Status Quo For Twins Radio

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Looks like KSTP-AM's last-ditch attempt to keep the Minnesota Twins baseball broadcasts by switching its format to sports talk have paid off.   The station now known as 1500 ESPN won themselves a two-year contract extension with the team.

This comes as a big surprise to those who thought the Twins would go to another radio station in the Twin Cities, most notably WCCO (AM 830), KFAN (AM 1130) or Pohlad family-owned KHTC (FM 96.3).  What brought this on were complaints that KSTP's 50,000-watt signal, which isn't all-encompassing like WCCO's, couldn't be picked up in parts of the metro.

If WCCO had won the broadcast rights, it would have meant a return for the Twins to the station that had been carrying their games since the team moved from Washington in 1961.  It also would have meant that owner CBS Radio had been saving their pennies for this very moment, after so many familiar voices with huge contracts were let go.

If KFAN had won, owner Clear Channel would have bypassed the all-sports station with a weaker AM signal and the Twins would have gone on KTLK (FM 100.3).  We're guessing the team didn't want their family-friendly image sullied by being on the same station as conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

So the Twins are staying on KSTP, where ESPN programming bookends afternoons with its two biggest names, Patrick Reusse and Joe Soucheray.  It also means that they passed on the chance to put simulcasts of games on one of Hubbard Broadcasting's two FM signals (KSTP 94.5 and KTMY 107.1) to appease those who couldn't get 1500.

And you know what it also means?  Two more years of bungling by play-by-play announcers John Gordon and Dan Gladden on the "Treasure Island Baseball Network".  Those two must have fit the Pohlad philosophy they used with their ballplayers:  Why get 'em  good when you can get 'em cheap?