The Power of FM over AM

Wow. This article from the Boston Globe really brings it home.

We've all known for a few years now that AM Radio, as a medium, was slipping badly. Traditional cornerstones of AM formats...sports and talk...were losing market share, and several major AM signals were electing to simulcast on an FM station and seeing positive results. At the same time, we're also seeing a lot of traditional AM formats bypassing AM altogether and starting on FM, also with positive results.

One place near and dear to my heart where this has been playing out is Boston, where many, many years of market dominance by WEEI 850AM (sports) and WBZ 1030AM (news) are radically shifting. WBZ still has a killer signal; one of the best AM signals in the USA, actually...famous for being heard in 38 states...and able to hurl almost 100,000 watts across an AM-friendly saltwater path right into Boston. Even so, WBZ has seen increasing competition from local (and national) NPR powerhouse WBUR and, more recently, WGBH's flip to mostly-NPR-news, too.

But it's WEEI that's the most eye-opening. After two years of losing substantial market share to upstart SportsHub 98.5 (aka WBZ-FM) despite WEEI having the Red Sox games...Entercom finally killed off Mike 93.7FM and simulcast WEEI on the 93.7 signal.

Baseball Players are Goddamn Wimps

You see this bullcrap with Game 5 of the World Series last night? Not the horrendous calls the umps were making, not the lousy plays many players were making. No - I'm talking about this bullcrap about suspending the game until the weather gets better.

"I don't want to speculate now," Selig said when asked when the game would be restarted. "We'll see what happens. But we're not going to resume until we have decent weather conditions.

Newsflash folks: it's late October in Philadelphia. If you wait for better weather, you'll be waiting at least six months!

Goddamn morons.

And goddamn wimps, too. Look at this crap from Wimp-In-Chief Carlos Pena:

"[The conditions] were horrible," said Peña. "It was windy, it was rainy, it was cold." (SNIP) "The conditions were difficult. I remember looking at home plate the last at-bat and all I saw was water. I couldn't even see home plate; it was covered in water. The rain was coming down pretty hard." Asked how he could see the ball to hit it, he said, "That's a good question. I don't even know."

Whassamattah Pena? Playing in the Trop made you soft and weak? Apparently the Rays can't handle playing in anything but climate-controlled indoor stadiums.

Now granted. I'm the first to say that any team that's located north of the Carolinas who builds an outdoor stadium with no roof should have the entire team, from the owner on down, dragged out into the street and shot. Yes, it's that dumb. But until MLB wises up and institutes that policy, these are the stadiums you got and yes, the weather gets lousy come late October in most northern cities.

Look folks, you know what? I don't care. I really. Don't. Care. Play the goddamned game. You're not paid millions of dollars to wuss out just because it's raining. Good God, the frickin' Indians went out there in the '97 World Series and played in the snow! And these wimps are whining about the rain?!? It's the goddamned WORLD SERIES!!!! Nut the f**k up and get out there and play!

Or, more appropriately, get out there and play so the Rays can lose.

Go Sox!

Signs of the Apocalypse : Number Eleven

Well, we already had Bush elected President (number three), and the tanking economy (number eight). But this is just nuts. If you told me in March that by July 1st the frickin' Tampa Bay Devil Rays...the $*^#@ DEVIL RAYS!!!!...would not only be first in the AL East, but also have the best record in baseball I'd slap you silly and call you Manny.

If your name was Manny, I'd still slap you (and you might deserve it) but I'd call you Susan instead.

To top it off, the frickin' Cubs have the second-best record, and are leading the NL Central by three games. At this rate it'll be Armageddon by Halloween.

Midol's Reverse Common Sense

My wife spotted an ad on TV tonight for Midol that has the tagline...I kid you not..."Reverse the Curse". Thank god for TiVo - I only had my cameraphone to get a screenshot but it's enough.

Nevermind the general cheesiness of the tagline, but I can't imagine they'd be dumb enough to run this ad in Boston. It hasn't been THAT long since my beloved Sox eliminated the "Curse of the Bambino" and took down the "Reverse the Curse" sign on Storrow Drive.

Then again, Bayer is dumb enough to run such a dumbass ad in the first place. And it's not just dumb because I'm a guy, even my wife thought it was stupid.

