A good amount of stuff to report today:
- Oakland’s CEDA Committee approved an action to have the City Council vote on EIR funding for Coliseum City. The City Council will take up the action next Tuesday night. A’s Fan Radio did a stalwart job of covering today’s proceedings. A similar action was taken prior to the City Council voting on Victory Court in December 2010. If the City Council approves the expenditure, two things need to happen: A) The work has to actually happen, unlike Victory Court, and B) A plan must be clearly articulated to show how the teams and venues will be accommodated. That last bit is probably the most important to the leagues, who are the real gatekeepers. Update 12:10 PM: As Bryan Grunwald notes in the comments, the 980 Park concept will be included as an alternative.
- The Santa Clara City Council approved the 40-year ground lease for the 49ers stadium. This was considered a formality because the Council approved the lease to the Stadium Authority, which is simply the City Council wearing different hats. The interesting note to come out of the session was dissenter Jamie McLeod’s mentioning the ongoing California Supreme Court case over a potential new referendum. The case could be decided in the next week.
- A new grassroots group trying to keep all three teams in Oakland has been formed. The group is called Save Oakland Sports. Seems a bit late to do something like this, but it can’t hurt. Besides, Baseball Oakland has gone largely dormant since the Victory Court plan was scrapped.
- Frank McCourt has been unwilling to sell the parking lots surrounding Dodger Stadium, and several bidding groups have dropped out as a result. One of the drop-outs was the group led by Rick Caruso and Joe Torre, considered one of the frontrunners. The parking lot attendant has truly come full circle.
- The Kings arena deal looks complex. And yes, it does look like the Maloofs will be borrowing to put up their share. The term sheet is due for public release on Thursday.
- The City of Miami approved funding for rubber wheel trolleys that will run between downtown and the Marlins Ballpark in Little Havana.
- San Francisco’s America’s Cup will be missing one major venue going forward: Piers 30 & 32. The piers were supposed to be used as a large staging area for teams. Costs may have proved prohibitive. The race will continue as planned, but there will be huge distances between the venues.
- MLB and the MLBPA are finalizing details of the revised playoff system that will include a fifth team in each league and a wildcard playoff game.
Radio ratings were released last week. The winter results show a sort of stabilization. As baseball season begins, KNBR-680’s ratings should rise. Will The Game’s? As the Warriors end their season early, KNBR-1050 should take a hit.
Arbitron ratings for the last three months
If you’re wondering, former A’s station KTRB finally showed up in the ratings book last month. The rating? 0.0 in the SF market.
newballpark.org 
A couple of things 1) as an outsider, it really is amazing that none of the Bay Area articles I read about the SC stadium mentions even the possibility of a new referendum being forced. Even today, in the Kawakami blog with the interview with Policy, he’s just resigned himself to Santa Clara. 2) while I agree that a site to generically support keeping all three teams can’t hurt, I really don’t see it helping. Pick a team, and get the community to rally around keeping it, Warriors, Raiders, whatever, because it just seems flat out impossible to keep all three at this point.
Save Oakland Sports aka S.O.S…..how appropriately named!
“This organization plans to contribute practical and creative ideas to the teams, City of Oakland and Alameda County officials to generate revenue and private investment – without using general fund money – to build state-of-the-art stadiums in Oakland and create new development, jobs and tourism.”
That is going to be interesting….”without using general fund money”.
From what i have read on the site, it seems to be a campaign built on support rather then negativity (ie. LGO). Kudos to them…
CEDA also included the study of 980 Park in sufficient detail as required by Caltrans as part of the Coliseum City contract.
Help me understand the bracketed portion of the 49ers ground lease deal article.
“The cash-strapped city is projected to receive about $40 million in revenue from football games over 40 years, starting with the opening of the stadium in 2014. Other revenue would come from naming rights and seat licenses. The lease also mandates the city receive annual rent that is roughly equal to half the net income from non-NFL events. (The team is expected to pay $30 million a year to use the stadium).”
I understand that the City will receive $1M/year for the 49ers and the same amount if another team like the Raiders play there. I also understand that the City will receive half of any net revenue from non NFL events (sounds like a movie deal to me). Will the City receive revenue from Naming Rights and Seat Licenses??? (I thought the 49ers were going to receive these to finance the stadium)Who is the team going to pay $30M/per year, the City
***
Doug Boxer commented at the CEDA meeting that Victory Court was dependent on redevelopment and hence not feasible. 980 Park is not dependent on redevelopment financing. We hope his group, Go Oakland A’s, will get behind 980 Park to attract the A’s to Downtown.
@ML “980 Park will be included as an alternative.”
.
Obviously not all of Coliseum City would fit at 980 Park (or even just a football stadium). Would it be an alternative studied only for the A’s, for the Warriors, or both?
.
