Caelador Radio Broadcasting chairman Paul Smith stated that "any investment to acquire the rights and the associated technical and staffing costs of providing the live coverage plus weekday programming far outweighs any income likely to be generated from the initiative."
Basically, it seems that the club were demanding far too much money for the rights to broadcast the games as Smith said that he was willing the coverage to make a small loss to meet the fans' expectations.
I'm really disappointed to hear this news because, despite not being to everyone's tastes, I really enjoyed the Quay's coverage of the Pompey matches and would always listen when I didn't have the money to attend games regularly.
Now that we've been relegated from the Premier League, it's going to be more difficult to follow the live games without going because the Championship gets far less live coverage on TV and shows such as Soccer Saturday will not pay us as much attention as they used to.
If you still want to listen to Pompey, the only alternative now is to listen to BBC Radio Solent, a station I have never listened to. From what I've been hearing from Pompey fans, it seems that the station is biased towards Southampton FC, so I'm not sure if they will broadcast their matches in favour of Pompey's or if they can cover both at the same time, somehow.
I shall miss Wisey, Macca and even Mark Mudie's contribution to the live shows. I know many find Mark's views "disagreeable" but he's just as much a fan as you and I and he goes out of his way to help other Pompey fans. Hopefully "Football Hour" won't be cancelled in the wake of this news.
Whatever the outcome there is, our local radio station has just lost the rights to cover our local football club which is yet another black mark against those who have recently been responsible for the running of Portsmouth Football Club.