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Athletics on Bay Area Radio

I wouldn't be surprised if the A's don't end up on any radio station this year. I remember in the 1980 season, they opened the season without a radio home, then in May of that year, they ended up on 1310 KDIA.
 
HenryOchs said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the A's don't end up on any radio station this year. I remember in the 1980 season, they opened the season without a radio home, then in May of that year, they ended up on 1310 KDIA.
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Those A's had been dismantled by Charlie Finley and were even worse than today's Marlins after Derek Jeter's fire sale. The current A's are a good team with a lot of young talent under control for several years. I can't imagine them not finding a radio outlet this season.
 
From the article:
The A’s do not envision streaming games themselves for the coming season, but as the format evolves, that possibility might exist down the line.

I thought MLB Advanced Media had exclusive video and audio streaming rights to every team's games. How could the A's even be considering that?
 
CTListener said:
From the article:
The A’s do not envision streaming games themselves for the coming season, but as the format evolves, that possibility might exist down the line.

I thought MLB Advanced Media had exclusive video and audio streaming rights to every team's games. How could the A's even be considering that?
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If enough clubs decide they can make more money on their own, that deal might change. It's a long term view, not a next-season view.
 
CTListener said:
I thought MLB Advanced Media had exclusive video and audio streaming rights to every team's games. How could the A's even be considering that?
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Last year MLB loosened the rules for streaming audio (as they gave up on selling their audio only streaming service) so now the flagship stations are allowed to stream the games, I supposed if a team had no flagship, it could steam it's own. The A's did have radio affiliates last year and I see no reason for that to change, guess worse case scenario KHTK Sacremento could become a de facto flagship.

They'll be buying time by the hour before any of this happens.
 
https://www.sfchronicle.com/athletics/article/A-s-with-no-radio-deal-yet-to-emphasize-13559722.php

And here is the lastest on the A's

The A’s still will have a traditional radio home for their broadcasts in 2019, according to team President Dave Kaval, but will be emphasizing their streaming service first and foremost in the coming season.

“We need to look at this in an innovative way,” Kaval told The Chronicle on Thursday. “Terrestrial radio is kind of dying and we need to look long-term at how you get in front of people with audio. There is still going to be an audio feed of the game, the way there is with traditional radio, but there are going to be many ways people can consume that and we want to provide options to achieve that in multiple ways.”

According to Kaval, the A’s are close to finalizing partnerships for distributing their audio content. There are numerous apps with which Oakland could team to present a streaming service, which would include game replays and additional programming such as pregame and postgame shows, team-related talk shows and interviews. MLB.com also has its own streaming app that provides all major-league games.

With FanFest on Saturday and pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training in 2½ weeks, the team has no traditional radio deal in place after the team’s acrimonious departure from 95.7 FM The Game. Kaval said the A’s still hope to be able to provide some game broadcasts from spring training in Arizona, though the team will be there less than five weeks because of the season-opening trip to Japan.
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brettbutlerisok said:
I know streaming is the future and works just fine for most people, even people on the road, but it's useless for those who would like to listen at the ballpark. The delay is just too long.
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The A's average under 20,000 spectators a game. How many of them are so thick about baseball that they need to bring a radio to the ballpark with then? One thousand? Five hundred? I respectfully suggest that their concerns figure not at all in this decision, even if they all stop coming to the games because they have no voice in their ears telling telling them what they're looking at, or because they're not being told what they're looking at at the precise moment they're doing so.
 
CTListener said:
The A's average under 20,000 spectators a game. How many of them are so thick about baseball that they need to bring a radio to the ballpark with then? One thousand? Five hundred?
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I would say it is dozens, not hundreds.
 
