Cardinals to end 52-year run with KMOX

ndugan1 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:04 am

I know most of us don't focus on the National League here, but I do, and this story concerns me as a baseball fan in general. It comes down to this:

The Cardinals have been on KMOX since 1954, after being aired for the previous three seasons on WIL. But club officials have been unhappy with the revenue-sharing plan KMOX owner Infinity has been trying to put in place. The team is being paid $6.7 million this year in rights fees, but Infinity wants to drop that to about $4.7 million. The parties then would split earnings beyond that.

Lamping said in an interview last month that the team disliked that formula because KMOX would receive the bulk of the money at first, and the Cards wouldn't get the bigger percentage until a significant amount of revenue had been generated. He contended that could reduce the incentive for the station to sell ads when it's not benefiting the most.

<snip>

Meanwhile, KMOX's strong nighttime signal - which covers most of the United States east of the Rockies and parts of Canada - has been credited with helping the team gain much of its popularity. KTRS' signal at night, when most of the games are played, has much less reach. It doesn't even cover the entire St. Louis metropolitan area, meaning the Cardinals would have to line up affiliates to cover towns as close to Busch Stadium as Collinsville and Edwardsville.

"KMOX's positive is they've got a strong signal," Lamping said last month. "If it just came down to signal (strength), this would have been decided a long time ago. On the other hand, if it just came down to financials it also would have been decided a long time ago and we would have gone to KTRS. There's no question financially the best way for the Cardinals to go is KTRS."

I was reading stories back when the Cardinals announced they were building a new stadium, about the team's relationship with KMOX. It was one of the first AM radio stations to be granted the ability to broadcast a 50 kilowatt signal, making it able to be heard pretty much everywhere in the United States east of the Rockies, and in parts of Canada and even the Dominican Republic. Most families, and subsequently, most baseball players, from the Dominican Republic and Cuba rooted for either the Yankees or Cardinals, because those were the two teams whose broadcasts were available. The station launched the career of Jack Buck, and played host to Harry Caray and Bob Costas, among others. Without such a strong signal, the Cardinals wouldn't have nearly the reach of a fan base that they do.

Collinsville and Edwardsville are two towns that are 15 miles over the river in Illinois, and KTRS is static there. And all in the name of money. Lamping himself said money would be lost either way. So, in addition to getting a new stadium with 1,000 fewer seats but more luxury boxes which wasn't necessarily needed, St. Louisans now have lost the ability to hear the Cardinals on a radio station that contributed significantly to the team's following. When I was going to college in Columbia, and now at my new job in Champaign, I could hear KMOX loud and clear. Its reach is further than any FM station I've listened to on those drives. I consider this a big loss for Cardinals fans everywhere, and I think it's one where the participants involved don't fully realize the significance of the move. I'm not saying all fans near St. Louis will turn away because they can't hear games on radio anymore (though some undoubtably will), but I think it will cost more money in the long run and will hurt the national recognition of the team.

wordygurdy · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:42 pm

Well, if the issue is the elimination of games on KMOX, then what I'm about to type is irrelevant.

If the issue is the broadcast reach of KTRS, then what I'm about to type is relevant.

Baseball fans have options when it comes to listening to their teams' broadcasts. One is to buy an annual subscription to Major League Baseball's Gameday Audio at mlb.com for $15, which entitles the subscriber to listen to every team's broadcast for every game of the season through the subscriber's computer.

Another option is to spend $300 once for the hardware and anywhere from $11 to $13 a month for a subscription to XM satellite radio. XM carries each home team's broadcast for every game. So at least 81 times a year, Cardinals fans in the farthest reaches of the known universe can hear KMOX or KTRS or whichever station is broadcasting the team's games. The hardware is portable, and some versions of it resemble a Walkman. Reception can be a problem in some spots, though.

SusanV · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:46 pm

Pardon my interruption, but that is a very elitist response.

Slinking back under my desk now.

wordygurdy · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 2:50 pm

It is? Didn't mean it that way, Susan.

$15 for a year doesn't sound too unreasonable or out of reach for most people, and most people have computers nowadays.

SusanV · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 3:02 pm

And a lot of those folks still choose dial-up, and if you've ever tried to listen to anything that way you know how awful it is.

Baseball belongs on the radio--and I don't mean XM or Sirius--available to as many listeners as possible.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 4:16 pm

wordygurdy wrote:

Another option is to spend $300 once for the hardware and anywhere from $11 to $13 a month for a subscription to XM satellite radio. XM carries each home team's broadcast for every game. ... The hardware is portable, and some versions of it resemble a Walkman. Reception can be a problem in some spots, though.

