Sports Teams and Radio Market Rankings

In our industry top markets are often equated with Football and Baseball teams. Instead of spelling out a top 30 or top 20 market focus an add-buyer or VC investor might just say all the MLB cities or NFL cities. The wording does not correlate to some kind sports demographic target. It's just jargon for "all the big markets." It's used most often by people who don't know much about radio. I don't know much about sports so let's file this post under irony.

There are 32 NFL teams and 30 MLB teams (counting both American and National Leagues). There is a lot of overlap so many cities have two or more teams while other markets have none. New York City famously has both the Jets and the Giants, and in baseball the Mets and Yankees. So you can imagine the spread isn't' even at all. Also as you well know, multiple cities can comprise an MSA further, compounding the city-to-team imbalance. The correlation craps out inside the top 20 actually.

1. New York: Jets, Giants, Mets, Yankees
2. Los Angeles: Dodgers, Angels
3. Chicago: Cubs, Bears 
4. Philadelphia: Eagles, Phillies
5. Dallas: Cowboys, Rangers
6. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose: Raiders, Giants, 49ers, Athletics
7. Boston (Manchester): Patriots
8. Washington (Hagerstown): Redskins, Nationals
9. Atlanta: Braves, Falcons
10. Houston: Texans, Astros
11. Phoenix-Prescott: Cardinals, Diamondbacks
12. Detroit: Lions, Tigers
13. Tampa-St. Petersburg (Sarasota): Buccaneers, Rays
14. Seattle-Tacoma: Mariners, Seahawks
15. Minneapolis-St. Paul: Viking. Twins
16. Miami-Ft. Lauderdale: Marlins, Dolphins
17. Denver: Broncos, Rockies
18. Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourn: NONE
19. Cleveland-Akron (Canton): Indian, Browns
20. Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto: NONE
21. St. Louis: Rams, Cardinals
22. Pittsburgh: Pirates, Steelers
23. Portland: NONE
24. Charlotte: Panthers
25. Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville):  NONE
26. Baltimore: Ravens, Orioles
27. Indianapolis: Colts
28. San Diego: Padres, Chargers
29. Nashville: Titans
30. Hartford-New Haven: NONE
31. Kansas City: Chiefs, Royals
32. Columbus: NONE
33. San Antonio NONE
34. Salt Lake City NONE
35. Milwaukee: Brewers
36. Cincinnati: Bengals, Reds,
37. Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson: NONE
38. West Palm Beach-Fort Pierce: NONE
39. Austin: NONE
40. Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek: NONE

That's just the top 40. While they match up 100% in the top 10, they only correlate to 90% of the top 20, and only abotu 85% of the top 30, and a mere 70% of the top 40. It all goes downhill from there.  For the completeists... rather than going long on this market list, here are the small market teams not included above:

Green Bay Packers # 68
Jacksonville Jaguars # 48
New Orleans Saints # 51
Toronto Blue Jays (N/A)
Buffalo Bills # 52

Jimmy The Greek

I had heard of Jimmy the Greek as a bookie, a famous bookie. A list of his best picks were even canonized in the infamous Book Of Lists. In the 1970s he published handbooks on college and pro football and baseball to help other gamblers gamble. He was eulogized in the movie The Legend of Jimmy the Greek, the book Farewell Jimmy The Greek (1996) by Ginger Wadsworth, an autobiography, and even a 1974 board came called "Odds Maker."  But he was also a radio man. That twist will take a little explaining.

Born in 1981, Jimmy Snyder got into gambling as a teenager in Stubenville, OH. It's long rumored that he was involved with the mob. Regardless, by 1948, he was so established he was giving odd on the presidential election and correctly called it that year for Harry Truman on a7:1 odds. In the parlance of the times he was a high-roller. He tried to parlay this into more legitimate stock investments but failed. He moved to Las Vegas in 1956 and began a weekly pro-football betting line. Sometimes you have to go with what you know.

Somehow his blue-collar fame as a sports gambler led CBS to hire him as an analyst on The NFL Today program...the pregame show for National Football League games. He started in 1976 and the stint lasted for 12 years. He appeared in segments with totally legitimate reporters, radio hosts and sportscasters like Phyllis George, Irv Cross, and Brent Musburger. Brent had been on the program since it's debut in 1975. Together they would make predictions about that week's NFL games. On the program everyone still called him Jimmy The Greek and he became a minor celebrity. This led to endorsement deals, books and that aforementioned board game.  But Jimmy blew the whole sweet deal.



