MLB Team Values

General Sports Junkies62

An interesting diversion for you. (Link)

The link to the “Heavy Lifting” blog has some very detailed information for sports junkies.

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General Sports Junkies

62 Responses to MLB Team Values

  1. BoKnowsNCS71 04/25/2007 at 7:15 AM #

    Just heard that Wolfpack football and basketball games are moving form AM 680 to FM 101.5 from now on. Same company but still a major change since we have all (in the Raleigh area) listened to WPTF for Wolfpack games since the 60’s for me (and before that for some of you).

    Should give NCSU a wider range of listeners since the channel can be picked up farther away. Lee Fowler was on the air with the announcers and very happy.

  2. 4PackinMB 04/25/2007 at 8:33 AM #

    Bo,

    Living in Myrtle Beach, I could pick up WPTF with occassional interference, but not much. I doubt I will be able to get WRAL-FM. FM doesn’t broadcast like AM, obviously. I guess I am out of luck now.

  3. packpigskinfan23 04/25/2007 at 8:40 AM #

    I have a bad antenna on my car… I can only pick up 680 in Wake County. I can pick up 101.5 all over the state.

    change sometimes sucks… especially if it is something you are used to, but I think this could be for the better. AM is a dying breed. UNC gets brodcast thru 106.1 which is the farthest reaching station I have ever heard.

    we will see how this plays out.

    of course I live in Raleigh and am a student now…. so I plan on being AT the majority of these games… and will have no problem viewing, or hearing them if need be.

  4. 12pack 04/25/2007 at 8:42 AM #

    I live in Greensboro, and I get soooo frustrated not being able to pick up the games very clearly. 600/1200 am carries the broadcast, and i have to walk around with my radio in different positions just to hear anyything. I hope that the Wolfpack Network can get picked up by a stronger FM station in the G’boro area.

  5. noah 04/25/2007 at 8:44 AM #

    Back when Cleveland was going through their football stadium deal in the early 1990s, there was a lot of talk about the economics of publicly-funded stadiums.

    This was when the conventional wisdom was basically that tax dollars spent on pro sports teams were dollars that were well spent.

    Even though I was in North Carolina, at night, I could hear the big Cleveland 100,000 watt all-sports station. I can’t think of the call letters, but it seems like it was 1120AM.

    Even though the Browns were getting ready to bolt unless the city built a new stadium and everyone was up in arms about it on this station, the hosts of their evening drive-time show brought on this guy from the Stanford School of Economics who had recently published a new study on the impact of pro teams on local economies.

    One of the things that made his study interesting was that all of the previous data was stuff that was done in the 50s, 60s and 70s when we had a big rash of spending on the multi-plex concrete doughnut stadium types like they had with Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, the vet in Philly, Cincy’s Riverfront, Atlanta’s Fulton-Co, and St. Louis’ Busch Stadium. You know the type…big, ugly, round, devoid of personality…suitable for everything from motorcross to baseball to football to prayer revivals to sacrificing christians to the lions….but basically, GOOD for nothing.

    This guy had done his study taking into account luxury boxes and stadiums like Camden Yards. He took the position that 1) the economic impact of pro sports teams on a community is waaaaaay less significant than previously felt and 2) the idea that the public should fund poorly designed pieces of crap that were just going to have to be torn down in 30 years was just as stupid as the idea that the public should fund really WELL designed stadiums that people would flock to and love and make a ton of cash.

    If they’re really well designed and people like going to them, then the owners should have no trouble putting up the cash for the design and construction of them. If they are pieces of junk…well…

    His conclusion was that cities and counties should stop debating the issue in terms of dollars and returns on investment. He said that no one debates a new bridge or a set of stoplights as a return on an investment. You get convenience and ease of mind from better traffic flow and maybe a little more public safety. He argued you should debate stadiums the same way.

    Do you like going to concerts and hockey games and stuff like that IN your community? Then vote “yes” on bond referendum on XYZ. But don’t pretend that your “yes” vote is actually a vote for a stronger economy.

    I wish I could remember that guys name…

  6. noah 04/25/2007 at 9:00 AM #

    For those who can’t get 101.5, get an XM. You’ll never miss terrestial radio again. You’ll wonder where this has been all your life.

  7. BoKnowsNCS71 04/25/2007 at 9:06 AM #

    Noah is right. XM carries the ACC and I could get WP games anywhere. BB might not be as accessible as football was. But they give you the score on the screen so if you are just checking in on the ACC scores — you can do that fast.

