Some people may have missed this, but my old employer is about to have competition.

KIRO AM to Shift to all sports

Although Bonneville International laid off six newsroom employees and one engineer on Monday, the station is expected to hire an assistant program director who would format the sports lineup. Sources said ESPN will leave KJR-AM (950) to air some of its syndicated shows on KIRO. But everyone agrees in order to compete with the only current all sports-talk station there will have to be local programming.

Arquette would not confirm the plan to go all-sports on the AM dial, saying, "come Thursday." Carl Gardner, vice president/market manager of Bonneville Seattle, will be joined by Seahawks and Sounders CEO Tod Leiweke and Mariners president/CEO Chuck Armstrong at the news conference Thursday.

I bolded that because when I heard this on KJR-AM they were only referring to TWO sports being represented, but you will note that the Seattle Times treats this as a three sport story, and I guarantee that Bonneville will as well.

The worst kept secret in the world will likely be confirmed tomorrow (KIRO will carry Sounders FC matches). I have also heard that the timing from the Times story is true, but how much local programming might be interesting.

Full press conference tomorrow, and I have a feeler out to Rich Moore, the Program Director at KJR-AM to see if he wants to reply to my earlier interview request now.