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Cubs Broadcast History - Page 2
Written by Ken   
Thursday, 26 July 2007 12:18
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Cubs Broadcast History
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GIVE IT AWAY

The Cubs, encouraged by owner Phil Wrigley, made it known in the early 1920s that they welcomed stations who wished to broadcast their games on the radio. Wrigley felt that the publicity would be good for his team—a belief from which many other owners of baseball teams recoiled in horror.

Sen Kaney was among the first stars of radio, operating in Chicago, a town that took to the medium like nobody’s business. Originally employed by KYW, Kaney on April 19, 1924 transferred to WDAP (soon renamed WGN, and then, as today, operated by the Chicago Tribune) as program director and an on-air personality.

In the first-ever local radio transmission of major league baseball, WGN carried the entire Cubs–White Sox 1924 post-season city series, with Kaney sitting on the Wrigley Field rooftop, next to the press area, to describe the action. While Kaney was no baseball expert, he is said to have been witty and engaging on the air.

Opening day, April 14, 1925, marks the first regular-season broadcast on WGN, with Quin Ryan replacing Kaney on the Wrigley Field grandstand roof for an 8-2 win over visiting Pittsburgh. The few existing sound bites of Ryan, a local writer and boxing expert, reveal a genial presence with a friendly tone.

(That fall, Ryan and Graham McNamee, in a first, aired coast-to-coast national broadcasts of the Pittsburgh-Washington World Series on WGN, which would continue to air World Series contests for many years. In 1931, Commissioner Landis granted just two radio networks—NBC and CBS—permission to broadcast baseball’s fall classic, and WGN picked up NBC’s feed featuring the popular McNamee.)

The following year, 1926, WGN and Ryan contracted to air every Saturday afternoon Cubs home game as well as the Opening Day tilt. More games were added during the season, however, as the Cubs proved a popular program.

In an indication of the utter seriousness in which baseball was held at the time, Ryan was joined in the booth by two comic actors responsible for the locally popular “Sam ‘n’ Henry” WGN radio show.

Of course, it’s critical to realize that at the birth of radio baseball, no template yet existed of “appropriate” commentary for the game. The idea of broadcasting baseball games over the air was only implemented because enough advertisers showed interest to pay for the program, and in these days before sophisticated Arbitron and Neilsen surveys, it was anyone’s guess as to what the Joe and Jane Doe with a wireless set would enjoy.

To illustrate this in stark black and white, we can look to station WMAQ, which also began broadcasting Cubs and White Sox games around the same time. Their announcer, sportswriter Hal Totten, had a sense of humor drier than any wine, and a voice that barely varied from its signature monotone. These days, a man with Totten’s vocal delivery would be, at best, allowed to read stock quotations over public-access TV.

WGN began regular broadcasts of Cubs and White Sox home games in 1927, with Ryan describing the entire home schedule for both clubs. By this point, Ryan had been moved into an area of the “press coop,” as the press box was often called.

(As was true for most early radio performers, Ryan was not just a sports guy. As “Uncle Quin,” he handled youth programming, reading the Tribune Sunday funnies to kids in the studio and hosting a “Punch & Judy” children’s show. In addition, Ryan anchored political conventions and covered other news events.)

Totten and WMAQ were also on hand for the entire schedule, and other stations eventually joined in the fun, including, at different times, WIND, WBBM, WJJD, and WCFL. At one point in the thirties, five stations aired Cubs and White Sox games. Only later on, in the 1940s, did teams begin to arrange for just one radio station to air the contests, as exclusivity in broadcasting meant a higher rights fee for the club.

But that kind of thinking was years away. Radio was still so new that no concept of “exclusivity,” or even of radio stations paying teams to air games, existed. Since Phil Wrigley wanted local stations to flood the airwaves with Cubs baseball, thus providing free advertising, the struggling White Sox—having fallen far in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—had to allow the broadcasts as well.



Last Updated on Thursday, 26 July 2007 12:31