I don’t necessarily think that it would take any of MASN territory outside their tenuous legacy claims to NC dating back to the days of HTS and prior to that when DC’s WDCA was a regional superstation. If the NHL and NBA are any indication, the VA/NC border are a hard boundary between DC/NC teams, even in places such as Mecklenburg County, VA which is in the Triangle’s Nielsen DMA. I would think similar would take place in this case.
Owing to their history on WLW radio and nothing to the south of them, the Reds are the epitome of “tenuous periphery”. What do Charlotte, South Bend, and Oxford, Mississippi have in common? They’re all in Reds territory.
In territory or not, if the Orioles - and this is all Orioles, the reason for the tons of appeals is that the elder Angelos wants this to not be resolved before he dies - really cared about North Carolina they’d have done a lot of things over the last decade and a half.
Get some radio stations to carry their games outside the parts of NE NC that do carry them. This applies to the Nats as well. That neither has their games on a station in the Triangle is an indictment about how they see this area.
Find some worthwhile incentive for TWC to give two channels of analog bandwidth to carry both MASN feeds per their requests. That or…
Allowing TWC to carry MASN on a digital tier. I know TWC in the Carolinas had a bad taste from the CSET debacle the Bobcats launched with, but it’d have been something. Or…
Compromise and allow for a sublicense of their games to what was Fox Sports Carolinas as what was CSN Mid Atlantic had done.
At least go back to the bargaining table to do something to get some incentive for them to carry their sad network. Seriously, this year they got new graphics for the first time since 2009.
When TWC and Charter merged to become Spectrum, do something aside “lol there’s no reason to carry it”. The pmSpectrum systems in the OBX and the Roanoke Rapids area were already carrying MASN and still are from a pre-merger deal, why MASN didn’t play hardball when taking over speaks more volumes.
Things like this are why the Orioles are at best the #4 AL East team in the Triangle (the Rays/Bulls connection making them a good #3), perhaps even #5 given the boost the Blue Jays got from freaking Drake. The Nats don’t have it much better, probably #4 only boosted by the fact the Marlins lack fans. Then toss in the Dodgers, Cubs, Cardinals, even arguably the Brewers given the Mudcats link and it’s pathetic.
Someone in another board I’m on openly wondered why one of the three sports stations that Capitol Broadcasting owns hasn’t picked up the Rays given their ties to the Bulls to serve as sort of filler.
That nobody at all has their games on radio here boggles the mind. Not just the O’s and Nats, but I think somebody could pick up the rights to the Braves or Red Sox or either of the NYC teams and it would be worth something. There would be no issues with it, exclusivity zone is only 50 miles from a park so any team would be golden here.
the northeast seems choked full of sports teams and stadiums of various sorts. with a ‘carolina’ name on mlb in raleigh is that not enough distance, culturally and milage wise to prompt mlb to look to the triangle?
This doesn’t just apply to the Northeast but to the Midwest as well and might speak to established city bias. Metros of similar size but earlier establishment such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, even Baltimore if uncoupled from DC were able to enter sports leagues when the barriers to entry were much lower and become entrenched over time to the point that it can be used to the detriment of other markets that want in. While Peter Angelos threw a hissy fit over MLB relocating the Montreal Expos to DC and his predecessor Eli Jacobs may have sabotaged DC’s attempt at an expansion team, Senators owner Clark Griffith showed zero opposition to the St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore after the 1953 season.
This puts late bloomer markets behind the 8 ball because the price to entry has become so much more expensive than the fairly recent past and the gaping hole that MLB has between Atlanta, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and DC speaks to this. The question is who in NC has the money and the will to spend $2B+ between expansion fees and building a park?
As for branding, city versus region matters a ton and is why the Panthers and Canes have built their fanbases while the Hornets and CFC…haven’t. Granted the Hornets had the issue with the original ones moving and the Bobcats making a ton of errors at their outset, but what incentive is there for anyone past Salisbury to root for CFC? If Ohio can have two MLS teams in a smaller chain of metros that are closer together (Columbus-Cincy, with Dayton in-between), why wouldn’t Charlotte-Raleigh with the Triad in the middle work? The double standard is maddening especially as the Big 4 plus MLS have reached near critical mass.
It’s worth remembering that in 1900 St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the United States. For more than 50 years it supported two Major League teams. Baltimore was sixth that year, and was still sixth in 1950, just before the St. Louis Browns moved to town and became the newest incarnation of the Orioles. Cincinnati was tenth in 1900, and Pittsburgh was 11th.
It wasn’t about lower barriers to entry. At the time these cities got teams they were big, thriving metropolises that any sensible league would want to be in. They’re similar in size to Raleigh today, but that’s only a very, very recent development because Raleigh has grown a ton while those cities have actually shrunk in population.
In 1950, the city of Baltimore had just shy of one million people, and the U.S. population was less than half of what it is now. Wake County as a whole only very, very recently passed the one million mark. They’re not comparable.
I still would like to see minor league baseball in DTSouth. This is probably just a dream and especially at my age. Have MLB go to Charlotte & seek a waiver to bring AAA Charlotte to DTSouth or bring The Atlantic League to DTSouth. ALPB is AA ball and now a Partner of MLB.
The work that it would take for the Bulls to consent to this would be too difficult to work out. And given the battles the Bulls and Mudcats have had at different levels I don’t see them relenting for the same level.
Seriously, closing Central Prison and reopening some of the mothballed prisons to take in the inmates there then building a ballpark on the Central Prison site for MLB would be more feasible than putting an AAA team in Raleigh when there’s an AAA team in Durham already. Teams don’t like having territory taken from them, at all, and putting MLB here makes the Triangle complimentary with Charlotte for sports a la Tampa and Orlando (that is until MLS wakes up and sees NC as the new Ohio).
Best case is a park somewhere in the RTP site or so, Bulls as the AAA affiliate and perhaps a DTSouth park for either a relocated Mudcats as a Low-A affiliate or for an Atlantic League team. It’d make sense for the Atlantic League to add the Triangle to go with High Point and Gastsonia.
I don’t think the relocated Mudcats are going to be an option. Looks like Wake county is considering dumping $15 million worth of upgrades into Five County Stadium.
The Bulls angle and narrative is overstated and outdated. If an owner wanted a minor league team in Raleigh it would happen.
I’ve always been in the ‘rather have minor league than major league baseball’ for Raleigh. Going to a Bulls game in the past couple weeks just reinforced that. Much more casual, less expensive.
Anyone know how to make polls in these posts? Curious how this community would vote MLB vs MiLB as preferred choice in a hypothetical ‘downtown-adjacent’ stadium.
That was like 30+ years ago. That’s what I mean when I say its outdated. Raleigh and Durham are completely different now. The narrative remains though.
We have been to two Friday night Mudcats games in the last four weeks and we had a ball. The fireworks were real good and everyone loving baseball. I bet that Raleigh is the largest city in America without a downtown sports stadium. I would love to see both minor league soccer and minor league baseball in DTSouth! 50% of The Atlantic League’s players has playing time in MLB.
To be fair, from what I remember about Philly, all of their city sports teams are all in south Philly about 15-20 minutes away from downtown. That’s not to say their dt isn’t visible from citizens bank park. Me, personally, would love to have an mlb team in the area (as my new 2nd fave team after the Braves, lol), and I wouldn’t care where they put them exactly, but to get a 35k seat stadium in dt south would be ideal.
