Inside The Huskies

UW Makes New Radio Deal, Switches to KJR from KOMO

Agreement between the school and media outlet to broadcast football and basketball stretches over next five seasons.

Dan Raley

UW Makes New Radio Deal, Switches to KJR from KOMO
UW Makes New Radio Deal, Switches to KJR from KOMO /

KJR is in, KOMO is out.

On Monday, the University of Washington announced it has reached agreement with iHeartMedia's Sports Radio 950 KJR to broadcast its football and men's and women's basketball games through the 2024-25 season, ending a six-year run with KOMO 1000.

What won't change is the Huskies play-by-play announcer: Tony Castricone, who has called three seasons of men's basketball and two in football, will shift from one station to the other.

While the women's basketball games will largely remain on KKNW 1150, a selected number of games will be heard on KJR during the 2020-21 season and the full schedule moves there in 2021-2022.

"They're home. BOOOOOOM!!" tweeted Dave "Softy" Mahler, a KJR sports talk-show host, a self-avowed UW fan and longtime moderator of a show called "Husky Honks."

While financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, KJR will offer a variety of UW programming, including expanded football pre-game and post-game coverage, as well as a weekly show promoting Huskies coaches and a monthly broadcast highlighting all other UW athletic teams.

"With iHeart's on-air, digital and social media platforms in Seattle, we believe there are ample opportunities to reach all segments of our fan base in this market," said Brandon Forbis, general manager of Huskies Sports Properties. 

KJR has previously broadcast Huskies football and basketball, as have several local radio outlets though the past decades, including KIRO and KING. Promotional support will be provided to KJR by its sister stations at 1090 KJR, 95.7 HD2 KJR FM and 96.5 Jack-FM.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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