    More info on the free FM broadcasting can be found at

    http://www.gopack.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=9200&ATCLID=876362

  8. BJD95 04/25/2007 at 9:49 AM #

    I have XM, and have only listened to old radio for Wolfpack pre and post-game stuff in at least a year. Maybe a few minutes during the basketball search when Dave Glenn was on.

  9. BoKnowsNCS71 04/25/2007 at 9:53 AM #

    The only bad thing about XM is that the home team gets their own announcers. So we get the 680 guys when here but when at FSU — we get their announcers (who are lousy by the way).

  10. Joeboot 04/25/2007 at 9:58 AM #

    4PackinMB:

    WRAL-101.5 offers streaming of it’s broadcast from the website. Hopefully this will allow many more people who live out of the area to listen to Wolfpack games.

  11. Joeboot 04/25/2007 at 10:02 AM #

    By the way, I also have XM. It is the greatest.

  12. highonlowe 04/25/2007 at 10:33 AM #

    all my comments are getting flagged as spam today. I promise I’m not selling via[]gra…

  13. noah 04/25/2007 at 11:00 AM #

    I would be willing to bet that during State games, they pre-empt their web stream with music.

  14. redfred2 04/25/2007 at 11:24 AM #

    Yep, everyone’s getting a good taste of satelite radio right now.

    The free airways will naturally offer less and less as we’re all becoming hooked on the satelite version and their profitability bottoms out. We’ll all be shelling out beaucoup $$$ as the price inexplicably rises for XM & etc. in the future.

    It all sounds kinda familiar to moi.

  15. BoKnowsNCS71 04/25/2007 at 12:28 PM #

    Well they just announced that Lee Fowler’s contract was exstended for 3 more years. And no — this is not April 1. Saw this on the Buzz Blog.

  16. redfred2 04/25/2007 at 12:49 PM #

    Whoopie!!! More good fortune drops out of the sky.

  17. noah 04/25/2007 at 1:05 PM #

    “We’ll all be shelling out beaucoup $$$ as the price inexplicably rises for XM & etc. in the future.”

    Terrestial radio did this to itself. They were the ones who pushed for the restrictions on radio ownership to be lifted and opened the door for ClearChannel.

    Radio listenership peaked in 1992 and has dropped steadily every single year. If you remember radio back before 1992, you remember local DJs and hearing exciting new music. If you were young, you probably LISTENED to the radio actively. That means you turned it on and paid attention while they cranked out good music and you actively listened to the DJ banter and that meant you heard the commercials.

    At some point, ClearChannel figured spending money to recruit more listeners was a waste of time. Why bother putting out a good product when you can spend a minimal amount of money, put out a perfectly mediocre one and still make a profit?

    The people who listen to terrestial radio now are largely passive listeners. They are the people who turn on News-Talk AM or Sunny D-Lite Bland FM and leave it on all day and couldn’t begin to tell you one single thing they heard on the radio. It’s sonic wallpaper to them.

    Elementary school economics would predict that someone else would simply come along, offer a better product and reap the profits while the consumer benefitted by having a better product to “buy.” Except that the FM market is totally closed out by bandwidth restrictions…so you didn’t have any other choices.

    Newspapers went through this. In any town, there are a certain number of people who would subscribe to a newspaper that was nothing more than a handful of wire stories, some sports agate, a list of marriages and obits and the Wednesday Piggly-Wiggly coupons. Thomson Newspapers have made a mint getting people to buy this crap.

    And while there are no bandwidth restrictions in newspapers, cities and towns are basically one-paper markets. It’s next to impossible to start a rival, competitive paper without an angel to pick up your losses.

    The nice thing about satellite radio is that there’s nothing that prevents a company from forming and offering a counter to XM’s product. Sirius went into the tank because it offers NOTHING except Howard Stern and NFL games.

    While I like the NFL, having Sirius for the NFL gives you 16 days of programming. That’s it. Yeah, I’d take it…but it’s nothing compared the offerings that XM provides.

    From April to October, every single day, I can get every MLB game. On my way home from work, I can listen to a game that I normally wouldn’t hear or see because of where I live.

    Plus, in the mornings, if I want to listen to foul-mouthed comics (which I do, sometimes), i can listen to Opie and Anthony or one of five comic channels. Or, if I want news, I can listen to Bob Edwards, the BBC, CNN, or a couple of other stations.

    Plus, if I want music, they’ve got dozens of music channels that are 99.999% commercial free, they have a very deep playlist, they play a lot of obscure songs and bands and they even have a channel dedicated just to deep album tracks.

