02.22.20
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More on Radio

Last season, the Cincinnati Reds celebrated long-time Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman, whose announcement of his retirement came at the beginning of the season. The celebration continued through the last homestand of the season. The last fan giveaway of the last series Brennaman worked was a transistor radio, to the first 20,000 fans.

The giveaway was sponsored by grocery giant Kroger, with the Reds logo alongside and Brennaman’s signature call, And this one belongs to the Reds!, printed underneath. The radio wasn’t set only to WLW-AM 700, the team’s longtime radio flagship. Instead there was a familiar dial, allowing fans to tune into Reds broadcasts throughout the Ohio and Northern Kentucky area, or other AM or FM stations if they so chose. It probably runs for hours if not days on two cheap AA/AAA batteries, and has a headphone jack. Street value is around $10-20.

I got my own portable transistor radio as a kid. I would tote it around to the park, on trips with my parents, and to A’s games. In my teens I got the first of many Walkman-style cassette radios, which were supplanted by separate CD players and pocket radios. Eventually I upgraded to an iPod paired with a digital Sony Walkman model, which looks like this:

When the A’s were on The Game I put 95.7 on the first FM preset

I did a quick look to see where I left this radio. Couldn’t find it. I have three smartphones, three laptops, two desktop computers, and other devices that can pull internet audio streams. The only radio I can find is the one in my car. Sony doesn’t appear to make the version pictured above anymore.

The hunt for the lost Walkman got me thinking about what kind of device the A’s would have to sell or give away to promote their all-streaming worldview. Think about what the requirements would have to be to make such a device:

  1. Cellular and WiFi radios plus SIM tray
  2. Some sort of minimal display, probably touchscreen or small keyboard or other input method
  3. Speaker, headphone jack, or Bluetooth output
  4. Decent-sized lithium-ion battery (irreplaceable)
  5. Android operating system to run TuneIn app
  6. USB port for software maintenance
  7. Pushbutton access to A’s Cast (and the software complexity therein)
  8. A wireless data plan

Absent such a not-inexpensive beast, we’ll all have to lean on our smartphones even more. I work in tech. I support the move to streaming as I’m ready for it and have been living it for years. For me, it’s better to carry a single device that performs a multitude of functions than to bring multiple devices (phone and radio) with me. When you consider the requirements to put together a modern streaming-only replacement for a cheap transistor radio, it looks like climbing a technological mountain. And that’s without the support sherpa some will need to set it all up.

Then I saw this Dave Kaval reply to a Bruce Jenkins column:

What followed was the usual meme fest congratulating Kaval for dragging Jenkins, as well as the finger wagging by much of the rest of Bay Area sports media. Once the dust settles from the social media rage, two outside factors will determine how well this works for the A’s. The first comes down to this claim by Kaval:

I’m skeptical of this. Even if the A’s do a wholesale revamp of the Coliseum’s in-stadium WiFi network, there’s still a transition from outside, whether you’re driving in or taking BART. Until that becomes seamless, it’s an annoyance at the least, a deterrence at the worst. If a fan is mowing his lawn on a summer day and listening to a radio, latency isn’t a big issue as there’s no perception of latency (as long as phone alerts don’t come in first). A fan at the ballpark is not going to have as much patience for a streaming delay from what’s happening in real time, right in his/her eyes.

The other big factor has nothing directly to do with the A’s. Last August, KNBR owner Cumulus chose to turn one of its Bay Area assets, longtime FM rock stalwart KFOG, into a simulcast station for KNBR. Now the Bay Area has four sports talk stations:

  • KNBR (AM 680)
  • KTCT (AM 1050)
  • KGMZ (FM 95.7)
  • KFOG/KNBR (FM 104.5)

Since the revamped KFOG is a simulcast station, there won’t be any new programming. Instead, the move enhances the Giants’ already vast hegemony over the market. The 49ers, who were already pushing into the East Bay as the Raiders depart the Bay Area, will also benefit from the simulcast. The Game will remain the Warriors’ flagship and the other place to talk Giants/Niners. With three sports stations at its disposal, Cumulus can keep KNBR-680 as its Giants station (the Giants partly own it) while the 49ers can stay on the Ticket and KNBR-FM. The Warriors will be the only team on The Game, which is what the Dubs have been wanting for years if not decades. Most radio stations, especially the ones with the high-power transmitters that can blast 50,000 watts, are owned by one of a few radio conglomerates (Cumulus, Entercom, Bonneville), making format changes largely strategic in nature with stations as pawns.

