Tuesday night in Baltimore, the Orioles and Nationals renew the “Battle of the Beltway” with both teams’ fans getting to choose which set of announcers they want watch or listen to.
On MASN you’ll have the Nationals broadcast team of BobCarpenter and Don Sutton with Byron Kerr doing the in game reports. The pre- and postgame will of course be handled by Johnny Holiday and Ray Knight from the studio.
Orioles fans will have a chance to watch Gary Thorne, Buck Martinez with Amber Theoharis and serving as the in game reporter over on MASN2 with Jim Durham and Rick Dempsey starting and ending the broadcast from the studio.
WTWP 1500AM/107.7FM has Charlie Slowes and Dave Jageler calling the action on the Nationals network while on WHFS-FM Joe Angel and Fred Manfra will handle the broadcast for the Orioles radio outlets.
The network that is co-owned by the Orioles and Nationals has come into its own in 2007 — with both teams having all 162 games available to their fans on MASN.
The Nats ratings for the month of April are up a staggering 133% over what they were back in 2007 and while the team may not be winning they are at the very least entertaining.
The Orioles are also finding that MASN has been very good to them in its first year on the network full time.
Orioles cable television audience has increased more than 25% (the exact numbers will be released later today and can be seen in my blog) over 2006 season.
Much of MASN’s success has to do with one of the deepest and impressive rosters of on air talent in all of regional cable. They also changed production companies, now using the same group that provides the remote trucks for ESPN. This dedication to quality both in front of and behind the camera seems to have paid off for the network. MASN is scheduled to receive an HD channel, likely in early 2008, so next year you’ll be able to get your hometown team in HD.
How about radio wise?
WTWP-AM and FM posted a 1.9 and that was good enough to beat WTEM, WJFK-FM, WMAL and Triple X ESPN. So Nats fans are logging some good radio numbers. An executive with WTWP stated that they were pleased with the ratings but expected the summer months to be even better.
Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this! on www.examiner.com.