CTListener said:
The A's average under 20,000 spectators a game. How many of them are so thick about baseball that they need to bring a radio to the ballpark with then? One thousand? Five hundred? I respectfully suggest that their concerns figure not at all in this decision, even if they all stop coming to the games because they have no voice in their ears telling telling them what they're looking at, or because they're not being told what they're looking at at the precise moment they're doing so.
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The generation of fans that made bringing a portable radio to the game a thing were far from thick and probably knew the rules of the game better than you or I. They enjoyed marrying the visual with the vivid descriptions that the best play-by-play talents in the business (Vin Scully, Lon Simmons, Dave Neihaus and many more) brought to the action. Times have changed and the current generation of fans has less of a connection with the play-by-play announcers than their dads and grandfathers did.
 
TheBigA said:
What's a portable radio?
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Sorry---lapsed into what my dad called pocket-sized transistor radios---although, son of a gun, you can still buy a new one:

https://express.google.com/u/0/product/5396110042981711702_15000018634906236472_125181302?utm_source=google_shopping&utm_medium=tu_cu&utm_content=eid-lsjeuxoeqt&gtim=COLBnL_uz8_F_gEQtKGeyJ2ygseDARjwi8QJIgNVU0QooNGI4wUw9rrYOw&utm_campaign=125181302&gclid=CjwKCAiAv9riBRANEiwA9Dqv1YhKSEsv06cFNCFAtmsPH6OWMxE17YTAwiP1_N8EExaSRtXX51WnYRoCNksQAvD_BwE.

But I was referring to that time. People COULD do the same thing with their phones and streaming now (the earbuds are just an updated version of what we used to plug into those transistor radios), but, again---other things have changed.
 
michael hagerty said:
People COULD do the same thing with their phones and streaming now
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You're right. They COULD, but they don't. I was at a game just last night. Surrounded by people with their phones out, and none of them were using their phones as radios. They were checking email, texting friends, taking pictures, surfing the web, anything you can think of but listening to something, either radio or music. I think it's an interesting study in how people use their phones, and I suspect this extends into other areas.
 
johndavis said:
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.
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The Twins did the same thing a few years back making their flagship 96.3 KTWN, primarily a AAA station at the time. The Polhads have learned their lesson and have made the Twins flagship back to 50k AM blowtorch WCCO.
I would have figured they learned their lesson with the debacle that was Victory Sports 1 when they tried to launch their own sports channel on cable.
 
michael hagerty said:
Sorry---lapsed into what my dad called pocket-sized transistor radios---although, son of a gun, you can still buy a new one:

https://express.google.com/u/0/product/5396110042981711702_15000018634906236472_125181302?utm_source=google_shopping&utm_medium=tu_cu&utm_content=eid-lsjeuxoeqt>im=COLBnL_uz8_F_gEQtKGeyJ2ygseDARjwi8QJIgNVU0QooNGI4wUw9rrYOw&utm_campaign=125181302&gclid=CjwKCAiAv9riBRANEiwA9Dqv1YhKSEsv06cFNCFAtmsPH6OWMxE17YTAwiP1_N8EExaSRtXX51WnYRoCNksQAvD_BwE.

But I was referring to that time. People COULD do the same thing with their phones and streaming now (the earbuds are just an updated version of what we used to plug into those transistor radios), but, again---other things have changed.
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No actually they can't, not for listening to play-by-play at the game. Too much delay with a stream. The San Jose Sharks have set up a part 15 transmitter for people to follow the play-by-play inside the arena. https://nhl.bamcontent.com/images/assets/binary/284663362/binary-file/file.pdf
 
I can't say I've ever thought about wanting to listen to play by play while sitting in the stands for many years. But I do keep an eye on Twitter and the MLB At-Bat app to keep up with stats and updates while at the ballpark.
 
The point is that if the A's decide that streaming rather than terrestrial radio is the future of play-by-play, they won't be taking the inconvenience of, at most, hundreds of people in the ballpark into consideration. Those people are already being reached by most of the A's advertisers through signage and between-innings ads on the video board. Play-by-play broadcasts are designed for people at work, in cars, at the beach, etc. They can't see the game, so it doesn't matter if the home run leaves the park 10 seconds before they hear the call.
 
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