The Giants and Cumulus effectively crowded the A’s out of the Bay Area radio market, with an assist from Entercom. The A’s tried to make it work with Entercom by sticking out a few years at The Game with dwindling support from the station. Now the A’s are persona non grata at The Game even as they are currently the hottest pro team in the Bay Area.

There’s something seductive in the sales pitch the A’s are making about going the streaming route. It’s Silicon Valley. It sounds disruptive. Is it, though? If radio truly is a dying medium, the A’s are blazing a trail. A trail to what? To me, it’s like the being the first team with a website (which they were), or the first to embrace the Moneyball concepts. It gets the team attention, but it probably won’t put the team over the top without significant further investment. Same goes for streaming. The problems with the streaming-only strategy are two-fold: the A’s can’t dominate streaming the way other teams dominate other forms of media, and it papers over the fact that the A’s are a lesser player in local media than they were two years ago. The A’s are making it harder to enjoy audio of A’s games, full stop. Furthermore, the move smacks of a certain pattern of impatience I’m seeing from the team. When the A’s see resistance to their efforts, they’re likely to fold and move on to the next vision, however fanciful or grand. It happened with all of the previous ballpark sites and now with this disappearance from local radio. If the A’s return to some other station in 2021, we’ll know that they didn’t have the patience to see this through. There may be a way for the A’s to innovate their way out of this jam. So far, they’re not offering that kind of innovation. Maybe that’s more in line with tech’s current direction than anything else.

P.S. – A decade ago, the A’s had a chance to buy KTRB, the same station they used as a stepping stone to streaming last year. They could’ve used more patience back then, too. 

02.18.20
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Radio Training Wheels Are Off!

Last year, when the A’s announced their plan to go with a streaming broadcast model, they kept rights with Bay Area AM station KTRB-860. At the time, many including myself considered the terrestrial station to act as a transitional step.

I’m not sure if the A’s deal with KTRB will go longer than 2019. I suspect that the A’s are using this year as a platform to launch the streaming offering.

The team announced today that they’re going with TuneIn exclusively in the Bay Area. That means no traditional terrestrial radio anywhere in the Bay. At least the broadcasts are free in the Bay Area.

As I don’t live in the Bay Area anymore, I found out quickly that I was outside the broadcast territory, so I couldn’t get the games or the pre/post-game content on the TuneIn app without some finagling. I decided to play around with all of my available options. I got a VPN app to spoof my location to the Bay Area, and bought a TuneIn Premium subscription for the year. The subscription ends at the close of Cactus League play, which works out quite conveniently for me.

As the 2020 Cactus League starts, they’re still getting the kinks out.

When I saw I was blocked from getting broadcasts despite my paying for workarounds, I decided to declare it all a sunk cost and went with the MLB app instead. The tradeoff there is that I got the game regardless of location, but little-to-no pre/post-game coverage. This year, I might go with MLB.tv for the A’s only (it comes with audio as well) and call it a day. It’s the price of innovation, I suppose.

Until then, I’ll keep trying with what they’re making available.

Strangely, there is still an A’s Radio Network that will operate outside the Bay Area. And there will be continue to be Spanish-language broadcasts on existing Bay Area Spanish-language stations. Those broadcasts will also be carried on TuneIn. It’s hard to beat good old radio, especially the AM variety, when you could “lock it in and rip the knob off.” In the digital age there are no knobs. There are a lot of unresponsive virtual buttons, cryptic error messages, and a creeping sense of dread as your data gets used up, inning by inning, game after game.

