Yes, WCHL AM/FM will continue carrying Carolina games.

The athletic department announced Tuesday that it has another Raleigh affiliate on the Tar Heel Sports Network, this time WPTF. You may recognize those call letters as the home of NC State for decades and decades before the Wolfpack games moved to WRAL FM. It is great that the Tar Heels have another affiliate in Raleigh, which is a very important market to the university.

However, the announcement caused much confusion and consternation in town, where Carolina games have been on WCHL for more than 50 years. The GoHeels website announced a new “flagship” station in the Triangle, Durham and Chapel Hill.

That triggered a bunch of calls and inquiries about whether the real flagship will still be broadcasting UNC football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball — the last two of which will not be on WPTF. Without mentioning that Chapel Hill continues to have its own affiliate on the radio network, the announcement not only caused concern but it also reeked of disrespect.

WCHL is very important to not only Mack Brown and Hubert Davis, but also Courtney Banghart and Scott Forbes, who want their games on local radio, and get them there on 97.9 The Hill without much acknowledgement from the university.

Along with Chapelboro.com, Chapel Hill Media Group is the only company that features extensive coverage over both radio and the web, live streaming the broadcasts and publishing game stories, columns and photographs.

Coincidentally, I was in my car Tuesday and tuned in to hear the 3 o’clock jocks on WPTF make the announcement. It reminded me why to ardent Carolina fans, WPTF was an acronym for Wolf Pack Those . . . (you fill in the “F” word).

Obviously reading from a statement handed to them, they referred to Carolina as UNC-Chapel Hill, the degrading moniker first coined by NC State years ago. “Carolina” was never again uttered on that station, and it will be fun to find out what they call the “flagship” of the University of North Carolina System when promoting its games.

 

Photo via Todd Melet.


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