As stated previously, it’s pretty obvious to me 980 Park will never happen for the A’s. Engineering and site challenges aside, Oakland simply isn’t an economically viable site for a privately financed MLB ballpark with the Giants at China Basin, plus ownership clearly is not interested. But I have a lot easier time envisioning it happening for the Warriors
i dont get why KNBR’s ratings went up. when its not baseball season there is no reason to listen. theyre sport talks is absolutely awful. the games done a great job of advertising so far but theyre still behind in the ratings. yet theyre getting all the good player interviews now (especially from 49ers and some giants players) so i expect in the long run 95.7 to the be at the top. especially when the athletics to move SJ
think it was kawakami on twitter last week who said the niners really don’t need the raiders to be co tenants of the new stadium.
…
680’s jan #s are most likely due to the niners playoff run. honestly don’t see 95.7 ever surpassing 680’s ratings. unless they can pry away the niners and w’s and even that will not be enough. i mean 680’s ratings during football season is less than that during baseball season. it’s the sfg whoring themselves out for much as they have for the past decade and a half and especially since the new park opened. niners used to be kings but now it’s unfortunately the other way around. lets hope 95.7 can remain above a 1 in both sf and sj markets. getting another pro team like the raiders or w’s could help out a bit. i know the station airs univ of sf basketball now but i doubt that’s a huge ratings draw. still believe replacing a couple of hosts in the current lineup would help out a bit too.
Hey, none of those three stations are based in San Jose, yet the best ratings seem to be in San Jose. Are there more sports fans in San Jose by percentage? Yet another reason for the A’s to move there?
RC, — the ratings that ML shows above are AQH, average quarter hour shares — that is, the percentage of people in that market who are listening to any radio station who are listening to that particular station. The other metric in radio ratings is cume, the cumulative number of listeners who tuned in to the station over the course of a week.
The total number of listeners in the San Jose market (#36 in the nation), as Arbitron defines it, is 1,501,600. The total number of listeners in the SF-Oakland market (#4) is 6,074,300. So you’re right, a slightly larger percentage of people listening to radio in the San Jose market are listening to sports, but the total number of people listening to sports radio is much higher in SF-Oak.
For KGMZ (the legal name of 95.7 The Game), their cume for January is 41,000 in San Jose, 197,000 for SF-Oak.
On a practical level, the overall numbers are not nearly as valuable to stations and advertisers (or underwriters, in the case of noncommercial stations) as the detail that breaks down by age and gender. If Station A has a higher cume than Station B, but Station A’s listeners skew towards the 55+ categories and Station B’s are more in the 25-54 range, many advertisers will choose Station B. Those numbers aren’t public, unlike the overall numbers.
http://www.radio-info.com/markets
i think the game will surpass KNBR eventually. better on air talent, better signal, better sports talk. they have barely been around a year and they are competing w KNBR in the ratings. the sharks will eventually be on the game as well plus the A’s will move to SJ and become immensely popular. i expect the raiders to find their way to the game as well. there is no way KNBR can stay on top of 95.7 when its all said and done
I fully anticipate KGMZ moving in on the Giants broadcasting contract once the opportunity arrises. Whether the A’s are in Oakland or San Jose, the Giants will always be the big boys on the block. KGMZ isn’t messing around either. They’re going for blood. The Giants aren’t going to be with KNBR forever, regardless of their cozy business relationship now. Would the A’s end up on the battered remains of KNBR? Would KNBR still be around? The next could years will be interesting to follow.
Doesn’t KNBR own part of the Giants?
5% according to Rich Leiberman. But considering long-term growth and the value of te Giants, 5% seems like a small barrier. Who knows?
I think 95.7 “The Game” has a chance to catch up to KNBR but it will take a long time and will require adding another team (and not the Sharks or a college) as a broadcast partner. I hope what Nina said is correct (that advertisers look at the ages/demographics of listeners, not just raw ratings numbers) because 95.7 definitely skews younger. FM listeners in general are younger. If you look at 95.7’s Facebook page, you will see that their followers are extremely young (and extremely ethnically diverse.) I would not be surprised one bit if the average KNBR listener is old enough to be the average 95.7 listener’s father. Perhaps KNBR will start to die out slowly, grave by grave. I sure hope 95.7 is in it for the long haul. If they are, I think they will be okay.
knbr is a 50k watt station that during the night could be heard thru 1/3 of the country, no way do i see them leaving that station for 95.7 where in some parts of the bay area both during the day and night, you can’t even hear the game on radio if you’re an a’s fan.
…
if 95.7 were serious, they’d go hard after the niners once their radio deal is over with knbr which they signed back before 2011 which takes them thru 2014. now during that time 95.7 could still bring in the raiders for a 3 year run to lay the ground works in broadcasting nfl football games if they and the niners decide to get a working relationship together and if the niners are not happy with their situation on knbr as they’re always be the second fiddle on that staton as we’ve seen their games being on 1050 until baseball season is over. still think if 95.7 ratings improve they’re gonna need to get maybe a am station to simucast so the reception can be heard in more parts of the bay area.
@ Nina – Thanks! Overall I think that it’s weird that they even separate San Jose into it’s own tiny market separate from the rest of the Bay Area. As the ratings show, clearly the two markets share stations.
RC, this is a construct of “Old Media.”