Three weeks after San Diego-based XEPRS-AM went off the air, the city's "sports-talk leader for the last 16 years disappeared from the internet as well," according to Krasovic & Posner of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE. XEPRS afternoon host Darren Smith yesterday tweeted at 2:06pm PT, "And that's a wrap. Right in the middle of the show." The tweet came about "two-thirds of the way through his regular weekday show, which along with the rest of the station’s programming had been available only online and via a mobile app since April 11." Four minutes later, Smith tweeted, "We were just told that our parent company killed the stream, officially killing our radio station." Interamericana de Radio's Andres Bichara, the signal operator for XEPRS, said that despite strong ratings in the male 25-54 demographic for Q1, it "went off the air just before noon on April 10," due to (XEPRS parent company) Broadcasting Company of the Americas missing lease payments. Ratings at XEPRS "dipped after the Chargers left San Diego two years ago, and BCA was known to be seeking a buyer in recent months." But a deal "could not be made, even when ratings recently rallied." The hosts of all three weekday shows at XEPRS -- Smith, Ben Higgins, Steven Woods, Scott Kaplan and Billy Ray Smith -- "have contracts with BCA." It "isn’t known whether the other stations in town will pursue any of the men" (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 4/30).
