Network’s Policy On World Series Falls On Deaf Ears

Sometimes we take for granted what a vibrant, cutting-edge community it is we live in.

At long last we have a grand new arena on the north bank, sort of a Granny’s Buffet of hockey and country music and Lipizzaner stallions. We have parking meters which can access your credit history or cuff and fingerprint any scofflaw who plugs it with a Canadian dime. The new STA bus center gives us $20 million of shade in which to wait for the Fairwood Limited.

Who knows what other science fiction may soon be fact?

Perhaps some day we’ll be able to listen to the World Series on radio.

Imagine it: you in your La-Z-Boy, the Braves and Indians on the tube and a pizza en route when the phone rings. Your daughter’s ride home from volleyball practice left without her. You pull on your overcoat, fire up the Festiva and punch up the AM dial to keep tabs on the ballgame.

That’s all you can do - imagine it. For probably the first time since Marconi - well, since they canceled it last year, anyway - you can’t find the Series on radio in Spokane.

We may be the largest market in America so afflicted, to the dismay of unlucky fans stuck on a highway or saddled with a boss who won’t allow a TV in the workplace.

Not exactly an outrage. Just another stake through the heart of tradition, another insult to endure.

We pursued this annoyance to the local all-sports station, KTRW alias The Score - which would seem to be a natural candidate to carry the games. Dave Spencer, the operations manager, stood up to take the heat.

“In the past, both KXLY and us have carried the game of the week from CBS radio sports,” he said by way of background. “This year, what with the strike and everybody hating baseball, when they offered us the package, we turned it down. We didn’t see a lot of interest, especially since we knew we’d be carrying part of the Mariners schedule.

“We just didn’t think it was a wise programming move.”

OK, so baseball’s approval rating was down there below Clinton’s back in the spring. But if the alternative was three more nattering hours of Papa Joe Limbaugh or one of his wannabes, how bad could the Padres and Pirates be?

Come to think of it, however, what CBS had to be offering stations way back was replacement ball, no?

In any case, Spencer didn’t field a lot of complaints through the summer. No one in The Score’s listening audience gave baseball much of a thought until the M’s riveted a region’s interest.

“So we called CBS about carrying the Series,” Spencer said, “and they turned us down. You have to carry a large percentage of their regular season package in order to carry the playoffs.”

This was not hidden in the fine print. Spencer said he “anticipated a problem” in not picking up the regular season package. At KXLY, Pat Schilling knew the score, too, but “because of our commitments to the Mariners and Cougars and Sonics, over the course of the (baseball) season we couldn’t take that many of (CBS’) games.”

Offered Spencer, “Knowing what we know now, we’d take it. It’s our fault.”

Maybe. But give an assist to corporate blockheadedness.

“The way CBS looks at it,” said Dana Ramos of CBS Radio Sports’ affiliate relations office in New York, “if a station doesn’t have full coverage of the regular season, it doesn’t serve CBS well to have spot coverage. We don’t advocate cherry-picking of programming.”

It’s simple enough. CBS uses the carrot of the Series to peddle those Saturday morning yawners between the Mets and Marlins. If, after selling its package nationally, it later makes the Series available to stations which didn’t sign on at the beginning, the full-season subscribers wouldn’t have any motivation to re-up next year.

(To which there’s a simple-enough compromise: make those stations pay. Soak ‘em. You want the Series, it’ll cost you.)

Funny, though. In explaining why it wouldn’t sell the Series to KTRW, CBS didn’t say a word about protecting affiliates.

“For stations to say they just want to take these games,” said Sina DeVito, a CBS flack who came on the line when Ramos ran for cover, “well, that just doesn’t serve the advertisers.”

Huh?

“We go to advertisers with an entire package and they know exactly what it is they’re buying,” she said. “For X amount of dollars, their commercial will be heard for the entire season.”

So if that commercial is suddenly heard in a market where it hasn’t been heard all summer - at no expense to the advertiser - that’s bad?

“That’s our policy,” DeVito sniffed.

You know where thinking like that gets you: a job with The Baseball Network.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review