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Athletics on Bay Area Radio

michael hagerty said:
Rich Lieberman, the Bay Area radio blogger, has been suggesting that someone willing to write a check could bring 610 back to commercial broadcasting after 13 years as Family Life Radio. He's been not-so-subtly lobbying K-101/KOFY founder Jim Gabbert to be that guy, but no action. The A's could. 610's signal isn't what it used to be (no one's is), but it could be improved well beyond what FLR's doing with it now.
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There would be an irony there. James Gabbert - one of FM radio's earliest supporters, one of the earliest proponents of Stereo FM in the mid 50's who ran little KPEN 101.3 on the Peninsula in the mid 1950's - a rare (for those days) stand-alone FM station, who then turned that station into powerhouse K-101 - coming out of a comfortable retirement to helm an anachronistic AM only station.

Keep in mind that Gabbert sold KOFY-TV at the top of it's value when it was still a UPN affiliate, so he certainly doesn't need an income...not that 610 would bring him one. AFAIK, the only things he has done publicly since the sale of KOFY-TV is to come back briefly as the face of the station, doing some videotaped promos - a nostalgia thing that probably just took him a few hours - and he used to occasionally fill in as a talk host on KGO.

And what would he do with 610 do when it wasn't running A's games? Syndicated sports or talk shows? Brokered programming? Neither of those sounds like much fun for a rich guy who's got nothing to prove.
 
LKellerIII said:
And what would he do with 610 do when it wasn't running A's games? Syndicated sports or talk shows? Brokered programming? Neither of those sounds like much fun for a rich guy who's got nothing to prove.
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Understood about the person you mention, but as far as programming on an all-baseball station, one only needs to watch the MLB Channel to see what to do. In the off-season they run re-runs of old games, discussions of the hot stove league, documentaries about baseball, and lots of other things. Do people watch? Probably not. But if the team owns the station, it doesn't matter. That's why an AM station is a good candidate.
 
CTListener said:
CBS had WBCN as the flagship of the "WBCN Patriots Rock Radio Network" for years before making the team the main attraction on its new "Sports Hub" WBZ-FM. Here in western New England, the Pats air both on WTIC news/talk 1080 AM and Springfield's classic rock powerhouse WAQY 102.1 FM. A factor in football continuing to air on music stations -- at least here in the East -- is that most games are on weekends, and the Monday and Thursday games are all at night, safely separated from the important commuter and at-work audiences that might otherwise be tempted to find something else to listen to.
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Football and baseball are two totally different animals.

Example: in the 90s, Arizona Cardinals games and call-in shows aired solely on AC KESZ. It's not like they were ever interested in a male audience, they just wanted the revenue. The station at the time was owned by the local ABC-TV affiliate, so they pitched a radio-TV deal to the Bidwells and got it. Since the majority of the programming aired on Sundays, there wasn't much of an interruption, and when they'd pre-empt the love songs show at night to have the TV sports anchor do a coaches show, they made more money on the coaches show than they did with soft rock. So even if you don't have an AM to shift the ancillary programming to, you can make a case for taking the deal. There's a lot of money to be made as the flagship.

Now let's imagine that the Diamondbacks were a thing back when those stations were still locally owned... with over 100 days of pre-emptions across middays, afternoons, and nights? There's no way I'd take that deal.
 
TheBigA said:
The easy solution to that problem is for the A's to buy their own station. They can brand it A's Radio, and talk about the team 24/7.
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Example: KLAA, owned by the Angels. When they're not running Angels games (or Anaheim Ducks hockey), they have a local afternoon drive show and the rest of the schedule is syndicated. 24/7 team talk would get old in a hurry, but owning your flagship means you keep the revenue and have total editorial control.
 
TheBigA said:
Yes, thanks for that. I had incorrectly said the Dodgers, but yes, it's the other LA tea.
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You're not far off on the Dodgers. The team owns 49% of KLAC, with iHeart owning the remaining 51%. The Angels own KLAA outright.
 
