The impending death of Bally Sports

[casimir]

14 hours ago, mtutiger said:

The Google Map screenshot on WMTR's website shows their reach as far as Port Clinton in the east... Realistically, 3800 Watts with an antenna in Wauseon probably gets them a little past Swanton lol

A little past Swanton is about it.

10 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

I can pick it up in my car in SW Monroe county unti! I cross Jack man heading east...but that's in my car.  And I'm out in the sticks.  I lose 97.1 somewhere south of the state line.

I know there are a lot of variables that go into picking up radio station signal. 

I don't think I've ever gotten 97.1 south of the border.  I have not tried it in years, maybe the signal is better, but it sounds like the reach is still limited.

96.1 (WMTR) is a family owned station with an office in Archbold and I guess the tower is somewhere around Wauseon.  Essentially its a Fulton County station that trickles into the neighboring counties.  I think I've heard that their deal allows them to be the only Ohio based signal of the Tigers, but that could be hearsay.  Years ago there was also a station in Toledo (1470?) that carried the Tigers, but no longer.

I'll put the $30 down for MLB At Bat.  At some point MLB will screw that up, but for now it works fine for me.

Edited February 18, 2023 by casimir

[CMRivdogs]

51 minutes ago, casimir said:

A little past Swanton is about it.

I know there are a lot of variables that go into picking up radio station signal. 

I don't think I've ever gotten 97.1 south of the border.  I have not tried it in years, maybe the signal is better, but it sounds like the reach is still limited.

96.1 (WMTR) is a family owned station with an office in Archbold and I guess the tower is somewhere around Wauseon.  Essentially its a Fulton County station that trickles into the neighboring counties.  I think I've heard that their deal allows them to be the only Ohio based signal of the Tigers, but that could be hearsay.  Years ago there was also a station in Toledo (1470?) that carried the Tigers, but no longer.

I'll put the $30 down for MLB At Bat.  At some point MLB will screw that up, but for now it works fine for me.

The FCC Coverage map for 97.1 has anything south of Monroe considered fringe. Since their tower is in Southfield (I think they share the channel 7 tower) 60 miles or so by line of sight.

96.1 lists both Toledo and Archibold as sites. Their coverage map barely reaches to Swanton and Bryar..

https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WMTR&service=FM

[casimir]

35 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

The FCC Coverage map for 97.1 has anything south of Monroe considered fringe. Since their tower is in Southfield (I think they share the channel 7 tower) 60 miles or so by line of sight.

96.1 lists both Toledo and Archibold as sites. Their coverage map barely reaches to Swanton and Bryar..

https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WMTR&service=FM

I guess it depends upon what level of listenable one wants.  If one wants a crisp & clean feed, the red circle makes sense.  Somewhere between that and the purple circle which excludes most (guessing over 80%) of Toledo proper is where the static on a car stereo can ebb & flow between tolerable and highly annoying.  That's been my experience east of the tower.

Personally I wouldn't consider listing Toledo as a market of 96.1, but that's just me.  It's just not strong enough of a signal to reliably pull it in.

[Toddwert]

12 hours ago, Shinzaki said:

I can pick it up in my car in SW Monroe county unti! I cross Jack man heading east...but that's in my car.  And I'm out in the sticks.  I lose 97.1 somewhere south of the state line.

oh hot Monroe County talk !!.....  how do you pick it up around Maybee? 

[mtutiger]

On a similar note, the Tigers used to have an affiliate in Angola, IN that I assume would have picked up the Williams County portion of NW Ohio and that appears to no longer be the case per the Tigers website.

[casimir]

32 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

On a similar note, the Tigers used to have an affiliate in Angola, IN that I assume would have picked up the Williams County portion of NW Ohio and that appears to no longer be the case per the Tigers website.

I remember Idaho Bert mentioning he grew up in NW Indiana.  My guess is he was still able to pick up WJR back then.  Maybe he picked up an Angola feed.

This all bounces around the fact that there are limited options for baseball to grow the sport on a local level, at least through traditional radio and cable TV means, and the MLBTV blackout rules really restrict things even more.  Sure, there are ways to fake out the zip code or whatever for MLBTV, but why force so many obstacles to jump over anyway?  And MLB wonders why it can’t grow the sport.