    Right now, XM is having a lot of success offering lifetime subscriptions with the purchase of head units in cars. And I read recently on one of the XM discussion groups that a lot of people are getting hooked on XM and getting second home units or those little walkman units and paying $6.00 for the second subscription.

  18. Dan 04/25/2007 at 1:21 PM #

    “In the business of baseball, especially in an era of free-agent salaries and the luxury tax, the more the team wins, the lower the profits”

    Wow. What a ridiculous assumption. That entire “operating income” scale is for “after luxury tax”. After the redistribution of wealth. So, the profit that the Padres are credited with was not made by the Padres organization. Its was made by the big spender organizations who are required to pay it to the low spending organziations. Its the Yankees profit. Its just given to the Padres. Its like if Bob and Joe go sell cars and Joe outsells Bob 10k to 4k. The Manager Bud comes in and tells Joe to give Bob 4k of his profit. Well now Joe has 6k and Bob has 8k. Who’s the most profitable? (Now before people blow that apart, of course Joe and Bob sell to different customers and advertise differently, but the point stands.)

    Operating Income and Profit in the light of the luxury tax are not the same thing. What a horrible conclusion.

    By the way. The Yankees are evil, but not because of this. They are evil because they drive up costs by overpaying players to field less that stellar teams. Then they feel the solution is to spend more further driving up prices. If there was a meaningful cap, they couldnt overpay and drive up prices in a manner that made small market teams need revenue sharing in the first place. However, MLB has realized that a salary cap wont squeeze the last from the fan. It leaves money left to be had in big market cities.

  19. McPete 04/25/2007 at 1:24 PM #

    I know alot of people who still can’t comprehend paying for radio. The same sentiment was shared by millions in 1980 when cable tv first came out. Look how that turned out. FM radio is largely worthless. It’s radio walmart. any self-respecting music lover can’t find satisfaction in FM radio. I had the opportunity to browse XM lineup and was pleasantly surprised to find lots of good music.

  20. 4PackinMB 04/25/2007 at 2:02 PM #

    Does XM have a station or two that plays good ole Carolina Beach Music? I am curious. And I am NOT talking about the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean.

  21. BoKnowsNCS71 04/25/2007 at 2:09 PM #

    Not like you want it to. It does have some classic soul which comes close. Beach music is unique to this area. Ousiders feel like they are in a time warp when it cranks up.

  22. noah 04/25/2007 at 2:09 PM #

    4pack – the 60s decade show has a beach music segment that they play during the week…seems like it’s on Fridays, I dunno.

    But it’s not “carolina” beach music like The Embers. It’s a much broader show than that.

  23. noah 04/25/2007 at 2:14 PM #

    One of the cooler things that I think they do is the Wolfman Jack rebroadcasts on the 60s channel. I am also amused by the rebroadcasts of the Casey Kasem America’s Top 40 show.

    The Wolfman Jack show was taken from the golden age of rock-n-roll on the radio, when a radio DJ was about as influential a person in pop culture as you could get.

    The Casey Kasem promo is, “Remember when you would wake up and KNOW it was Sunday’s because American Top 40 was on the air?”

    Yes, I do. It’s a total nostalgia trip for people around my age.

    My wife and I were driving back from Ohio a couple of Sunday’s ago and they were doing a countdown from Spring of 1986. A whole lotta, “Oh yeah! I remember that song!” and “What the hell is this crap??”

  24. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 04/25/2007 at 2:21 PM #

    WPTF can be reached in Florida but it is a directional signal after dark so if you are not south of Raleigh the signal isn’t very strong. Over all probably a good move but WPTF is one of the golden oldies AM stations with about as strong as of a signal as any station in the country. I think it is 50,000 Watts- How would you like to pay that power bill?

  25. Cosmo96 04/25/2007 at 2:21 PM #

    I bought a new car in ’05 that had an XM radio. I really liked it, but I moved to Hawaii last year and they don’t broadcast out here for some reason.

    I haven’t really kept up with XM since then, but I had heard that they were possibly going to merge with Sirius. Does anyone have any info about that? I liked the fact that XM carried ACC games, but would like to have been able to hear NFL games as well. Also I heard that NASCAR was moving from XM to Sirius (which would be disappointing for me, if, you know, I was still able to listen to XM). I won’t live out here forever, so I’m planning to re-subscribe as soon as I can.

    Basically, if the two companies merged, subscribers would be able to hear all of the above, right? Is there anyone in the know who could clarify? Thanks.

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