Managing Expectations...or "It's a Long Season"

Ugh. Y'know, I thought I had the perfect setup for a lovely weekend. The BoSox are playing in Toronto, an easy three hour drive from my digs in Rochester. Tickets are a mere $9 each...granted that's in the nosebleed section, but hey - for nosebleed section the seats were pretty good: almost in a straight line behind home plate. We could see all the infield action nicely. And the weather was beautiful for the drive up and back...I was vaguely surprised they didn't open the roof. Toss in about $30 for munchies and sodas, another $25 for parking, and perhaps $25 worth of gas, and we've got a $100 Saturday that was guaranteed to be a lot of fun.

I mean, c'mon...it's the Red Sox against the frickin' Blue Jays.

Errr....ummm....yeah. So much for that idea. Yeesh, I wasn't expecting Buchholz to throw a no-hitter, but to get through five without looking ridiculously shaky would've been a reasonable expectation. Not to mention the bullpen to, y'know, not suck the big one? Yeah, that'd be nice, too. A reliever that didn't pitch so bad they designated him for assignment right after the game? Is that too much to ask?

Plus was I alone in thinking Buchholz really needed to stop throwing to first in a vain attempt to pick off a runner and focus more on just striking out the guy in the batter's box? Apparently not, given the hordes of Jays fans around us that booed him long and loud about it. And while obviously I'm no baseball expert, I still think the Sox management are trying awfully hard to put a positive spin on this 10-2 disaster (itself part of an 0-3 weekend of ugliness).

Oh yes, for the record? I still think Yankees fans are nastiest, but really the Sox fans - obnoxious as they are - are no worse than the Jays fans. I suspect all baseball fans are more or less the same after seven innings of Budweiser, though.

On a related note, I've been to Montreal before, but never Toronto. It was exceedingly strange to be in a foreign country that seemed, for all intents and purposes, exactly like the United States. I mean, besides the speed limit signs being in km/H instead of MPH...and the appearance of different kinds of money here and there...you'd be hard-pressed to know you were in Canada just by driving along the highway. I guess you've got to get off the road and experience the local character more, but we wanted to get back before it got too late so we didn't stick around and had dinner on the road. Eh, perhaps later in the season when the Sox visit again.

Not Much to Say

Not much to say as of late...lots of late evenings at WEOS engineering live events and not much to talk about otherwise. Well, not on anything I feel I can add something useful to, anyways.

Two items of note: this Saturday I'm making a run for the border; seeing my beloved Red Sox play at Toronto. Next Wednesday I head out for Vegas to attend the Public Radio Engineering Conference and Nat'l Association of Broadcasters Conference for a week. If I see cool stuff, I'll blog about it.

Oh yeah, the Red Sox won...

Some Red Sox fan I am...I didn't even remember to blog about it until four days afterwards. SHAME on me!!

Well, in my defense, the night they won I was going thoroughly insane trying to pack up all my (and my wife's) crap to move to another state. Thank God they won in Colorado...I'd hate to drive a giant UHaul truck through hordes of celebrating Sox fans.

And to make it even more delicious, A-Rod is gone, and they were DUMB enough to let Torre go. Now, let's just pray that Theo & Company are smart enough to re-sign Mike Lowell before smoking enough crack to think that A-Rod is worth bringing to Boston. (shudder)

You know, driving down the NY Thruway they have lots of rest stops with little convenience stores, and many of them sell Yankees shirts and whatnot. Many of them say "Got Rings?"

I ask "Any this century?" :-)

Now if the Patriots can beat the Colts tomorrow, it will TRULY be a big week for me!
Update: To dream...the impossible dream...

Well, I *was* worried about the Angels...

Despite having the best record in baseball, there was a lot to be concerned about with this year's Red Sox going into the ALDS last night. They're a great team to be sure, but now they're playing other great teams...and the Sox definitely have some glaring weaknesses. The Angels are always a threat to Sox happiness, so I was a little apprehensive last night.

Apparently I didn't need to be. Beckett threw a complete-game, four-hit, shutout...with a brilliant combination of precision and power, mixed up with some disgustingly filthy pitches that nobody could touch. Plus the offensive did rake poor Jake Lackey...who's never had good luck at Fenway (1-5 lifetime)...over the coals for two homers and another two RBI. BOOYAH! RED SOX UP 1-0 in the ALDS!

Tonight the real competition begins, though. The Angels have never faced Dice-K, so that should give him an edge. However, Dice-K has really shown the effects of season fatigue in the past month or so. Fortunately, he should be pretty rested going in tonight...let's hope he doesn't have the infamous one-inning meltdown.