The A’s are partnering with TuneIn, a good choice from a business standpoint for both as TuneIn gets a high-profile client and the A’s probably get some of the production costs handled by TuneIn. I wonder about the wisdom of this decision in the long run, though. This is a move fraught with friction. Last year I chose to go away from it because of that friction. I did some A/B testing against the MLB App, and TuneIn consistently had more latency than MLB. It didn’t matter if the A’s were at home or on the road, or if I was at the Coliseum or not. Given the state of affairs, I have no interest in renewing. A while back MLB allowed smartphone users to rebrand the normal MLB app with their preferred team’s logo, making it a sort of one-stop shop for baseball fans. That same app is what A’s fans will use to watch video highlights or entire games from their smartphones on the go. Yet there is a second, unrelated app that is preferred for radio. Way to make it easy, A’s. If the team wants to remove some of that friction, they should follow the branding lead and put all their audio streams in the MLB app for easy access. No offense to TuneIn, I also occasionally listen to audio of MSNBC, CNN, and the local NPR station on the go. For A’s games, it makes less sense. I already use Overcast for pre-recorded podcast listening. That’s not going to change despite the incursion of streaming giants into the podcast world.

First world problems? First world problems.

02.13.20
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Soon. This Time We Mean It! Maybe.

UPDATE: The report is scheduled for release next Friday, the 21st.

Dave Kaval provided an update on the Howard Terminal EIR to Steve Berman (@BASportsGuy) of The Athletic yesterday. It was unsurprising.

You may remember that Kaval previously said that the EIR was coming around Valentine’s Day and before that, the end of 2019. Or last fall or summer, er late summer. In any case, we’re getting close! Come sometime next week, I hope to spend a good amount of time reading the draft document while I watch some good Cactus League action.

The release of the document will be a momentous occasion, even if the project stalls as so many previous attempts by the A’s have. At this point, I think it’s important to point out what will and won’t be accomplished by the release.

First of all, whether it gets released Friday or next week is mostly a matter of bureaucratic paper shuffling as the report bounces among state and regional agencies. It’s extremely unlikely that there will be some major mitigation step identified, let alone approved, in a week. The important takeaway is that we the public will have better visibility of the issues. Compared to a decade ago when we first started talking about Howard Terminal in earnest, the City of Oakland’s website is better equipped to provide documents as they come out.

Second, while the report will go into great detail about those issues, it won’t describe how much it will cost Oakland or the A’s to deal with them. Outside consultants will provide estimates for some steps, which will be challenged by others who feel such steps don’t go far enough, which will beget other estimates. That’s part of the comment period, which starts once the draft EIR will be released. There’s always a danger of feature creep in the process, lamentably unavoidable in California.

If you’re a regular reader of this site or have been following the Howard Terminal situation for the past year or so, you’ll notice that there has been roughly one article or interview per week published somewhere in Bay Area media, positive or negative. The point of this is to keep HT in the news. When the EIR is released, there will be a avalanche of related news. I’ll do my best to cut the wheat from the chaff. Until then, I have some family in from out of town this weekend. Spring is here, everyone.

02.03.20
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Barracuda to get their own Tank

Expanded training facility with planned garage (not depicted) across the street

When the Worcester Sharks moved to San Jose to share an arena and a practice facility with their parent club, I was curious to see how long that would last. The answer apparently is six years, as last week the rebranded San Jose Barracuda announced plans to construct a new, 4,200-seat arena adjacent to the Solar4America training facility they continue to share with the Sharks. From the press release:

The 4,200-seat spectator arena will include locker rooms, training facilities and executive office space for the Barracuda, an in-arena Jumbotron with a 360-degree LED display ring, 12 suites, eight loge boxes, one theatre suite, a 46-person party deck, three bar locations, seven food concession stations, a press room and press box and two team merchandise stores.

