https://radioinsight.com/headlines/201249/chicago-white-sox-move-to-espn-1000/
Starting in 2021 Chicago White Sox will move to ESPN 1000.
Starting in 2021 Chicago White Sox will move to ESPN 1000.
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Chicago White Sox Move To ESPN 1000
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
- Start date
Widely expected return to their former home. Should prove to be a good fit. WMVP has nighttime signal problems to the west and southwest of the immediate metro area, but they can solve that by putting together an affilliates network.
That's exactly what they did in the 50s and 60s when they were on WCFL, the original AM 1000. Bob Elson their PBP man then used to do the ID as "This is the Chicago White Sox Baseball Network". We'll have to see if they put together some downstate stations.
There used to be a yearly baseball brochure directory that showed all the baseball team stats plus the primary affiliate for radio and TV, and the announcers, like "Scully-Doggett", "Kell-Harwell", etc. I don't remember WCFL being the affiliate, at least after they went Top 40. I thought it was WGN Cubs and WMAQ White Sox. Then all the affiliate switching started, and much to the dismay of listeners, WTAQ La Grange had the White Sox, with just 500 watts Night. I remember hearing complaints.
Here is a full list of White Sox broadcasters, going back to 1924.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicago_White_Sox_broadcasters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicago_White_Sox_broadcasters
Didn't the Mets dismantle their entire network in 2019? You either heard the games on blowtorch WCBS, on SiriusXM, or via streaming, or you didn't hear them at all. Maybe the White Sox will do the same, especially if there continues to be doubt as to what sort of baseball season we are going to have in 2021.
WCFL was the exclusive home of the White Sox radio broadcasts from 1952-66 in Chicago. When WCFL changed to Top 40 they were still contractually obligated to carry Sox games through 1966. The Sox switched to WMAQ in 1967.
That's pretty close, but it misses some broadcasters, including, to use 1931 as an example, Bob Hawk and Jimmy Corcoran on WIBO (560), Pat Flanagan on WBBM (770), Tris Speaker on WENR (870), Johnny O'Hara on WCFL (970) and Red Grange, of all people, on WJJD (1130). Must have been amazing to go down the dial back then and have six or seven stations carrying the same home game. (Stations generally did both Cubs and White Sox home games, though there were a few road broadcasts, both in-person and via ticket re-creation.)
The White Sox had a big network, about 90 stations, sponsored by Household Finance, across Illinois and into the deep south, both when WCFL and subsequently WMAQ carried them in the 1950s and 1960s. Household Finance bailed when the Sox bolted WMAQ after the 1969 season amidst a legal tangle with NBC over moving games to WMAQ-FM during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago to allow NBC News coverage uninterrupted on 670, and the big network evaporated. (They had about 18 stations in 2019.)
I believe the White Sox were on WMAQ-AM through the 1970 season. Then in 1971 Harry Caray and Ralph Faucher replaced Elson and Red Rush and the games were carried on the network of suburban stations for two years including WEAW-FM which transmitted from the Hancock.
As far as General Finance was concerned it always amazed me that "friendly" Bob Adams could be at all 50 offices at the same time.
I wrote a substantial part of that article, with others adding their info later on. The info I got was mostly from the Sox website, plus a few Google searches. It's Wikipedia, so feel free to add your info to the article. The pre-1944 broadcasters are the hardest to find, so congrats on turning those up.
Harry Caray's first two years were on an FM and a weak daytime AM. That's tough.
Prior to 1971, the Sox had one foot in Milwaukee and another on a banana peel. Four years later, that foot was in Seattle. This was when the Allyn brothers (Arthur for the first few years, then John) almost put the Sox out of business. Arthur was better than John (barely), in that the Sox were competitive through 1967. After that, the team went into the tank until Bill Veeck bought the team back from them in 1975 to keep them from moving to Seattle. He kept Harry Caray despite their feud that went back to St. Louis in the '50s.
Because of John Allyn's ineptitude, WMAQ bailed after the 1970 season, which was the worst in Sox history. They did have full-market coverage (or close to it) on WEAW-FM 105.1, but people didn't listen to sports on FM in those days. The AM, WTAQ 1300 LaGrange, was a joke. From what I remember of that station, it inherited the ABC long-form news programming that WLS was finally able to dump circa 1966. Its coverage was mostly in the suburbs and the southwest side of the city.
WTAQ was not a daytimer, but it ran 500 watts at night, and was affiliated with the ABC Entertainment Network, the worst of the three networks that were created in 1968 to replace the "old" ABC Radio Network. It catered mostly to small-town affiliates and was almost an afterthought. Outside of Paul Harvey (who aired on WGN in Chicago), that network was pretty much irrelevant.
In 71 and 72 WTAQ was the lead station carrying the Sox, but there was a ring of small AMs around the city that also carried their games. WJOL, WJOB, and I think there was one around Elgin also. Then WEAW-FM soon entered and that helped solidify the city & nearby suburbs. After their 72 season when they competed very well with Oakland for the division title, they moved back to WMAQ.
This ring of suburban stations had already been tried by the Mets in NYC in the late 60s before their miracle year in 69.
This ring of suburban stations had already been tried by the Mets in NYC in the late 60s before their miracle year in 69.
