Cardinals Move: The Reality, Folks
> Even this Cub fan thinks it's a sad day for baseball. I love
> listening to the Cards on KMOX; Jack Buck was one of my
> all-time favorites. F'ing Cardinals!! How could they do
> this? Pathetic and disgraceful move.
OK, aside from the distant listening issues, let's throw this out:
KMOX is no longer KMOX.
Sure, it's a 50,000 watt flamethrowing signal that hits a lot of real estate, especially at night. But if you really want to look at this *locally*, in St. Louis itself, KTRS is more KMOX than KMOX is.
It's run by a former KMOX sales executive (Mr. Dorsey). A very large chunk of the KTRS air staff claims KMOX as their most recent former home. The station is locally owned and run, and many of its investors are high-profile St. Louis names (Dan Dierdorf, etc.).
Meanwhile, KMOX, the soon-to-be-former home of the Cardinals, is owned by national conglomerate Infinity Broadcasting.
If KMOX was owned by the same kind of people who own, say, KTRS... the Cardinals go nowhere from 1120. Period. In fact, it's 550's extensive local ties that prompted the station to basically overpay for the rights, because they know how important that team is to St. Louis. Infinity's New York-based upper management didn't see that value. They LOST the team...KTRS didn't GAIN it.
Yes, it ticks off a lot of folks who will A) have to retrain their radio tuning fingers to go to 550 vs. 1120, or B) lose that over-air night-time access to the games since they won't be on the mighty 50,000 watt KMOX.
But I'd really like someone to dig into this, and give an estimate of how many people that REALLY affects. Put aside the teary stories of people who've been listening to the Cardinals on 1120 on their transistor radio in a faraway state since 1954, and get to the facts.
How many people in the team's marketing territory will not have access to the games on one of the 110-plus Cardinals Radio Network stations? The station's network is VERY extensive. From the list of stations in Missouri alone, it looks like they've signed up half the signals in the state, and that's BEFORE KMOX lost the rights.
The phrase "team's marketing territory" is very specific. If you're a resident of Chicago or Kansas City or other reasonably nearby areas who listens to the Cards on KMOX now, frankly, too bad. You're not in their territory. They can't even TRY to reach you, because MLB won't let the Cardinals sign up an affiliate in Chicago or Kansas City (though they can get reasonably close, I guess, outside the market).
The fact that you COULD pick up the games, at night, for free on KMOX, was a BONUS. If you live in the Cubs/White Sox territory, MLB never meant for you to become a Cardinals fan. I'm sorry that's so blunt, but that's the way it is. Their focus is, and should be, fans in their OWN vast territory, and I have a hard time believing there are many gaps in a 110-station network in that region.
It isn't as romantic as pulling KMOX/1120 out of the static at night, but people in the region should still be able to hear the games on LOCAL stations. It's great that the club has a "national" following, but that's a BONUS.
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Ohio Media Watch - <a target="_blank" href=http://ohiomedia.blogspot.com>http://ohiomedia.blogspot.com</a></P>