While I’m glad for the players and the Sharks farmhands that they’ll get better facilities, I feel an opportunity to grow the sport is being lost in the process. The Sharks are effectively doubling down on the South Bay, instead of using an opportunity to grow the sport. To the Sharks’ credit, they also operate ice rinks in Oakland and Fremont, so they are providing some exposure to the sport. When it comes to playing pro ice hockey, fans will still have to come down to San Jose or all the way out to Stockton for the privilege, which is disappointing. As longtime readers of this blog are well aware, I am more than anything else an advocate of spreading the “wealth” of pro sports all over the Bay Area and Northern California. It provides exposure to all communities instead of concentrating teams in San Francisco or San Jose, where ironically, the actual wealth is. This consolidation trend works against my desire and to me seems short-sighted.

Barracuda Tank looks pretty nice

I suspect that Oakland was out of the question, because the Oakland Ice Center can’t be easily expanded and the Sharks don’t operate the Oakland Arena, which is newly empty with a part-time tenant in the Panthers arena football team (who kick off in March). The ‘Cuda play a 68-game schedule, which means the arena would have to maintain an ice surface on-and-off for a full seven months annually. Hockey teams remain sensitive to ice surface quality, which is tough to maintain in balmy California. A leading argument for having both the Sharks and Barracuda play at SAP Center was to give a reason to maintain the ice at the big arena. Instead, the Sharks are pulling back at SAP, opening dates for concerts and other events while consolidating work at an expanded Solar4America Ice facility.

I have a few friends who are season ticket holders to the Barracuda, so I’m interested to see how willing they’ll be to move southeast with the team. It’s only 3+ miles, but anyone who goes to SJ Giants or SJSU Spartans football games nearby know that public transit isn’t a great option to the South Campus area. Parking should be easier as a garage rises across the street from the facility to replace the spaces lost with the expansion. Another loss is a city-owned firing range at the edge of the property, though I don’t know enough about that to gauge its impact. SJSU’s hockey club is probably licking their chops, since they already play at Solar4America Ice and would enjoy the benefits a new arena provides to a college program. First, the Sharks might want to beef up their electrical capacity.

With the Sharks’ minor league affiliate getting its own arena and SJSU blowing out the east side of CEFCU/Spartan Stadium to expand it, it’s a boom period in what is historically a sleepy industrial part of town. Along with what the Giants are doing in Scottsdale and Phoenix, I guess people have money to burn.

02.01.20
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Adapt or Die

My usual route to the gym takes me through Papago Park, the former spring training home of the A’s. Every time I drive down 64th Street/Galvin Parkway, I see this:

The old training fields are visible from the street, with Phoenix Municipal Stadium (now home to ASU) situated downhill at the south end of the park. The baseball sculpture is a friendly reminder of Papago’s sports history, and though the A’s are now in Mesa, it’s nice to know that Papago will get its own improvements before the Giants move there from their current facility on Camelback and Hayden Roads (Indian School Park). As much as I like the A’s situation at Hohokam, like the rest of Mesa it’s pretty sleepy.

Papago Park baseball fields under construction

Occasionally I would hear talk of the Giants building their own ballpark/training center complex near the Scottsdale/Tempe border, where there remains some undeveloped land. Instead the Giants struck a deal with Scottsdale to get some improvements at Scottsdale Stadium. The main thrust of the work is an expanded clubhouse that will also serve as an event center/club facility, the better to attract Giant fans with fat wallets and expense accounts. The event center is claimed to be the largest such space in the downtown area, which is somewhat surprising given the bevy of hospitality options in the city. While the stadium will remain in Scottsdale’s Old Town, the training facility at Papago Park will be just outside Scottsdale within Phoenix city limits. Moving to Papago required a separate negotiation. Indian School is 1.5 miles away from the stadium. Papago is a whopping 2.5 miles away. It’s not quite the convenience of having a single campus like the Cubs or Dbacks/Rockies at Salt River Fields, but it’s an easy drive or bike ride between the two and most Giants fans will prefer to be around the Old Town scene during and after the games.

