Baseball on Southern California Radio 1999

Several newspaper articles I saw from the sports writers, John Maffei from the North County Times, and Fritz Quindt of the San Diego Union, both excellent sports journalists in their own right, have in part explained some of the quirks about baseball on local radio and cable television.

Let's begin with the radio part.

The San Diego Padres will have all of their games in English on 760 KFMB and in Spanish on 1550 from Tijuana, plus other affilliates across their network. Are you a Padres fan in Los Angeles? Why does KFMB barely reach Brea during the day, but booms beyond Bakersfield at night? Well, just two notches to the left of 760 is a Christian talk station at 740, a daytimer from nearly Avalon, and rather than drowning each other's signals out, KFMB broadcasts at 5,000 watts during the day, enough so that it keeps the folks at KBRT happy; but once KBRT signs off at dusk, KFMB goes, boom, to 50kW! You may also notice that KCBS out of San Francisco can be heard at 740 at night.

Are you a Dodger fan, anywhere? Guess what? If KABC's 5,000-watt signal wasn't impressive enough in 1997, the new KXTA Xtra Sports 1150 and their new far-out and right-on 50,000 Watter blowtorch can hit a homer into your radio homes much clearer---except SAN DIEGO!!!!

Hey wait a minute, one San Diegan Dodger ponders, why is that KXTA sez it's now a 50kW station, but it comes in like a 500 watter? Why do I get mostly static on 1150 from where I live in Chula Vista? I thought that KXTA 1150 was a 50kW station? Well, it is, 3 out of 4 directions; it's the South side of their transmitter that they have to be very very careful with. Why you ask? You see, if you turn your radio just two notches from either side of 1150, you get a local station at 1130 (KSDO) and another one at 1170 (KCBQ). Although 1150 can broadcast at 50kW every other which way, they have to protect the two stations in San Diego from possible channel interference, as well as to honor the International treaty intended to protect Mexico from excessive American radio signals from drowning out some of their signals down there.

So it's funny that a signal with ten times less power (KABC) broadcasting omni-directional, is actually more powreful than a 50kW station (KXTA) broadcasting a fourth of its signal into the Pacific Ocean.

Although KXTA's parent company Jacor owns KSDO, they don't have rights to broadcast Dodger games locally on any San Diego station, as a separate broadcast contract would have to be agreed upon between the broadcaster and Major League Baseball. But San Diegans have other radio options, but at different times; during the day, you can get AM 1340 from Santa Barbara, but before dusk, the 1340 signal is reduced greatly, but from the desert, you can then get KDWN 720 from Las Vegas, which has Dodger games as well.

So for San Diegans, the KXTA signal is just as good as KABC's? Bah! Why not have KXTA broadcast just 10,000 watts maximum down South, the reverse direction of what KFMB broadcasts during the day, so that at least half of San Diego county can hear some trace of the 1150 signal? The signal would be weak enough to not mess up fans of Dr. Laura and Tom Leykis down here!

Are you an Angels fan...in Orange County? In San Diego? In 1998, the weak-to-the-South KRLA 1110 came in OK during the day, but at night, unlike their former home at 710, now a Radio Disney kid station, the signal just didn't come in at all. Now that KRLA is a talk station, Angels fans can rejoice that a strong AM, KLAC 570, has taken over the Angels radio broadcasts beginning in 1999.

In 1998, country music station KIK 94.3 once ironed out a deal with KRLA to have the Angels games simulcast over to Orange County's low-power FM station. Spanish language games air on XPRS 1090 based in Tijuana.

On the national radio side, CBS Radio's three-game weekends have been replaced by ESPN Radio's Sunday Night showcase.

Now let's tune into the television part.

You may be noticing fewer baseball games from the so-called "Superstations" nowadays, in fact, TBS is no longer a superstation as of January 1998. More on that in a moment.

