Baseball Is Just a Business

[macuser2]

I wasn't sure where to put this; but since it deals with a trend that affects all of baseball, and not just the Cardinals, I decided to put it here instead of Rivalries. There's a very good article in today's Wall Street Journal about the trend to a subscription only model for radio broadcasting of baseball games. It mentions how this trend parralells what happened with television. Unfortunately the site is paid, but you may just want to purchase a copy of the WSJ just for this article. I warn you, it may break your heart.

 

Here's a sample:

 

Hearing Red

Does Cardinals' Switch to Smaller Station

Signal Eclipse of Free Radio Broadcasts?

By LARRY BOROWSKY

Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

June 19, 2006

In April, in just the third game the St. Louis Cardinals played in their brand-new ballpark, they heard a strange sound drifting down from the stands.

 

Booing.

 

Aimed at the home team.

 

St. Louis fans rarely boo the opposition, much less their own Cardinals. When the team got swept by the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 World Series, nary a catcall was heard at Busch Stadium. Instead, the crowd stayed after Game 4 to cheer the vanquished Cardinals and honor the celebrating Red Sox. So why did these famously loyal fans turn on the Cardinals during their new park's opening week?

 

"It seems like a greed element has taken over," says lifelong Cardinal fan Tom Murrell. "There's a different mood. The owners have made some decisions that it seems they wouldn't have made in the past."

 

The Cardinals' new ballpark (the third to bear the Busch Stadium name) has brought spikes in the price of tickets, concessions, and parking -- unfortunate, but not terribly surprising. But Mr. Murrell says he's more upset about a different change of address: The Cardinals have moved down the radio dial from 50,000-watt KMOX, their flagship station since 1954, to 5,000-watt KTRS, whose signal sometimes barely reaches his home in Shiloh, Ill. -- all of 15 miles from Busch.

 

"It's terribly irritating to lose that signal when we're so close," says Mr. Murrell, who says he's followed the Cardinals on radio since the early 1960s. "We're just right across the river."

 

Few stations have ever been more closely identified with a team than KMOX was with the Cardinals. For more than half a century, "the mighty MOX" beamed Cardinal baseball throughout the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Bible Belt, creating deep and long-lasting loyalties. Before the major leagues expanded into Texas, Colorado, Georgia and California, the Cardinals were the "home" team in those states -- and it was KMOX that made them so.

 

But after losing money on a five-year deal that expired in 2005, KMOX offered a lower guarantee in renewal negotiations. KTRS, seeking to boost ratings in a market dominated by KMOX, wowed the Cardinals by offering the team a 50% ownership stake in the station.

 

And so the Cardinals became the third team this decade to dump a longtime flagship station: The Detroit Tigers left flagship WJR three years ago, while the Philadelphia Phillies departed WPHT in 2001. Last month the Boston Red Sox sold their local radio rights for the next decade for an estimated $13 million a year, the largest such package ever sold. Under the terms of that deal, next season the majority of Red Sox games will move from hallowed WEEI to WKRO.

 

So the sound of booing will be heard at baseball games throughout the land I guess. This trend, plus the recent Cubs performance has been pretty disheartening to me personally.

When I was growing up, my interest in major league baseball started because of listening to broadcasts of the Cardinals games, with Harry Carray as the announcer. When I first got cable television my loyalty moved to the Cubs because of the games on WGN. Now it appears that all of that is passing away.

 

I can afford the Extra Innings tv package and XM Radio. So for me personally, what's the big deal? Am I just depressed because of the Cubs performance or is there something else? All I know is watching or hearing baseball isn't the same.

 

Also, fans of teams other than the Cubs are apparently starting to resent all of this.

 

This past spring I went to my local college's baseball games and really enjoyed it. Maybe that spoiled me. All I know is I don't feel like paying for access to any of this major league stuff much longer.

[Derwood]

Let me get this straight. Fans at the game were booing about a change in radio stations? Huh?

[J.R.]

KMOX was like an extension of the Cards franchise itself ... much moreso than WGN's TV and radio branches, which actually are tied to the Cubs. I understand why people are pissed - with the passing of Buck and the switch coming in such close succession, it must have been like the two-pronged 1998 blow of Caray's passing and the migration of many Cubs games from WGN-TV, only worse, as the St. Louis tradition had been in place for generations.

 

Both changes reflected bigger changes within the broadcast industry itself. There's a massive shift underway with terrestrial radio, and as a radio enthusiast, I'm worried about the future - but thankful that I don't have a stake in any stations.

[macuser2]

Exactly my sentiments although expressed in a more rational and less emotional fashion. :D

 

As teams become more businesslike responding to market trends, they can expect the fans to become more like customers. Which is why there is the booing. Ah well, I guess I had better get used to it.

 

But I have my own reservations about satellite radio; those are for another time and place.

[Soul]

Things change. I hear what you're saying, but that's part of what makes the "good old days" fun to remember.

 

My Dad used to tell me the same thing back in the '80s when I was a kid. He would tell me how Wrigley was a dual-use stadium used for Bear games, how people would bring their own booze and everyone wore a top-hat :)

 

Back then people lamented the retirement of Jack Brickhouse. It wasn't until a few years down the road that Harry Carey became the legendary CUB announcer. For awhile he was the guy who came from the Cardinals and White Sox.

 

I've gone through the same thing you have---sort of wishing baseball remained the way it was. But, some good things have happened in the modern game, such as the Wild Card, which I wouldn't want to disappear under any circumstances

[macuser2]

Good post. Thanks. It was what I needed to read. 8)

[Banedon]

Let me get this straight. Fans at the game were booing about a change in radio stations? Huh?

 

I'm with you. I think they took two different ideas and merged them into one article without there being a direct association.

[Derwood]

"Hey hey!

Ho ho!

KTRS has got to go!"

 

:lol:

 

I doubt there was a unified front of booers in the crowd rising up against a radio station switch

[macuser2]

There was more to it than the station change.

I think the problems for the Cards fans are that:

 

1) Many no longer had a "free" radio broadcast available to them because of the limited range of the new station.

 

2) Attending games is a lot more expensive than it used to be.

 

3) They perceive that the product quality has deteriorated ( at least according to their standards).

 

4) So they are paying more and getting less, hence the booing.

 

But the fans of many teams have come to feel this way, including some who post on this board.

 

Well, all I know is that if it had not been for the large number of games which used to be available on WGN I would probably not now be a Cubs fan. Maybe I would have been beter off?

[Outshined_One]

Hearing Red

Does Cardinals' Switch to Smaller Station

Signal Eclipse of Free Radio Broadcasts?

By LARRY BOROWSKY

Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

June 19, 2006

In April, in just the third game the St. Louis Cardinals played in their brand-new ballpark, they heard a strange sound drifting down from the stands.

 

Booing.

 

Aimed at the home team.

 

St. Louis fans rarely boo the opposition, much less their own Cardinals. When the team got swept by the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 World Series, nary a catcall was heard at Busch Stadium. Instead, the crowd stayed after Game 4 to cheer the vanquished Cardinals and honor the celebrating Red Sox. So why did these famously loyal fans turn on the Cardinals during their new park's opening week?

 

*Groans*

 

Some one has a selective memory.