Is anybody really listening?

When network ratings are low we always joke that “no one is watching”. And by nobody we mean probably a million. And yes, when that number was more like fifteen million for even low rated shows, one million seems paltry. On a smaller scale is radio. Even when you’re a small station playing informercials for colon cleanser you always assume there is somebody listening.

This theory has been put to the test.

Back in 1988 I was broadcasting minor league baseball for the mighty Syracuse Chiefs (the then-AAA affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays). I had a great partner, Dan Hoard (now the voice of the Cincinnati Bengals and U. of Cincinnati) and a truly horrible radio station. Our signal was so bad at night that you couldn’t hear it in parts of the ballpark. Eventually the team sought a better station, but in my year fans would move from section 30 to section 6 to hear us once the sun went down.

During one roadtrip we traveled to Denver to play the equally-mighty Zephyrs (this was before the Rockies). The venue was the old Mile High Stadium. The park sat 70,000. For Zephyr games against us they drew maybe 2,000. So the stadium looked completely empty every game.

There was no baseball pressbox per se. They just stuck us in a luxury booth near home plate. And that was fine. There was more than enough room. But there were three rows of seats behind us and the team sold those. So there were paying customers in the broadcast booth constantly telling us to shut up. "Hey, we paid ten dollars for these seats!"

One of the games became a marathon. We were in maybe the 14th inning. It must’ve been 1:00 AM in Denver. The fans in the rows behind had long since left.  Dan was doing the play-by-play that inning. He wondered out loud how many people were listening. He said, “Tell ya what, if you’re listening right now call the station (he gave out the number) and we’ll give you two free tickets to an upcoming Chiefs game!” I was waving, “Stop! Don’t do this!  This can't end well.” It was 3:00 AM in Syracuse. But Dan went ahead.

You can probably guess how many calls we got. None. Zero. Zilch. The big goose egg. Despite several mentions (bordering on pleading).

Sometimes when someone says no one is listening, they’re RIGHT.

Oh… and when the game was over – we then had to do a half hour postgame show. Needless to say, we really gave it our all.

Hello from Melbourne, by the way.  For updates on my journey I invite you to follow me on Twitter.  Just go here.   Thanks.