I think this is what a friend in Baltimore has. When she took it to a game, she found that it broadcasts with a delay she estimates at 15 seconds. This left the announcers a pitch behind when a pitcher worked fairly fast.

She likes it in her car, though, for weekly trips beyond the range of clear standard reception.

ndugan1 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 5:08 pm

wordygurdy wrote:

Baseball fans have options when it comes to listening to their teams' broadcasts. One is to buy an annual subscription to Major League Baseball's Gameday Audio at mlb.com for $15, which entitles the subscriber to listen to every team's broadcast for every game of the season through the subscriber's computer.

Another option is to spend $300 once for the hardware and anywhere from $11 to $13 a month for a subscription to XM satellite radio. XM carries each home team's broadcast for every game.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Sure, I can buy that subscription for $15, I can subscribe to mlb.tv for another $30 and watch live broadcasts on my computer, and I can pull up game tracker on Yahoo Sports or ESPN.com and follow it that way. But it's just not the same. I don't know a lot of folks, though, who would subscribe to XM at a $330 start-up fee just because they can't hear baseball on the normal radio. I guess I'm one of a few that will miss being able to catch a game without having a satellite radio receiver or computer nearby, or searching through the AM fuzz to find which station might carry it here.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 5:22 pm

I'm as nostalgic and sepia-toned a baseball fan as there is, but I agree with Wordygurdy. Scratching against the low cost and wonderful convenience of online radio is the curmudgeonly equivalent of saying that kids would be better off for walking 15 miles through the snow to school each day. I don't much need it, living close enough to Seattle to follow the Mariners (and the great underrated broadcaster Dave Niehaus), but for those of you in more dire geographic straits, Gameday Audio should be seen as a low-cost, high-satisfaction godsend. I don't see anything elitist about that. Choosing not to have a computer and a high-speed Internet connection these days is like choosing 50 years ago against indoor plumbing and electricity.

longwords · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 5:47 pm

There are many more people than you realize in rural areas in North America who have no access to high-speed internet. They are seriously disadvantaged, in part because people in the cities and the suburbs can't imagine the difficulties.

Someone in a poor inner-city neighborhood can go to the library to use a computer and get on the internet. Back in CompuServe's heyday, I talked to their chief publicist, who was bragging about how they served more than 90 percent of the U.S. I pointed out that this didn't include many rural areas, and that they weren't available over 90 percent of the geographic area of the country. The result was basically a shrug -- polite but indifferent.

Suburbanites in the U.S. need to take rural poverty and isolation seriously, whether it is isolation from baseball (a lot of Plains communities don't have good internet access) or isolation from health care, water and sewer systems, or reliable electrical service.

I will try to refrain from telling you the numerous ways in which urban newspapers contribute to the neglect and, in my opinion, disenfranchisement of rural residents throughout the U.S.

I'm not a Cardinals fan, but what the owners are doing is a good example of a very bad decision for people who live in rural areas.

ndugan1 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 6:01 pm

Wabberjocky wrote:

Gameday Audio should be seen as a low-cost, high-satisfaction godsend. I don't see anything elitist about that. Choosing not to have a computer and a high-speed Internet connection these days is like choosing 50 years ago against indoor plumbing and electricity.

You're implying here that there is a choice. As illustrated above, many communities lack access to a high-speed connection. But a bigger part of it is money. I just took a new job, so I've dealt with moving costs, new rent, security deposits, and the like. I'm also just getting into the workforce, so this will be the first time I'll be able to support myself financially. You'll excuse me, then, if, in addition to the phone, car payments, rent, cell phone, insurance, cable, broadband Internet and other regular bills I have to pay, I'd prefer not to have to pay $15 more to listen to my team play baseball on my computer when I can get it for free on my radio -- my normal, broadcast-from-a-tower-somewhere-in-the-corn-and-soybean-fields-of-the-Midwest radio. I'm not against Satellite radio, but I'll have to have a bit more money set aside to afford the receiving equipment and the monthly subscription costs. Right now, anything I can get for free, I'll gladly take.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Thu Aug 04, 2005 6:09 pm

I just don't know that in today's buisness-oriented baseball climate, that it's reasonable to EXPECT to continue to receive free baseball broadcasts. I'm from rural Illinois myself and listened to Cards games on KMOX on many a magical night, and I treasure those memories, so don't think I'm being heartless. I just now appreciate that it's a service that costs money, and somebody feels the need to recoup that investment. This argument is not unlike the "if you want better newspapers, invest more money in your newsroom" debate. You're morally right, just as you are here ... but that doesn't mean that your view will prevail.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Fri Aug 05, 2005 12:11 am

Yes, we live in a society where commercials and advertising aren't enough to cover the expenses and expected profits of media companies.

