A Short Road Trip

I won't be doing much on the hockey front today thanks to being in a vehicle for eight hours, but that's life when it comes to work responsibilities. I have a scheduled visit with a branch I never get to see enough, so I'll be working the next few days out of town as I try to get all of their technological issues solved. That being said, I felt like I was an F-Zero racer from the classic SNES game while driving in my new vehicle with all its bells and whistles, so the drive today was pretty comfortable. Like any drive, though, there are some people who don't seem to understand the basic rules of the road, but those people were thankfully few and far between. Needless to say, I arrived at my destination as planned, and the ride was smooth-sailing for the majority of the concrete journey.

What made the second half of the journey that much more enjoyable is that I was able to tune into the local professional baseball radio broadcast as I drove thanks to the magic of cell phones and the internet. Despite being some four hours away from the ballpark, I was able to tune in and hear the call clearly thanks to the station's internet broadcast. As such, I didn't miss a pitch despite being a considerable distance from the station's broadcasting range.

This isn't any sort of new revelation, you're saying, and I completely understand that. However, it does bring to light the importance of radio broadcasts when it comes to professional sports teams as there's no way I could tune into the video broadcast while driving. Normally, I would watch the game if I wasn't working at the ballpark, but today's excursion to a far-off location made that impossible.

With the improvements in technology and advancements made to stream audio better, it doesn't matter where you in the world now when it comes to listening to your favorite team's radio broadcast. Radio has always been free outside of satellite radio, and most teams have opted to have a local station broadcast its games to its immediate market so its fanbase can listen whenever they're playing.

That's a smart decision for people who may be bustling around cities and towns where the broadcast signal reaches, but it made it hard for people to listen before streaming audio on the internet became a thing. Today, there are no limits when listening from faraway places, and my example today is an important reason why hockey teams still need radio: they can reach ANY market with that broadcast!

With Rogers deciding to scrap their sports radio stations in both Vancouver and Calgary, there was an immediate backlash towards Rogers before the Flames signed a deal with Corus-owned QR Calgary 770AM and the Canucks moved to Rogers-owned KiSS Throwbacks at 104.9 FM. Those broadcasts will still allow fans to hear their favorite teams, but the fact that Rogers continues to disrupt something that was working well over a profit statement held by shareholders is something I'll never understand. Radio is a proven and valuable asset!

Had radio died with the rise of the internet as some predicted, there would have been no way for me to have listened to the game pitch-by-pitch as I did today. There's likely no way that a lot of sports fans who have moved outside the broadcast range of their favorite team's radio signal would be able to consume that content. Yet not one person to whom I have spoken about this very topic has ever said, "Having a radio broadcast of that game is a stupid idea."

I won't lie in telling you that I listen to games from all over the place in the winter when I'm driving. I can usually be found listening to a Fort Wayne Komets game or a Pittsburgh Penguins game - two teams whose schedules rarely cross with Winnipeg - as I'm driving around on a winter's evening, and the end result is that I miss nothing from those games by tuning in via streaming audio. It's an awesome thing to be able to catch broadcasts from anywhere, and I'm grateful that I'm able to do so. As a driver, I respect the power of radio.

I need to go through and update some of the links on these, but, if you want to listen to your favorite hockey team while travelling, there are resources right here on HBIC for that. I have a whole page dedicated to NHL teams' radio broadcasts, another for AHL teams' broadcasts, and a third for ECHL teams' broadcasts. Find your team(s), save their radio links, and you're set for in-vehicle hockey broadcasts from your favorite teams! How awesome is that?

If you needed a reason as to why I love radio, it's this reason. Yes, it's an outlet for a lot of hockey chatter between Jason and I, but the fact that we can reach ears around the globe is one of the main reasons I love it. When Canada West fans crashed the server in 2018 during the Canada West Final between Saskatchewan and Manitoba by tuning in from all over the planet, that was a watershed moment for me. I knew we were reaching people with our goofy broadcasts, but people were also responding by tuning in to hear us call games.

Whether it was grandparents in Florida who could listen for free or Albertans listening while tweeting at us, we had expanded UMFM's borders from a campus radio station to something much bigger. The flip side, though, was that people were able to tune in and hear the game in its entirety for free from two guys who loved calling the game, had a passion for women's hockey and the players on the ice, and understood that many fans wanted inexpensive coverage.

Listening to the baseball game as I drove gave me a lot to think about when it came to Rogers' recent decisions, and it's renewed my passion for having radio as a vital and important medium for sports. My hope is that you feel the same about your radio broadcasts, and I'd urge you to support your local radio station that broadcasts your favorite team(s), especially if you live outside their broadcast map.

It's still free and it's still totally accessible as it should be. All you need is a radio or an internet-connected device to tune in!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!