Five years ago today, another salvo was fired in the battle for Nashville’s sports talk airwaves:

However, on August 11, 2003, just hours before [George Plaster] was to debut on WGFX, Cumulus (with assistance from Gaylord) was granted an injunction in Davidson County Chancery Court, preventing Plaster from appearing on his new show. Cumulus had sought to quash Plaster’s new contract, citing a non-compete clause in his original WWTN contract. Plaster was under the assumption the clause had been voided along with the contract, which had been signed by Gaylord Entertainment, not Cumulus. Cumulus then filed a breach of contract suit against Plaster, and he reacted with a countersuit alleging that Cumulus was illegally hampering his ability to make a living.

Willy Daunic and Darren McFarland, who both also made the move to WGFX (though without legal consequence since neither was under contract to WWTN), took to the air in Plaster’s place and continued that way for two full months. On October 11, the case was settled without trial, and Plaster received an undisclosed sum of money from Cumulus and Gaylord. He was also allowed to join his co-hosts on WGFX, where he continues to broadcast to this day.

It was one of the final blows in a drama that unfolded publicly for more than six months, as chronicled to some extent by the Nashville Scene and the City Paper. The Scene’s words in February 2003 turned out to be prophetic, though the paper predicted that Plaster would end up at WLAC-AM rather than his eventual destination at WGFX:

[B]y now, it’s pretty clear that SportsNight will never be the same. The odds of Plaster, Biddle and Fulton ever sharing a mic again are virtually nil. A couple of possibilities do remain: Plaster gets his own show some other time during the day, or perhaps he and his former co-hosts will split shifts on SportsNight—sort of a radio platoon system. Or maybe he’ll just leave altogether … [I]n radio, as in sports, contracts are often made to be broken, especially when egos are bruised, relationships are severed and somebody puts enough cash on the table to make somebody else happy. The first two of these have already happened. The last may not be far behind.

The end wasn’t far behind (only six months later). It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since, but it’s pretty clear now who the winners and losers were in this sad scenario.

• Winners: Plaster, Daunic and MacFarland, along with Kevin Ingram. Plaster lost plenty of ground–and air time–in the short term, but he remains the number-one local sports broadcaster today (relevant item at bottom of page) and the second highest-rated Nashville talk show host regardless of format. The rest of George’s crew–nice guys all–landed in higher profile spots and out from underneath the long shadows cast by Biddle and Fulton.
• Draw: Biddle. Biddle continues to write his prominently featured columns for The Tennessean, but he’s struggled to regain radio success.
• Loser: Fulton. Fulton has since relocated to Orlando. According to his LinkedIn profile, he works for Fox Cable Sports as a sales account executive.

Now that the dust has long since settled–at least on the air–local sports radio listeners can hopefully look forward to less drama from the broadcast booth and more drama on the playing surfaces of the sports Nashville’s stations cover. Here’s hoping it’s a long time before another sports radio shootout like this one rears its ugly head.