Today the Division, Tomorrow the World!!! (Series, that is)

With a brilliant bunt down the third base line...the always-dangerous-at-the-end Orioles stunned the Yanks in extra innings. That loss, coupled with today's Sox win over the Twins, means the Red Sox have won the AL East division! First time in 12 years, even.

I've said it before to Yankees fans, and I'll say it again: "How many World Series have you won this century?" Nyah nyah nyah. :-)

Wait Wait I Was in Chicago!

So this week's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me was taped in Millennium Park in Chicago, and since I was visiting an old college friend, my wife and I decided to fly out early enough to catch the taping on Thursday night. We got there literally one minute before the show started - perfect timing! The pic to the left is the closest I could get to the front, from left to right is Carl Kasell, Peter Sagal, Roy Blount Jr, Roxanne Roberts and Adam Felber. Adam was in rare form this week, correctly answering eight questions during "Lightning Fill-In-The-Blank"...that's hard to do, but Adam's somewhat notorious for being a little too well-informed. :-)

It's interesting how much gets edited out on Friday before the show gets distributed to local affiliates across the country; the live show went on for nearly two hours, and listening to the finished product I remember hearing a lot more chit-chat and jokes...not all of them exactly hilarious, but more jokes nonetheless! And if you stick around for the re-takes at the end, the panelists and crew apparently will schmooze with the crowd a bit afterwards; I had a nice chat with Rod Abid, the head-honcho producer. :-)

However, I think I also made my claim to fame...at one point there was a listener caller from Boston. The chit-chat included a mention that the Chicago White Sox were playing the Boston Red Sox at Fenway that night, and I shouted "Go Sox!" (much to my wife's chagrin). It does sound vaguely like my shout made it on tape, although I was mighty far back on the lawn. Meh, even if it's not really me - I'll choose to believe it is. I'm a Red Sox fan...allow me my delusions... ;-)

P.S. We also got a very nice tour of Chicago Public Radio's facility on Navy Pier from Breeze Richardson on Friday; thanks Breeze! Some pics are posted here: there's the "WBEZ statue" out on the boardwalk of the Navy Pier (which CPR is located on). There's also this retro-looking "Remind-O-Timer" I spotted in one of the studios...I have no idea if it works, though. The hands were spinning but the time is wrong. Looks cool, though...all those curved marks around the perimeter are switches. And there's a pic Breeze took of myself and my wife in WBEZ's main mic studio, a very nice studio with lots of mics, high ceilings, and plenty of floor space to have bands perform during interview shows. There's also a separate performance studio (that I didn't take a pic of) that's even nicer.


I also stood not 10 feet from the back of Ira Glass's head while he was in town for a meeting. (Ira's based in NYC these days) My skin is still tingling. :-)

God I'm SUCH a Red Sox Fan

We've got a 9.5 game lead in the AL East.

Our interleague record is already 5 - 2 (last year was 16 - 2, IIRC)

And yet all I can think of is "We're only beating these NL teams by a run or two...we're gonna get clobbered in July!"

I swear, members of the Red Sox Nation are physically incapable of not worrying. We're ALWAYS convinced the Olde Towne Team is one step away from total implosion. What's WRONG with us?!?
:-)

UPDATE 6/15/07: Apparently, after last night's loss, I'm not the only one starting to worry. Although at least I'm cheered by this funny video of Roger Clemens in 2057. And hopeful that lying slimeball Barry Bonds will get beaned every time he's at bat this weekend in the Fenway.

Sportscasting and RBDS

Recently I had a chance to catch a Sox game on their Rhode Island outlet, 103.7 WEEI-FM. Interestingly, I thought the audio quality was "better" on their Boston AM outlets...680 WRKO-AM and 850 WEEI-AM...but the real nice thing is that WEEI-FM uses RDS to show what the score is and what inning it is.

I can't speak for other baseball teams, but the Sox announcers have a pathological aversion to announcing the score and the inning as part of their play-by-play commentary. Pretty much the only time you hear it is at the beginning and end of each inning...which could be a long time to listen depending on how good/bad the pitchers are that day. Drives me absolutely bonkers when I just want a quick update as to what the blankety-blank score is!

I've long suspected this is intentional...it's a clever way to get people listening to become invested in listening. They sit there, waiting for the score, long enough to interrupt whatever else they were doing...and that means they're more likely to listen during the commercial breaks.

Still drives me bonkers, though. And the RDS provides some nice relief from that.