So, while the income of most folks is dropping when compared to the rising costs of housing, health care, transportation and coffee, everyone is expected to pay for broadband this and cable that and satellite wonders to get what, in some cases, once was "free."

And if it's not available where you live, you can move. And if you can't afford it, that's tough.

I know, life isn't fair. Never was. Never will be.

And those of us who, for whatever reason, lack cable TV or satellite radio or broadband Internet access will be seen as Luddites, curmudgeons, lay-abouts or fools.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:08 am

If we can't afford $15 a month to support the owners of baseball teams and the players whose minimum wage is -- what, a couple hundred grand a year? -- then we've lost sight of what's truly important, haven't we.

Dugan's trying to give some of us here a reality check.

Is this thing on?

PunkOnce · **Posted:** Fri Aug 05, 2005 3:22 pm

I can remember listening to KMOX late at night in rural Pa. during the Whitey Herzog years and wondering how it was cost-effective for that station to broadcast to me -- a 14-year-old Mets fan under the covers in his bedroom (with zero disposable income).

Now Niko has solved that long-ago mystery for me: In fact it was a historical accident, and as such, unlikely to survive much longer.

So I'm with Wabberjocky on the issue of expecting anything free to last -- but I wonder about the context. Maybe it's another of those stunningly inept media-business decisions that blow up quickly and then are quietly forgotten over time (while Infinity's Les Hollander reverts back to a regional job in Seattle -- no, Honolulu) -- so no good news there. But is it possible that the money difference is actually insignificant, and KMOX just wanted to avoid getting into a bidding war with a pipsqueak rival that was geared up to throw a spectacular but doomed Hail Mary -- after which implosion KMOX will simply pick up the rights again on its own terms?

And isn't this going to lead to *disastrous* publicity for KMOX?

(I found Dan Caesar's June 18 Post-Dispatch article on this issue to be mighty good. I'd love to see more use of the word "outstate.")

Oeditpus Rex · **Posted:** Fri Aug 05, 2005 4:13 pm

PunkOnce wrote:

And isn't this going to lead to *disastrous* publicity for KMOX?

Probably. I'd also wager the Cardinals will lose fans.

Sometime in the '70s, I guess, the Dodgers and 50,000-watt KFI parted ways, and the club hooked up with 5,000-watt KABC. (They're now on another 5,000-watt station.) As I lived, and still do, some 300 miles NNW of Los Angeles, that meant I had to follow them through newspapers, updates during Giants broadcasts, ESPN and the occasional televised game â€” and over the years, I cared less and less. When AOL offered MLB.com's Gameday Audio at no charge last season, I caught the fire again. (AOL didn't renew the deal this season, but I forked over the $15 to MLB.com â€” rather like a junkie who's clean for 10 years, then gets an "innocent" fix.)

It's gotten to the point that baseball simply doesn't care about the fans who live outside a ball club's metro area because they don't buy season tickets, much less spend thousands on luxury boxes. Working slobs are being priced right out of sports.

I don't know if this is MLB-wide, but on Giants broadcasts there're promos headed "Baseball on the Radio" with fan accounts of the tradition of listening to games and how radio is preferable to TV. I strongly agree, but there's a rather ugly irony here. I think we're not too many years from the day when all sports broadcasts will be available only on subscription radio or cable TV.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Sat Aug 06, 2005 8:15 am

In other Cardinals news, Albert Pujols last night became the first player ever to hit 30 home runs in each of his first five seasons.

B Cubbison · **Posted:** Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:13 am

Ndugan, do you get WSMI out of Litchfield? They are going to carry the Cardinals games.

ndugan1 · **Posted:** Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:41 pm

jjmoney62 wrote:

In other Cardinals news, Albert Pujols last night became the first player ever to hit 30 home runs in each of his first five seasons.

And he hit number 31 today, the catalyst for an eighth- and ninth-inning spectacular comeback after struggling against Jorge Sosa all day. Up until those last two innings, the Braves were going to win on a pair of solo home runs from a pair of rookies. Then one thing led to another, and David "Doing way better than the player he replaced" Eckstein knocked a grand slam into the left-field stands.

Boy, I'm sure glad they decided to carry that on my local WB station, because my cable's not hooked up yet.

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Cardinals to end 52-year run with KMOX

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