Quad Cities River Bandits fans won’t be hearing Ben Chiswick’s familiar voice calling games in 2010. In fact, they won’t be hearing anyone talking up their hometown heroes.
It was announced in December that Chiswick, Quad Cities Director of Broadcasting and Media Relations, had left the River Bandits after five years. The radio voice of the St. Louis Cardinals Class A affiliate for 140 games each season was the club’s longest-tenured full-time employee, going back prior to the ownership change following the 2007 season. Chiswick has since taken the similar job with Midwest League competitor West Michigan Whitecaps.
The same day Chiswick’s departure was made public, his replacement was introduced, Tommy Thrall. Thrall had been the Director of Broadcasting and Communications for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans of the Carolina League.
It was not clearly stated that Thrall’s new position is simply Director of Media Relations. I have since received emails from Thrall, but did not catch the subtlety in his signature block, the missing Director of Broadcasting part.
The blank was filled in for me when I happened upon the blog of South Bend’s broadcaster Owen Serey. As he recapped the various moves among his Midwest League peers, Serey noted that Quad Cities has discontinued radio broadcasts of their games for 2010.
Finally, the light bulb came on for me; or should I say it went off? Obviously the Bandits don’t need a broadcaster if they aren’t going to be broadcasting games. Very disappointing news.
Back in March 2008, the River Bandits and Miller Media Group, the owner of WYEC (93.9 FM, Geneseo, Illinois), had announced a three-year agreement to air the team’s 140-game schedule on the station. Games were also streamed on the team’s website.
Ending the deal a year early seems especially counterintuitive as the Quad Cities baseball operation is definitely on the rise. Total attendance (236,401) and average attendance (3,694) last season were both the highest since 1995 and rank among the top five years the history of the franchise. Since the ownership change, attendance has grown 64 percent on a per-game basis (from 2,254 in 2007) and 59 percent on an annual view (from 148,773).
A 2009 study by Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal ranked the Quad Cities #31 of 239 minor league sports markets, best of all Cardinals minor league affiliate metro areas.
In confirming the news, Miller Media Group’s Kewanee, Illinois cluster sales manager Fletcher M. Ford was quite direct. He explained how the change was made and communicated.
“Your Easy Choice 93.9 WYEC was served notice from Kirk A. Goodman, Vice President and General Manager in late 2009 explaining the intention of the Quad City River Bandits not having a radio broadcast partner in the upcoming season for its fans,” Ford explained.
Ford wanted to make it clear that Miller Media Group was not a part of any evaluation process.
“This decision was made solely by the management of the Quad City River Bandits,” Ford said.
Goodman offered further details.
“We are indeed discontinuing our radio broadcast,” Goodman stated Monday. “We were being charged a very high rate to be on a station located 55 miles from our ballpark and in addition to that cost and the expense of paying for the salary and travel for a broadcaster did not make fiscal sense for our team.”
Apparently no alternatives that offered a match could be found.
“We made an effort to bring the broadcast to a more local station but none of the formats of the stations for the two main radio groups in our market worked with what we were willing to offer in return.
“It was strictly a financial decision…to pay what was necessary for our broadcast to be on the air was not worth the return we saw from having a broadcast,” Goodman said.
At least one lower-level Cardinals affiliate in a smaller metropolitan area continues with radio, the Batavia Muckdogs of the New York-Penn League, a short-season club.
All may not be lost for River Bandits fans with stronger radios or internet service as the team will still be heard as the opponent on some broadcasts. Other clubs in the 14-team Midwest League continuing with radio include South Bend and West Michigan (obviously) along with Fort Wayne, Burlington, Kane County and Dayton.
Follow me on Twitter.
Seems a bit short-sighted to me, but maybe the fan base just isn’t big enough to truly justify it, as Goodman states?
MiLB.com Audio is still free, right?
You’d think some enterprising college radio and tv major who wants to break into broadcasting would seize this opportunity. For a couple of thousand of dollars or less, a kid could set up a broadcast booth with an internet feed and broadcast over the internet. Even if you did only home games, imagine what a resume builder. Could probably get a few sponsors and make a little money. Sounds like the team was paying to have their games broadcasts so they would seemingly welcome this and might even kick in a little.
Well, at least they will probably have the hitting coach with the best resume in the league.
It seems like an indicator for the economy or for the changing economics of radio. Quad Cities may be a good location for a low A franchise, but there is not a local radio station that can afford to broadcast its games. Radio is a free medium. Anyone with a radio can listen. Radio listeners do not have to buy products advertised on radio or may not go to any more QC games than they would have gone to anyway. Game broadcasts near the QC are not making money.
Ronald Reagan got started in his career by broadcasting (time delayed re-enactments) of Quad Cities baseball. Times are different.
When Mr. Page was riding high with his hot hitting teams he still had time to wander over to the stands and talk to the fans before BP now and then. Hope he’s solved his problem. Glad the club is giving him a chance.
Two seasons back the broadcast signal was so weak it was hard to get clearly sometimes right in the parking lot at the park. There were places in the stands where I couln’t pick it up at all on my walkman. I didn’t get up that way much last year but I’m sure it was the same.
Fangraphs has lists of top 20 pitchers with biggest gain and loss of fastball speed from 2008 to 2009. Penny is on the gain list and McClellan is on the loss list. Lincicum is also on the loss list.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/fastball-losses/
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/fastball-gains/
Ouch! that hurts not having a local broadcast for the local fans out there. Carioca Cardinal has a good idea about an enterprising broadcasting student, wonder if there are any around Quad Cities and what the hoops would be for them to jump thru.
Some of the people it hurts the worst are the player’s families. Hopefully they’ll be able to pick up the visiting team broadcast most of the time.
Totally agree about player’s families, CC.
The Fort Wayne TinCaps (also MWL) broadcast every single game and stream over the net. I have personally spoken to parents who live out-of-town and in-town “adoptive parents” (many international players live with local sponsors of sorts) who follow every game possible that way.
I feel badly for the people who listened to radio of the QC games.
I even spoke to one of the adoptive moms who said her host player’s mother in the Dominican Republic listened to as many games as possible at a pay internet cafe in the DR about 45 minutes walk from their house.
When the Fort Wayne host mother learned this, she offered to send her the money for both the cafe fee and a cab ride to and from her home.
These host parents are, in every instance I have experienced, really awesome people. They really help make foreign players more comfortable. They help with their English. They give the players a sense of pride and family locally. They make sure they eat well and have a nice place to sleep. Etc. I would love to do that at some point. Probably not with two little kids, but at some point.
From my exchanges with those involved, the players’ families did not come up as a factor in what appeared to be a strictly financial decision.
I have a lot of respect for host families. Unfortunately, there have been cases where a player took advantage, racking up big long distance phone bills. Perhaps it was nothing more than a simple lack of understanding that everything has a cost rather than a blatant show of disrespect.
I know all too well about host families getting huge phone bills.
We hosted a German exchange student when I was in High School. She never left her room and accrued nearly $2,000 in long distance charges.
We had to kick her out, actually.
Sucked, too. We were really excited about that as a family. Our two year agreement ended after just a few months.
today, with the internet calling and cheap international phone plans, it would also seem a lack f knowledge how to make cheap phone calls or how to control your talk time with a phone card.
Totally agree.
Lena was an idiot.
Reminds me of Sven, Ole and Lena jokes from my days living in Minnesota…
Had forgotten to mention that the River Bandits relented and have been presenting internet-only broadcasts of their home games this season through MiLB.com. Tommy Thrall is at the mike.