The negotiators may have mixed up WTAQ with WMAQ, or thought it was a major facility. Kind of surprising that NBC didn't fight the call letters. When they proposed changing WCFL to WWTN (Ten), WGN cried bloody murder.
You could see the four WTAQ towers from I-294, and they appeared to be in a line. The late Charlie Gustafson worked there in the early days when it was 500 watts Nondirectional Daytime only. He said that the previous WTAQ site was not quite in a line, but a squished parallelogram for an asymmetric pattern. The present WRDZ 1300 towers (6) are in a line next to I-294.
Out by ORD, the WTAQ signal was pretty good in the Daytime with 5000 watts. At Night with 500, it was pretty bad.
You could see the four WTAQ towers from I-294, and they appeared to be in a line. The late Charlie Gustafson worked there in the early days when it was 500 watts Nondirectional Daytime only. He said that the previous WTAQ site was not quite in a line, but a squished parallelogram for an asymmetric pattern. The present WRDZ 1300 towers (6) are in a line next to I-294.
Out by ORD, the WTAQ signal was pretty good in the Daytime with 5000 watts. At Night with 500, it was pretty bad.
In the late 60s the White Sox ownership made some bad decisions. That and the team playing poorly really hurt them.
Those of us in the Chicago area know that WGN-TV carried Sox and Cubs home games since the late 1940s. In 1967 the Sox signed with WFLD-TV for more money.
At first it appeared to be a good thing for Sox fans. Many more games would be televised. The problem was alot of people still had old TVs that didn't have UHF adapters. If you lived in the suburbs you needed a special antenna to receive WFLD-TV with some clarity. After being a solid contender since the early 50s the Sox fortunes on the field went downhill fast in the late 60s. This combined with many fans not being able to find the games on TV and the Cubs major improvement really hurt the Sox and their attendance went way down. Interest in the team was quite low at this time.
As Keith mentioned, Arthur Allyn wanted to move the team to Milwaukee. His brother John was against it and he bought out Arthur's share. The poor performance and low attendance lead to WMAQ dropping the Sox after 1970 and no other major Chicago station had interest. Because of all this the Sox games on radio were carried on lower powered AM's for 2 years.
In 1972 the team started winning again and the situation "radiowise" improved in 73. There was still some money problems which resulted in Allyn selling the team to Bill Veeck in 1975.
Those of us in the Chicago area know that WGN-TV carried Sox and Cubs home games since the late 1940s. In 1967 the Sox signed with WFLD-TV for more money.
At first it appeared to be a good thing for Sox fans. Many more games would be televised. The problem was alot of people still had old TVs that didn't have UHF adapters. If you lived in the suburbs you needed a special antenna to receive WFLD-TV with some clarity. After being a solid contender since the early 50s the Sox fortunes on the field went downhill fast in the late 60s. This combined with many fans not being able to find the games on TV and the Cubs major improvement really hurt the Sox and their attendance went way down. Interest in the team was quite low at this time.
As Keith mentioned, Arthur Allyn wanted to move the team to Milwaukee. His brother John was against it and he bought out Arthur's share. The poor performance and low attendance lead to WMAQ dropping the Sox after 1970 and no other major Chicago station had interest. Because of all this the Sox games on radio were carried on lower powered AM's for 2 years.
In 1972 the team started winning again and the situation "radiowise" improved in 73. There was still some money problems which resulted in Allyn selling the team to Bill Veeck in 1975.
Bill Veeck and Chuck Comiskey sold the Sox to Arthur Allyn in 1961. Arthur at least kept the team competitive. But he was clueless when it came to television, and even more clueless about his brother John, who was to MLB as Bill Bidwill was to the NFL.
I've never seen any exact figures from that time (WFLD started up in 1966, and two ultra-low budget UHF stations preceded it by a couple of years), but my guess is that there were absolutely zero UHF TVs and/or converters in Chicago and the inner suburbs, other than in households that owned a 1964-or-later TV. The only audience that Channel 32 could possibly have gotten early-on were those bars that had tall towers and big UHF antennas so that they could get Bears games from South Bend and Rockford that were blacked out on WBBM-TV.
The American League was against it, too.
Allyn just about went broke owning the Sox. He had absolutely no clue what he was doing. He tried to move the team to Seattle after the 1975 season (the Oakland A's would have moved into Comiskey Park), and fired Harry Caray after that season as well. Bill Veeck bought the team back and rehired Harry (who he had blamed for running his Browns out of St. Louis), but he never had the money to really compete -- 1977 notwithstanding.
We didn't have a UHF Tuner in our house until 1973. Plus we didn't get a Color TV until Sylvania came up with Permatint, an in between step between the Color and Tint controls always having to be constantly adjusted between channels, and PLL technology. We got the Allied Radio Colorset 60 VHF-UHF-FM TV Antenna and Alliance T-45 Rotator in 1969. We did have a very sensitive Magnavox tube monochrome TV with UHF visit the house with a relative over the Summer in 1972 and 1973. Our relatives near ORD had a lot of problems with their UHF Portable in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was in and out of the shop all of the time.
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As far as General Finance was concerned it always amazed me that "friendly" Bob Adams could be at all 50 offices at the same time.
I always wondered how he was able to do that. I presumed he had supernatural powers. The "White Owl wallop" home run call was easier to understand.
The signal in the near suburbs was poor and even with a special antenna not as good VHF.
Caray had nothing nice to say about John Allyn--many times.
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