For WGN Chicago, which is the flagship station for the Chicago Cubs and White Sox games, they are hitting a stride of their own being one of the stations priveldged enough to carry "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek" into millions of homes and the WB becoming the talk of the television industry. As a result in part, WGN would rather show fewer Cubs and White Sox games than to get angry telephone calls from fans who miss "7th Heaven" and "The Wayans Brothers" even for a week. So, WGN has scaled back to fewer than 100 games this year for the Cubs, in fact, 92 this year, a drop from 142 in 1997; WGN has 40 White Sox games this year.

TBS, like WGN, has dropped the number of Atlanta Braves games below the century mark, from 125 to 96, but for a different reason. You see, it had to do with the fact that Turner Broadcasting wasn't making any money with TBS still classified as a "Superstation", going back to ancient times when it was once known as WTCG 17 Atlanta, then WTBS, a UHF station whose signal was placed on a satellite bird by millionaire at the time Ted Turner (now billionaire) in order for cable systems in outland areas to have some entertainment programming for them to distribute to their subscribers.

As the years went on, TBS was classified as a distant signal, meaning that it was subject to FCC's copyright tribunal or something like that, meaning, cable systems had to collect about a quarter or so for importing a distant signal, and that fee went back to Hollywood in some form of royalties, which originated from the subscribers who had to pay the fee that the cable system passed onto them. But, TBS never got a penny from the fees because they were still a distant station. So, Turner decided to convert his TBS into a Cable Network class, meaning, that it can ask cable systems for carriage fees, and instead of them going to Hollywood, it would go back to Turner.

Not so fast, says Turner's other corporate enemies, Fox, Disney, etc. etc. Fox and Disney claim they have exclusive national contracts to televise baseball, yadda, yadda, yadda. So to make a long story short, some compromise was struck, whatever it is, and Turner got their wish to televise the Braves games as a Cable Network. So there.

At other national networks: ESPN Cable Network has 26 Sunday Night games, and Fox has 18 Saturday game of the week telecasts, but, not until May 30. Why, I don't know. fX has 26 Saturday games this season, and the team blackout rule doesn't apply, as fX, unlike the regional cable networks in the next paragraph, is a national network.

For the regional networks: Are you a Dodger or Angels fan in San Diego? If so, you're out of luck in this department, as the suits at Major League Baseball clearly prohibits the importation of out of town league games into another league market via regional cable networks, in this case, San Diego, so everybody else (except San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, etc) can look forward to seeing 80 Angels and Dodgers games on Fox Sports West and Fox Sports West 2 respectively. Furthermore, MLB orders Fox Sports West 1 and 2 to substitute programming in place of the Angels and Dodgers games into other baseball markets, and with so much substitute programming on FSW2, San Diego cable systems see no reason why they have to pay such a high carriage fee for a channel whose star teams they cannot show in their market. Fox Sports West, however, will broadcast Fox cable's Game of the Week on 26 Thursdays, provided that their local teams are on (i.e.: San Diego Padres on FSW in San Diego). If you want even more baseball, DirecTV has about 27 gazillion games available for purchase.

For the locals: San Diego's Cable 4 will have 135 Padres games, while Channel 51/Cable 9 has 25 games, all on Sunday afternoons, not to conflict with ESPN's said exclusive baseball window. Also, Dodger fans can get 40 games on KTLA channel 5, available by satellite as it is a superstation. Many San Diego cable systems carry the station, which, like WGN, is a WB affilliate. Angels fans can enjoy 51 games on KCAL channel 9, which is not on satellite, but available all over Southern California...except San Diego whose cable systems (Cox, SW, etc) doesn't carry KCAL, so you'll need an antenna from Radio Shack in order to see the games. And for the record, it's not a WB station.

KMRZ (formerly KMEN) 1290 is carrying The Anaheim Angels network.

Are you a minor-league baseball fan? Here's some news: the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, which is the Class A California League Padres affilliate, will be heard on 10,000 watt KMSL 1510 from Ontario. It's possible to get the signal from all over the area if you try hard enough. The Angels' California League affilliate, the Lake Elsinore Storm, moved to KFRG 92.9 in the San Bernadino/Riverside area. San Bernardino Stampede games are on KCKC 1350 in San Bernardino, which carried Quakes last two years.