[Toddwert]

Living in the Traverse City area Its hard to listen to sports over the air.....the stations either cut power at night so low that you cant hear them 10 miles from town or the station doesnt switch from the right wing radio show. I think sports on the radio is a dying thing especial with XM/Sirus and streaming. 

[Shinzaki]

2 hours ago, Toddwert said:

oh hot Monroe County talk !!.....  how do you pick it up around Maybee? 

I don't stray too far north of 50...so I can't say

[Toddwert]

1 hour ago, Shinzaki said:

I don't stray too far north of 50...so I can't say

I was born in Monroe and I have family and grew up in Dundee...🙂

[oblong]

They raised the price of at bat $10. Last couple of seasons I got it free for being a ticket holder.  I love the convenience of not need to find a radio to listen.  Mentally $30 is a big difference from $20 though. 

[Edman85]

Growing up in western Ohio, all this talk of radio reminds me of why I hate the Red Wings. As a kid, WJR was the radio affiliate and the Tigers had priority unless the Red Wings were in the playoffs, and the Tigers got bumped to 800 (I forget the call signal), and I couldn't get their games. It's only natural to root against the team keeping me from listening to the Tigers.

[HeyAbbott]

On 2/18/2023 at 2:30 PM, Toddwert said:

I was born in Monroe and I have family and grew up in Dundee...🙂

Really? I grew up in Dundee as well, as did my father,my grandfather, and my great grandfather.My Great-Great grandfather and my Great-Great-Great grandfather along with their families settled there immediately after the Erie canal opened for business.

[Toddwert]

Just now, HeyAbbott said:

Really? I grew up in Dundee as well, as did my father,my grandfather, and my great grandfather.My Great-Great grandfather and my Great-Great-Great grandfather along with their families settled there immediately after the Erie canal opened for business.

Know any Wertenbergers? thats my family

[HeyAbbott]

I graduated with a Wertenberger in 1972.

Edited February 19, 2023 by HeyAbbott

[Toddwert]

2 minutes ago, HeyAbbott said:

I graduated with a Wertenberger in 1972.

Lonnie or Larry?  My dad is Larry and Lonnie is my uncle

[Motor City Sonics]

On 2/18/2023 at 11:39 AM, casimir said:

I remember Idaho Bert mentioning he grew up in NW Indiana.  My guess is he was still able to pick up WJR back then.  Maybe he picked up an Angola feed.

This all bounces around the fact that there are limited options for baseball to grow the sport on a local level, at least through traditional radio and cable TV means, and the MLBTV blackout rules really restrict things even more.  Sure, there are ways to fake out the zip code or whatever for MLBTV, but why force so many obstacles to jump over anyway?  And MLB wonders why it can’t grow the sport.

I was listening to the famous Red Wings March 26th game on WJR while driving though Missouri moving back here from Albuquerque,   Most of the game it came in very very clearly.   

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

I was listening to the famous Red Wings March 26th game on WJR while driving though Missouri moving back here from Albuquerque,   Most of the game it came in very very clearly.   

I think JR might have been strongest directionally going out west. I remember as a kid going up north to just outside Traverse City with my family and not knowing whether I could pull it on any given night so I could listen to the Tigers game. The local Tigers station (TCM?) went low power at night and we couldn’t pick it up quite so well through the hills.

On the other hand, WBZ, 1030, out of Boston? Clear as a bell every night in Warren, Michigan. Too bad they didn’t have Red Sox games. I did get KMOX and Cardinals games out of STL pretty reliably, though. Same with 3WE and Indians games.

Edited February 20, 2023 by chasfh

[gehringer_2]

38 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I think JR might have been strongest directionally going out west. I remember as a kid going up north to just outside Traverse City with my family and not knowing whether I could pull it on any given night so I could listen to the Tigers game. The local Tigers station (TCM?) went low power at night and we couldn’t pick it up quite so well through the hills.