On January 16th, 1988, Jimmy was fired by CBS.  On that very day he made an amazingly racist comment to WRC-TV reporter Ed Hotaling.  He was explaining that in his opinion African Americans were naturally superior athletes at least in part because they had been bred to produce stronger offspring during slavery. The exact quote was “The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way."  Note: It was Martin Luther King day. Complex magazine rated this as one of the most racist statements made in the last 25 years of sports reporting. [source]

Snyder suffered from diabetes in his later years and died of a heart attack on April 21st, 1996 in Las Vegas, NV, at the age of 77. He was buried at Union Cemetery in his home town of Steubenville, OH.

Transcription Mystery Disc # 176

This is not the kind of disc I normally find. It's a 10-inch Audio disc with an outer-edge start. It spins at 78 rpm though I had to rip it at 33 rpm because of a notable curvature in the disc. It's is labeled in nice clear block letters "9th Inning 2nd game of 1947 World Series Yankees-10 Dogers-3" This is a recording of the last minutes of the most famous 9th inning rally in Baseball history.

1947 World Series

 
The recording is just a bit over 4 minutes long and about half way in Mel Allen introduces "the old red Head," Red Barber who is heard for the rest of the recording. Allen wasn't just a sports fan, he was also a radio man. He started out in 1933 announcing college football games on 960 WBRC-AM in Birmingham. His sports broadcasting career at CBS started in 1937 where he stayed until the Yankees fired him as an announcer in 1964. They brought him back in 1976. In 1990 he guested and did play-by-play on WPIX-TV for a Yankees game making him the oldest sportscaster of the day at 77.  He died in 1996.

The Oldest Baseball Radio Broadcast

This is the oldest (virtually) complete radio broadcast of a regular season baseball game known to exist. I lifted that sentence straight from the description from alpineinc1 because it was perfect. It contains the relevant caveats and still sells the historical relevancy. The program aired live on WWJ-AM which is how we come to have an existing transcription.

On September 20, 1934, the Yankees played the Tigers at Navin Field; now known as Briggs Stadium in Detroit. It's announced by Ty Tyson who was a huge figure in early sports broadcasting. the audio is worthwhile for the ads alone, but real baseball fans will appreciate the Yankees in the era of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

Auto Racing on Radio

In the last century almost any imaginable type of radio program has been attempted. There are book shows, cooking shows, advice programs, political talk, sex talk, interview programs, football, baseball, and basketball. But some sports don't lend themselves to radio, at least I didn't' think so. So of the major sporting seasons there are only two that didn't make the cut. Ones too fast the others too slow: auto racing and golf.ESPN synchronized swimming. For all that's going on, none of it translates to really changed that. They've covered ping pong, sumo wrestling, arm wrestling and even good play-by-play. On 1090 XESPN in San Diego the only local program is an auto racing show on Sunday mornings.

Their Golf Talk program is based at 1230 KGEO-AM. It amazes me but they actually have affiliates for it. If you listen to this I want to know why. As a network they have no programming quality standards of any kind. It's improved since their inception in 1992, but I think it has roots in their cable TV roots.

ESPN is an acronym for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Originally this was a cable network. It was founded by Bill Rasmussen, formerly a reporter for WWLP-TV. His single satellite channel ran sports programming 24 hours a day. In order to do that they broadcast some lesser events: Australian rules football, badminton, pro-wrestling, slow pitch softball... While this was largely cured in their TV programming, this seems to have lived on in their radio programming.

KBOA's addiction to baseball

Tenacious radio sports fans have been responsible for some of the stranger events and innovations in radioland.

During the first summer of KBOA-AM's operation in 1947 they carried the St. Louis Cardinal Baseball games during the daylight hours of the sun-up to sun-set operation but was unable to broadcast the ball games played at night. In that era they ran at 250 watts as a daytimer.

But in the summer of 1947 the Cardinals were having a good season and we all know how baseball fans can be. So KBOA hooked up The baseball loop. It was a telephone line feed direct to St. Louis so the station staff started could listen to the dame on a monitor. They just couldn't broadcast it on the air.

Then slowly a growing group of fans started dropping by to listen to the ball games. This crowd of cardinal fans grew until staff members had to install a public address system to serve and hundreds of cars which would park on the KBOA grounds along Highway 25. Former PD, nwo congressman Paul Jones estimated the total head count at about a thousand.

The following year they got an FM signal to carry those night games on.

Paul Jones interview here:
http://www.kboa830.com/People/Paul_Jones.htm

Check out SMAYS.com for more KBOA lore.