New Orleans Saints radio broadcasts in Baton Rouge are moving next season from WJBO-AM to Guaranty Broadcasting's WYPY-FM 100.7.
Owen Weber, Guaranty's vice president and general manager, said Monday the change will start with this summer's preseason games.
Weber declined to offer specific terms of the agreement. But Chris Claus, marketing manager of Entercomm Communications, the parent company of Saints flagship station WWL-AM, said the agreement with Guaranty runs two years.
In addition to WYPY, Guaranty's Baton Rouge stations are WDGL-FM, WTGE-FM, WNXX-FM and KNXX-FM.
WJBO is held by Clear Channel, which also owns WFMF-FM, WYNK-FM, KRVE-FM and WSKR-AM.
Clear Channel did not respond to requests for comment late Monday.
Weber said Entercomm approached Guaranty several weeks ago about moving the Saints from WBJO's AM signal to a stronger, crisper FM station.
"The station they're going to be on covers a rather large piece of geography here in south-central Louisiana," Weber said of Entercomm. "The idea that they could get that kind of coverage was attractive to them as well as the Football team."
Getting an FM signal played a key part in Guaranty's ability in the late 1990s to lure LSU sports from WJBO, which had broadcast Tigers games for decades.
WDGL "The Eagle" airs LSU baseball and Football games, while men's basketball is heard on "New Country" WYPY.
Weber said Guaranty didn't want to put the Saints on The Eagle as well, because LSU Football programming already runs about 12 hours on Saturdays.
"It makes more sense to do what we're doing with New Country. We think they complement each other," he said of Saints games and LSU basketball.