On the other hand, WBZ, 1030, out of Boston? Clear as a bell every night in Warren, Michigan. Too bad they didn’t have Red Sox games. I did get KMOX and Cardinals games out of STL pretty reliably, though. Same with 3WE and Indians games.

On 'JR they would always say "broadcasting from the golden tower of the Fisher Bldg", but those were the studios, AM is generally too long a wave to broadcast from a dipole on top of a bldg. At that freq you normally have some kind of array strung out across a large area. IIRC WJR's transmitter was(is?) in one of the downriver 'burbs. 

[oblong]

30 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

On 'JR they would always say "broadcasting from the golden tower of the Fisher Bldg", but those were the studios, AM is generally too long a wave to broadcast from a dipole on top of a bldg. At that freq you normally have some kind of array strung out across a large area. IIRC WJR's transmitter was(is?) in one of the downriver 'burbs. 

Near Sibley and Allen, Riverview.  Next door to Riverview Highlands.  They have a couple of very cool looking small buildings on the property.

 

 

[Toddwert]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

I think JR might have been strongest directionally going out west. I remember as a kid going up north to just outside Traverse City with my family and not knowing whether I could pull it on any given night so I could listen to the Tigers game. The local Tigers station (TCM?) went low power at night and we couldn’t pick it up quite so well through the hills.

On the other hand, WBZ, 1030, out of Boston? Clear as a bell every night in Warren, Michigan. Too bad they didn’t have Red Sox games. I did get KMOX and Cardinals games out of STL pretty reliably, though. Same with 3WE and Indians games.

yeah it was WTCM but they dont even carry the Tigers any more.... kind of a sports radio desert in this area now

[Shinzaki]

Pre ESPN, the sports final edition from 11:15 PM to 11:30 PM on WJR was the gold standard for sports news

[chasfh]

9 minutes ago, Toddwert said:

yeah it was WTCM but they dont even carry the Tigers any more.... kind of a sports radio desert in this area now

When I was at Ferris State in the mid 80s WJR could hardly reach up there, either, and they had no nearby Tigers affiliates. WBRN, the one and only reliable radio station we could get, certainly wasn't one. The closest one, I think, might have been Cadillac and that couldn't reach, either. WKZO also didn't make it up there. I spent two years there hardly hearing any games during spring or September.

In this pre-cable time, it was also weird that I could get no ABC TV stations. Channel 13 out of GR was buried in snow, and don't even think about channel 29 out of TC, even though Mecosta County was in the Traverse City-Cadillac ADI. And once I'd moved on to Michigan State, I couldn't get any ABC station there, either. Channel 13 was the same snow situation, channel 41 out of Battle Creek pretty much stopped at the Charlotte city limit, and forget about channel 7 out of Detroit. That was another two years of no ABC TV.

I spent a lot of time in some very weird media deserts when I was young.

[oblong]

Pre WDFN I would listen to "Sports Wrap" on WJR, it was in the evening but I don't recall the precise time.  6:30 to 8?  Frank Beckman... Paul Chapman... Steve Courtney (He's still around I guess, I saw him in a commercial, haven't listened to WJR in a very very long time).   

On the weekend ESPN Radio was fun.  I delivered pizzas so it was always there for me.  Just a couple of guys goofing off in a studio.  They made me laugh.  There's something about the need to fill air over a few hours in an era when not everything was televised.  So you'd hear the updates every 15 minutes and it was like listening to guys live tweet events. Had a morning show vibe to it and a fun way to stay on top of national sports news. 

[CMRivdogs]

The 50 thousand watt blowtorches. Most all were on clear channels (no other station could use the frequency or with a few the frequency was shared by daytimers that went off the air at sunset). I basically grew up listening to KDKA until we moved south. Could still catch them at night if conditions were good. I remember sitting in my car with the GM of the Pirates single A team in Salem,VA listening to John Candelaria's first big league game. Candy had spent part the year before in Salem.

KDKA, WBZ, WCFL were my primary late night go tos...

[oblong]

when we were driving home from our yearly trips to TN, we always picked up WJR just south of Lexington.  That's when the mountains started to give way.  This was only during the night though.  When I started driving I would like to leave around 3 pm, but before that the "old people" left in the morning.