Construction sign emphasizes the Event Center aspect

The East Valley (defined loosely as the communities within the Loop 202 freeway plus Scottsdale) is the economic engine of the area. Teams that call the East Valley home are in enviable positions relative to their Cactus and Grapefruit League counterparts. After the trend of huge campuses that helped save and expand the Cactus League a decade ago, it’s refreshing to see a return to renovated facilities, even if they’re split. The A’s and Giants are unlikely to go anywhere for years if not decades. The Brewers also renewed their deal in Maryvale. All teams are consolidating player development at their facilities, further establishing permanence while also endangering some minor league cities.

New clubhouse at Scottsdale Stadium replaces an auxiliary field

There’s even more baseball this spring. A college tournament is set for Salt River Fields in two weeks, plus Olympic qualifiers are slated for late March. We’re eleven days from pitchers and catchers reporting. I might be able to take more advantage of the Spring Training Ballpark Pass this year. I’m already seeing a lot of people around here in shorts. Spring always comes early to the Valley of the Sun. ASU hosts numerous wintering teams this month, an early spring ritual. It’s an embarrassment of riches.

01.28.20
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Gone Baby Gondola

2018 gondola route map (with older ballpark design)

Two related bits of ballpark-related news came out of FanFest over the weekend. First, the Chronicle’s Phil Matier picked up on the transportation study that shows that people will continue driving even if the A’s come to Howard Terminal, which belies the notion of an “urban” ballpark. On a related note, Oakland’s Department of Transportation is now downplaying the prospects of a gondola bridging the nearest BART station (12th Street/City Center) and the ballpark. After all the hubbub coming out of last year’s FanFest, this news is what I feared. Dave Kaval remains optimistic. I have my doubts.

I discussed the prospects of the gondola at length exactly one year ago. It saddens me that the discussion may end there, not so much because the gondola dream is dying, but because all parties seem to be satisfied with the current lack of solutions to deal with the last mile problem. The prevailing attitude seems to be that technology will solve the gridlock problem. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that.

Transportation Network Companies, from Uber and Lyft to bike and scooter share startups, are supposed to bridge that gap along with walking. Profitability remains off in the distance. Strategies are largely confined to waiting for a competitor to go under and become a default monopoly player due to attrition, then jack up fares to become profitable once the competition is gone. Another possible scenario is a merger to eliminate competition, which makes some sense given that many drivers work for both Uber and Lyft. When that consolidation occurs, and more realistic pricing emerges, we’ll start to see how many people choose ridesharing as an option instead of walking or taking a bus shuttle. The upshot is that it’s a very difficult game to make transportation that merely breaks even, whether you’re talking public or private. (Note: Not touching the impact of AB 5.)

This is the point where I have to point out (again) that the Giants’ ballpark deal in China Basin was made with SF agreeing to a light rail extension from Market Street to the ballpark along the Embarcadero. That won’t happen in Oakland. Perhaps a BART extension could happen once everyone figures out how and where a second Transbay Tube will be built (and funded). That probably can’t happen until 2050.

Take it or leave it for now

For the majority of fans who will be driving to Howard Terminal, they could reserve parking spots at participating area garages depending on how much they’re willing to pay and walk. There’s enough parking inventory in downtown Oakland to handle the demand. How fans react to longer walks to their parking spots or BART is the coming source of friction. If fans encounter a fairly tranquil day as has been experienced for the Jack London Square version of FanFest, they’ll be encouraged to keep going to games. If they see difficulty in game night traffic, the parking experience, the walk/shuttle, or a train incident blocks the way in/out, that could mean one or more fans or families that choose to go on a weekend instead of a weekday, or simply less frequently than they used to. However the A’s and the City/Port are pitching this, convenience is not the main selling point. It will be convenient for some who live in Oakland near the park or a short AC Transit bus ride away. The problem is that it isn’t an improvement for practically everyone else who lives in the East Bay. There could be improvements with the bus schedules, helpful for those who choose to take the bus. I could see more Amtrak trains and ferry service. None of those options help the rest of the East Bay, where most of the fanbase originates.

