Seems Like Old Times: Athletics Find a New Radio Home for the Rest of the Season
In a throwback to 1978, the A’s have found a radio station for the remainder of the 2020 season
The club announced Thursday that starting with Friday’s game in Seattle, the remainder of the regular season will be carried on Bloomberg 960-AM and KOSF-HD2 103.7 FM.
In addition, the club’s A’s Cast is being moved to iHeartRadio, with fans able to stream games and other content throughout Northern California on all their mobile digital devices. The A’s Cast service had been on TuneIn, but iHeartRadio’s has traffic three times larger than that of the financially strapped TuneIn, which, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, is experiencing financial difficulties.
There was no Bay Area radio for the first six games of the season, which is the second time the club has started a season without a radio home. The first time, in 1978, the University of California’s radio station, KALX, stepped up for the first month of the season before KNEW, a medium-sized for-profit station finally signed on.
The student doing the play-by-play was Larry Baer, who is now the president of the San Francisco Giants. That experiment lasted just 16 games under the club moved to KNEW.
For the A’s broadcasters, they won’t notice the change. They were on radio on a dozen smaller stations outside the Bay Area, but now they’ll be able to call games that their core audience can pick up around the Bay Area.
“You don’t change anything at all; you’re still doing the game,” A’s play-by-play voice Ken Korach said. “It’s nice to be back on radio again.”
There will be changes, of course, Korach and teammate Vince Cotroneo and engineer Mike Baird will call all road games from the Coliseum. As is the case with most clubs, A’s radio and TV personnel are not traveling during the pandemic.
Korach and Co. had a trial run Tuesday when the A’s played in San Francisco.
“You’re calling the game off the television,” he said. “We’ll do the best we can with it. I’m not concerned about it at all. There is probably going to be some stuff we’re gonna miss. But I think our listeners are understanding. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and it’s something we should be able to handle.”
Listeners outside the Bay Area can continue to catch games on the A’s Radio Network, which includes KHTK–AM 1140 in Sacramento and 11 other radio affiliates throughout Northern California. Spanish-language broadcasts will be available for 22 of the A’s remaining home games this season on KIQI (1010 AM, San Francisco) and KATD (990 AM, Pittsburg).
A’s Casts can also be accessed in one click at athletics.com/ascast and fans can listen to other A’s Cast on-demand material for free at athletics.com/podcasts.
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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