Houston-centric; perhaps Gow hopes to avoid that potential pitfall by pushing Rodgers, who was Jim Rome’s longtime producer, and Pendergast, who first achieved some degree of national exposure through Rome’s show.

Similarly, perhaps we’ll hear contributions on KGOW from Bob Berger and Craig Shemon, who moved here from the Left Coast to host Sporting News’ weekend programming.

“Within our building, we have a combined pool of sports-talk talent that is deeper and broader than anyone in the city,” Gow said. “When there’s a breaking story about Houston that has national import, we have people who are experts in the Houston market. When there is national news, we have experts who can be part of our local station.

“We’re only using Bob and Craig on weekends, and that is a missed opportunity. We have guys like Richard Justice and John Granato who can speak nationally, and that is a missed opportunity that we haven’t done yet. We have to figure out a way to use all of them across two platforms.”

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