The Tar Heel Sports Network is a

radio network There are two types of radio network currently in use around the world: the one-to-many (simplex communication) broadcast network commonly used for public information and mass-media entertainment, and the two-way radio ( duplex communication) type ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

dedicated to

broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...

live

events Event may refer to: Gatherings of people * Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion * Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest * Event management, the organization of ev ...

and programming relating to

North Carolina Tar Heels The North Carolina Tar Heels are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The name Tar Heel is a nickname used to refer to individuals from the state of North Carolina, the ''Tar Heel ...

athletics. It is operated by Tar Heel Sports Properties, a property of

Learfield IMG College LEARFIELD, formerly Learfield IMG College, is a large collegiate sports marketing company, representing more than 200 of the nation's top collegiate properties including the NCAA and its 89 championships, NCAA Football, leading conferences, and ...

, which manages the

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

rights for the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

. The Network's flagship station is

WPTF WPTF (680 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station broadcasting a news/talk radio format. Licensed to Raleigh, the station serves the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. It is owned by the Curtis Media Group, with studios located on Highwood ...

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most ...

. The network began in the early 1960s when WSOC in

Charlotte Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont (United States), Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Meckl ...

made the first attempt to create a radio network for Tar Heel men's basketball outside the

Triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

. In 1965, WSOC owner

Cox Broadcasting CMG Media Corporation (doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company prim ...

sold the network to Village Broadcasting, owner of WCHL in

Chapel Hill, North Carolina Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the state ca ...

. WCHL became the flagship station. Village Broadcasting gradually evolved into VilCom, and sold the network in the late 1990s. The Network consists mainly of local radio

affiliates In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or ...

within

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

, southern

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

, and northern

South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

. Some stations with local interest carry only

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

programming. For example,

WAMW-FM WAMW-FM (107.9 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a classic hits format. Licensed to Washington, Indiana, United States, the station is currently owned by Dewayne Shake, through licensee Shake Broadcasting, LLC, and features programming from ...

Washington, Indiana Washington is a city in Daviess County, Indiana. The population was 11,509 at the time of the 2010 census. The city is the county seat of Daviess County. It is also the principal city of the Washington, Indiana Micropolitan Statistical Are ...

, the hometown of

Tyler Zeller Tyler Paul Zeller (born January 17, 1990) is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball at the University of North Carolina, where as a freshman he played on their 2009 national championship team and as a seni ...

, aired men's basketball from

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

. The Network's

play-by-play In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...

announcer for football and men's basketball games was

Woody Durham Woody Lombardi Durham (August 8, 1941 – March 7, 2018) was an American play-by-play radio announcer for the North Carolina Tar Heels football and men’s basketball programs from 1971 to 2011. Early life Born in Mebane, North Carolina, Durham ...

from 1971 until his retirement in 2011.

Jones Angell Monrovie Jones Angell IV (born 1979, Sanford, North Carolina), known professionally as Jones Angell, is the current “Voice of the Tar Heels,” the play-by-play radio announcer for the North Carolina Tar Heels football and men’s basketbal ...

succeeded Durham as "the Voice of the Tar Heels" for both football and basketball beginning with the 2011 football season. From 1989-2005, former

Carolina Panthers The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. T ...

play-by-play announcer

Mick Mixon Forest Orion "Mick" Mixon III is the former play-by-play radio voice announcer for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League. Mixon took this position during the 2005 football season, replacing Bill Rosinski. Previously, he was the co ...

served as the

color analyst A color commentator or expert commentator is a sports commentator who assists the main (play-by-play) commentator, typically by filling in when play is not in progress. The phrase "colour commentator" is primarily used in Canadian English and the ...

. Current analyst duties are split between

Eric Montross Eric Scott “Big Grits” Montross (born September 23, 1971) is an American former professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for eight seasons with the Boston Celtics, Dallas Mavericks, New Jersey Nets ...

(basketball) and

Brian Simmons Brian Eugene Simmons (born June 21, 1975) is a former American college and professional football player who was a linebacker in the National Football League (NFL) for ten seasons. He played college football for the University of North Caroli ...

(football) with Lee Pace handling football sideline reporting. UNC head coaches

Mack Brown William Mack Brown (born August 27, 1951) is an American college football coach. He is currently in his second stint as the head football coach for the University of North Carolina, where he first coached from 1988 until departing in 1997, whe ...

(

Scott Forbes Scott may refer to: Places Canada * Scott, Quebec, municipality in the Nouvelle-Beauce regional municipality in Quebec * Scott, Saskatchewan, a town in the Rural Municipality of Tramping Lake No. 380 * Rural Municipality of Scott No. 98, Saska ...

(

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

Courtney Banghart Courtney Rosholt Banghart (born May 11, 1978) is an American basketball coach who is currently the head women's basketball coach at North Carolina. Prior to North Carolina, she served as head coach at Princeton from 2007 to 2019. Playing career B ...

(

women's basketball Women's basketball is the team sport of basketball played by women. It began being played in 1892, one year after men's basketball, at Smith College in Massachusetts. It spread across the United States, in large part via women's college compet ...

), and

Hubert Davis Hubert Ira Davis Jr. (born May 17, 1970) is an American college basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels men's team. Before his coaching career, Davis played for North Carolina from 19 ...

(men's basketball) host programs on the Network during their respective team's season. The state's most powerful AM station, WBT in Charlotte, has been an affiliate of the network since 1971, except for 1991 to 1995 and 2006 to 2012. WBT is a 50,000-watt

clear-channel station A clear-channel station is an AM broadcasting, AM radio station in North America that has the highest protection from Interference (communication), interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation. The syste ...

that reaches parts of 22 states at night, bringing the Tar Heels' broadcasts to most of the eastern half of North America. According to longtime WBT station manager Cullie Tarleton, putting the Tar Heels on WBT was largely the idea of longtime coach

Dean Smith Dean Edwards Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015) was an American men's college basketball head coach. Called a "coaching legend" by the Basketball Hall of Fame, he coached for 36 years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hi ...

, who wanted to tell recruits from

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

that their parents would be able to listen to the games. Beginning in 2006, WFNZ served as the network's Charlotte outlet. However, its weaker nighttime signal forced the Tar Heels to contract first with

WRFX WRFX (99.7 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Kannapolis, North Carolina and serving the Charlotte metropolitan area. Owned by iHeartMedia, it airs a classic rock radio format, and calls itself "99.7 The Fox." The radio studios and ...

(2006-2011) and WNOW-FM (2011-2012) to simulcast football games that kicked off after 5 p.m., as well as all basketball games. The Tar Heels returned to WBT beginning with the 2012 football season. In 2021, North Carolina's second-most-powerful AM station, WPTF, joined the network. As part of the deal, WPTF became the network's flagship, though WCHL remains as an affiliate station. WPTF had long been the flagship of rival

NC State North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The university ...

from 1968 to 2008.

List of affiliates

Current network stations

External links

List of affiliates from the Tar Heel Times
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References

{{University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill North Carolina Tar Heels Sports radio networks in the United States University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill media College basketball on the radio in the United States College football on the radio Learfield IMG College sports radio networks