The New York Yankees made it official and announced that they have reached a multi-year broadcast agreement with CBS Radio for Yankees games to be broadcast on WFAN beginning in 2014.
Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon said Tuesday that the team is “negotiating with numerous parties” regarding its radio-broadcast rights for next season and beyond, but refused to speculate on where the Mets’ might land. Some are reporting that the Mets could end up airing on either ESPN Radio or WOR – who had tried unsuccessfully to win the rights to broadcast the Yankees.
There’s really no surprise here as to why WFAN felt the need to move on. Radio stations operate on advertising revenue, and the Yankees are the gold standard when it comes to that. The Mets were reportedly losing money for WFAN and were probably paying more for the broadcast rights than the revenue they were generating from those broadcast rights.
Hey, wherever they end up we’ll all be listening so that’s not going to change. And let’s face it, aside from the Mets were you really tuning in to listen to Craig Carton or Mike Francesa?
The good news is that I spoke to a production manager at CBS as well as another source with direct knowledge of the situation and both of them said that Howie Rose will continue to broadcast games for the Mets wherever they do wind up. That’s all I really care about.
Original Post 9/10
As reported by Neil Best of Newsday, The Yankees and CBS Radio are close to a deal that would put the Yankees on WFAN starting in 2014, a person familiar with the negotiations told Newsday.
The arrangement would bump the Mets off the station that has carried their games since WFAN’s inception in 1987.
Jeff Wilpon, chief operating officer of the Mets, said Tuesday while attending a firehouse in Manhattan that it is “fairly accurate” that the Mets are leaving WFAN. Wilpon said he expects a resolution to the team’s radio deal for 2014 and beyond in about six weeks.
Best adds that while it’s not clear where the Mets would land, options include ESPN Radio and one or more of the New York stations — including WOR — owned by Clear Channel Communications, which earlier in the process made a serious bid for the Yankees’ rights.
The Yankees currently are carried by WCBS Radio, which like WFAN, is owned by CBS. The current one-year contract is believed to pay the team $13 to $14 million.
The Mets are believed to earn about half what the Yankees do in rights fees but have been a money-loser for WFAN, which inherited the team when it took over WHN’s 1050-AM signal in 1987. The Mets then moved down the dial with WFAN to 660-AM in 1988.
This is nothing new. The Mets have seen 20% viewership declines on SNY and attendance continues to fall. Have you seen the advertising on SNY during Mets broadcasts? Bubba Blade, Acorn Stair Lifts, Cholula Hot Sauce, etc. Not even the brewery giants, who advertise everywhere, choose to spend a dime advertising on SNY.
I don’t recall the Mets popularity and interest in the team being this low since the late seventies. After record breaking revenues from 2005-2009, the Mets have lost money exponentially every year since then.