But I wonder...in this age of multiple "data streams" hitting us media consumers all at once (just tune to any cable news TV channel and there's a talking head, a powerpoint slide, an animated graphic, and at least one news crawler at the bottom of the screen) I wonder if the style of game announcing will suddenly and radically change as the "old school" sportscasters retire and the newer breed fills their shoes. With a new mandate from corporate, no doubt.

I'd be curious to see if there's an actual strategy for a "new way" to announce sports games being formulated as we speak by program directors at sports stations.

Martha sez "You Suck!"

I was recently alerted to the fact that Martha Stewart was not even hiding the fact that she'll sell out for the right price, and that the price is a mere $10,000 for 30 seconds.

Oh my, I don't have $10k lying around the house, but it's a low enough number that I can almost imagine that I do. And since Martha's done a little time, she probably knows how to shiv someone in the back as well as to hawk someone's product.

C'mon, admit it...wouldn't you love to see Martha's smiling visage and warm, gentle voice twisting the knife as she character assassinates someone you don't like on national TV? Alright, maybe just in the abstract, but it's still a pretty funny thing to imagine, isn't it?

I'm Martha Stewart, and I'd just like to say that the Yankees Suck!

Metro & the Morning Commute

Like many fellow Boston subway riders, during my morning commute I read the Metro, our local freebie rag that is often compared to "mental twinkies". Meh, it's free and it passes the time. But today two things caught my attention.

First was this picture of Barry Bonds. (thanks to Metro and AP) I saw it and the first thought that came to mind was: "He's taken so many steroids even his tongue muscle has gotten freakishly huge!"

Yeah, I really don't like Barry Bonds. Not one bit. I don't really begrudge him the steroids so much as the blatant dishonesty about it. And the apparent greed in trashing Hank Aaron's great homer count for Barry's own personal glory.

I also really hate Barry for what he's doing to Giants' fans. Well, at least one Giants fan, anyways...one of my best friends...who's a San Francisco native living in Boston. And this season he can't just pop a brew and enjoy a damn Giants game because everything is about Barry Bonds. It's like the rest of the team doesn't exist. That's not fair to the fans, Barry. Screw you.

I suppose this touches on a long-held theory of mine that I believe players should be completely indebted to the fans. Because it's the fans that pay for outrageously overpriced tickets, concessions, playbooks and jerseys. Those sales ultimately pay for athletes' salaries, so don't give me "I'm not a role model" bullcrap. You can't sell part of your soul, folks, you gotta sell it all.

But I digress...

The other thing was "Ask the (insert government official here)" column with Dan Grabauskas, General Manager of the MBTA. Dan was appointed after creating a reputation as a "cleanup man" after his success at the Massachusettes Motor Vehicle Registry. If his goal was to "clean up" the MBTA, he's failed miserably...things are worse now than when Grabauskas started in 2005, and the recent reports of state transportation's fiscal health indicate it's gonna get a lot worse in the future.

One of the Q&A questions was about fare evasion on the Green Line...I'll quote the relevant part so you don't have to open the PDF...

QUESTION: What is being done about fare evasion on the Green Line? I’m sick of paying $60 a month for my pass, and watching kids and adults alike board the back doors, laughing how easy it is not to pay. What happened to “proof of payment,” and why is it never enforced?
(name omitted, 23, Brookline)

ANSWER: The Green Line fare collection system is working. While we do have some peak loading problems, we are addressing them with staffing or other measures.

(emphasis added by me)

Don't tell someone that that a pig is a swan when it's oinking and dripping mud on your carpet. The fare collection system on the Green Line is completely a farce and every regular rider knows it. After three fare hikes in six years, it's reasonable to expect that people who pay their fair share are gonna be mad when anyone does not.

Even if the system really worked, the perception is that it's a farce...and that's just as bad.

Thinking more broadly, this is why I don't really care for these kind of "Ask your elected official" columns. The Metro has had the "Ask the Mayor" column for a little while now with Boston Mayor Tom Menino and it's equally useless and arrogant-sounding. People are essentially writing in with a complaint and the Mayor's never going to be in a position where he can say "You know, you're right! We really f**ked that one up, and I'm going to fire the jerks responsible, and hire some actual real workers who aren't patronage appointments!" because no elected official can ever actually say that. Even if Menino could actually do that, he probably wouldn't say it.

Really all we'll ever get out of these columns is arrogant-sounding dismissals that there's not really a problem, but we're working hard to fix it (in vague, unspecified terms). That doesn't benefit the questioners, the readers or the elected officials. So why do these columns continue?!?!?