Baseball, especially in Oakland, is dependent on casual fans who choose to go on a whim instead of being season ticket holders. The A’s even modernized their season ticket plan to effectively encourage going on a whim. But it’s not a good trend if the end result is lower friction to buy tickets and higher friction to actually attend a game. Bottom line: the only infrastructure being planned so far is the transit hub, a single pedestrian/bike bridge, and the addition of bus lanes. To be honest, I’m confounded at how this passed as a first draft of the transportation plan. A’s fans, whether you live in Oakland or Concord, whether you’re young or old or need assistance, deserve better.

P.S. – I chose not to go to FanFest this year. The lack of news about the ballpark, combined with the minimal turnover in the roster, made it easy for me to look ahead towards Cactus League play. Speaking of which, the A’s brought back their Spring Training Pass for those fortunate enough to be in the Valley of the Sun for the entirety of the spring. Maybe this time I’ll be able to go to more than a few games.

 

01.22.20
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BUILD IT NOW

During last night’s Oakland City Council meeting, Council President Rebecca Kaplan noticed a bunch of people carrying preprinted placards.

Who pray tell printed a cheer card like this?

At a previous meeting Kaplan similarly admonished the gallery for turning the City Council meeting into a planned cheering session. That warning got the A’s to lighten up on the propaganda so as to establish some decorum. Perhaps this is another warning from the dais. Regardless, the MOU passed 8-0.

I was hoping the draft EIR would be released around the time of FanFest this weekend. No such luck.

This also follows up last week’s Port Board meeting where the same MOU (memorandum of understanding) was discussed, approved, and sent to City Hall. That particular meeting had more port industry interests and fewer A’s fans in attendance. The purpose of the MOU is ostensibly to combine effort and remove duplicative effort, another way to streamline the process. The A’s spent a lot of lobbying time and energy to streamline part of the process, but we’re getting to the nitty gritty portion. The Port conveniently put together a flowchart, which covers only the areas related to Port development activities.

Compare that to the Ballpark Tracker page the A’s put together. Here’s one of the slides:

Now take that list of accomplishments above and try to overlay it on top of the required work the Port maps out in their flowchart. If it seems like not that much has actually been done yet, you’re not wrong. We’re essentially at the red star in the flowchart and the serious talks begin once the draft EIR is published. The complicated nature of building on the waterfront, in a city with unique development challenges and numerous stakeholders to mollify, makes getting a project like this going extremely difficult.

There’s a bit of a disconnect here. The A’s want to open the ballpark by 2023. The ENA term sheet also runs out in 2023, yet the ballpark project requires all of the dotted I’s and crossed T’s before the A’s can break ground. You’ve probably noticed that the tentacles towards the right side of the flowchart aren’t under the City’s control. Regional and State agencies will determine what mitigation measures need to be made and what’s actually feasible in what timeframe.

For example, let’s take the 45-day comment period. There will be plenty of comments from regular citizens and entrenched businesses. Staff will be required to respond. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s also the time for lawsuits from those with vested interests. Major lawsuits won’t be adjudicated in 45 days. It’s highly unlikely that the Port interests, who are ready to wage war, are going to roll over in 45 days. Thankfully for the A’s, AB 734 allows CEQA lawsuits to be limited to 270 days. However, legal maneuvers aren’t typically accounted for in project plans. Even with litigation limits baked in, that’s not going to stop the well-heeled from utilizing their retainers.

At some point later this year, we might yet again hear about how shocked or surprised someone from the A’s or the City is about recent news. No one should be surprised about any twists or turns this story takes.

District 3 Council Member Lynette Gibson McElhaney punctuated the proceedings by calling the MOU part of an “iterative, deliberative, intentional process to ensure that if a development goes forward that it is good for Oakland.” This time around, I don’t doubt that.