Baseball radio in the Northeast

[Scott Fybush]

Kevin Vahey wrote:
> Yes the Mets are on 660 but they only have stations in Albany and
> Amsterdam, NY besides WFAN. Sure 660 gives them coverage but NYY has
> 880 but still has many other stations wants NYY badly but I am not
> sure the Yankees want to lose New Jersey and upstate as WEPN does
> protect CHUM Toronto. 

The fan bases for the two teams are very, very different. The Yankees 
have always enjoyed a widespread fan base that stretches all the way 
upstate and, yes, pretty deeply into southern New England, too.

Aside from a small number of transplants from downstate, there's simply 
not a passionate Mets fan base to speak of up here in Rochester, or in 
Syracuse or Albany or even Buffalo or Binghamton, where the Mets have 
their AAA and AA farm teams, respectively. It's much more common to see 
someone wearing Red Sox gear (and not just in my household!) around here 
than it is to see someone in a Mets cap or with a Mets license plate on 
their car.

WFAN simply does a phenomenal job of blanketing the core of Mets 
territory, and WOFX in Troy/Albany picks up the smaller knot of Mets 
partisans around Albany. I suspect the team could benefit from an 
affiliate in the central Hudson Valley, where WFAN can get a little 
noisy on stormy days, and maybe out on the eastern tip of Long Island, 
too, but otherwise there's probably no other team whose fan base can be 
so completely encompassed by a single signal as the Mets and WFAN.

(A big-signal Miami AM, if such a beast existed, could probably do the 
same thing for the Marlins, come to think of it...)

s