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LKellerIII said:
There would be an irony there. James Gabbert - one of FM radio's earliest supporters, one of the earliest proponents of Stereo FM in the mid 50's who ran little KPEN 101.3 on the Peninsula in the mid 1950's - a rare (for those days) stand-alone FM station, who then turned that station into powerhouse K-101 - coming out of a comfortable retirement to helm an anachronistic AM only station.

Keep in mind that Gabbert sold KOFY-TV at the top of it's value when it was still a UPN affiliate, so he certainly doesn't need an income...not that 610 would bring him one. AFAIK, the only things he has done publicly since the sale of KOFY-TV is to come back briefly as the face of the station, doing some videotaped promos - a nostalgia thing that probably just took him a few hours - and he used to occasionally fill in as a talk host on KGO.

And what would he do with 610 do when it wasn't running A's games? Syndicated sports or talk shows? Brokered programming? Neither of those sounds like much fun for a rich guy who's got nothing to prove.
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Actually KOFY was a WB affiliate...
 
Here's a new idea!!! Maybe iHeart should at least look into buying 1170 KLOK in San Jose and putting A's games on that station. They could also program a similar format that Bill Weaver did in the early to mid 1970's! :)
 
HenryOchs said:
Here's a new idea!!! Maybe iHeart should at least look into buying 1170 KLOK in San Jose and putting A's games on that station.
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You realize iHeart is in bankruptcy? It's a great idea if the team (that is in much better financial shape) shares the expense.
 
Tom Taylor's newsletter quotes a sports talk host at The Game as saying "We're in the audience business, they're not." A look at the ratings would say he's right. The Giants get better ratings on KNBR-AM than the A's got on an FM. The A's say they got bounced to the AM a lot in the spring because of basketball, but that didn't happen in the summer. Once basketball season ended, The Game's ratings dropped a full point, under a 2 share, for the summer.
 
TheBigA said:
Tom Taylor's newsletter quotes a sports talk host at The Game as saying "We're in the audience business, they're not." A look at the ratings would say he's right. The Giants get better ratings on KNBR-AM than the A's got on an FM.
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That despite the Giants being a dreary, punchless, sub-.500 baseball team practically from the start of the season while the A's hit a lot of homers, gave the Astros a good fight for the division title and made it into the wild-card game. Tough being the No. 2 team in the market. I have a feeling Mets/White Sox/Angels ratings never top Yankees/Cubs/Dodgers ratings no matter how successful a season they may be having.
 
CTListener said:
I have a feeling Mets/White Sox/Angels ratings never top Yankees/Cubs/Dodgers ratings no matter how successful a season they may be having.
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Interesting because both the Mets and White Sox recently changed radio stations in their markets, and you're right, they were underperforming the other teams. The Angels, as we've said, own their radio station, which is partly why I suggest that's what the A's should do. For many years, the Yankees owned their own cable TV channel (YES), which they programmed with non-stop Yankee content.
 
TheBigA said:
Interesting because both the Mets and White Sox recently changed radio stations in their markets, and you're right, they were underperforming the other teams. The Angels, as we've said, own their radio station, which is partly why I suggest that's what the A's should do. For many years, the Yankees owned their own cable TV channel (YES), which they programmed with non-stop Yankee content.
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The Cardinals tried that a few years ago with KTRS, but it couldn't be heard in Metro East, and after 4 years they threw in the towel and went back to KMOX, where they had been since the early 50s and can be heard EVERYWHERE at night.
 
The A's have been everywhere on the dial. One year they were on a low power college FM that one year when Harry Caray was withe the A's. Have the Giants been anywhere but KNBR?
 
ThePowerCow said:
The A's have been everywhere on the dial. One year they were on a low power college FM that one year when Harry Caray was withe the A's. Have the Giants been anywhere but KNBR?
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I remember growing up in the 60's listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons on KSFO. The Giants moved to KNBR in 1979 with Lindsey Nelson and Hank Greenwald sharing the play-by-play.
 
ThePowerCow said:
The A's have been everywhere on the dial. One year they were on a low power college FM that one year when Harry Caray was withe the A's. Have the Giants been anywhere but KNBR?
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The Giants were on 560 KSFO from 1958-78!
 
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