Desperate for revenue and suspicious of new technology, the Cardinals once joined the Browns in banning radio broadcasts of their games.
Eighty years ago, Feb. 3, 1934, the National League Cardinals and American League Browns declared that radio broadcasts were having a negative impact on attendance at their games at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.
In 1933, with America reeling from the Great Depression, the Cardinals drew just 256,171 in 77 home games, even though the Cardinals had a winning record (82-71) and were just two years removed from a World Series championship. That was their lowest home attendance since moving to Sportsman’s Park from Robison Field in 1920.
The 1933 Browns, a last-place finisher at 55-96, attracted only 88,113 in 77 home games.
Radio broadcasts of Cardinals and Browns games had been carried since 1926, five years after the first broadcast of a major-league game, the Phillies vs. the Pirates, on Pittsburgh station KDKA in 1921.
Under the headline “St. Louis Clubs Sign Off on Radio,” The Sporting News reported in its Feb. 8, 1934, edition that “this decision was reached with dramatic suddenness by Sam Breadon, president of the Cardinals, and Louis B. von Weise, who holds a similar title with the Browns.”
“There, no doubt, was a time when the microphones did us some good,” Breadon said. “That was in the high times. But now we are at a point where we are willing to experiment a season without the mikes.”
Strong reactions
St. Louis radio executives were stunned and disappointed.
“We feel that it was a service the public appreciated and that radiocasting of the games helps more than it damages attendance,” said Jack Van Valkenburg, president of KMOX.
Added Thomas Patrick Convey of St. Louis station KWK: “Nobody has worked harder than myself to try to get people out to the ballpark.”
In an editorial, The Sporting News supported the right of the St. Louis clubs to choose whether to permit radio broadcasts of games. “Like other sports, baseball long has been in doubt as to the value of broadcasts,” The Sporting News wrote. “… The opinion has been growing stronger within the past two years that, whatever good the radio may have done the game in the past, conditions now have changed and its tendency to cause the fan to sit in front of the loudspeaker instead of in the stands is beginning to outweigh all its advantages.”
Most of the mail Breadon received in reaction to the decision opposed the radio ban.
Business and marketing
Breadon, a native New Yorker, may have been influenced by the decisions of all three New York clubs _ the American League Yankees and the National League Dodgers and Giants _ to ban radio broadcasts of their games.
However, the teams in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati and Detroit were continuing game broadcasts. Walgreens paid Chicago radio station WGN $45,000 to sponsor game broadcasts for the 1934 season, The Sporting News reported.
Meanwhile, radio magnate Powel Crosley had purchased the Reds, with the notion of using radio to promote his team and using the broadcasts as an advertising revenue generator for his stations.
Without the broadcasts, home attendance of the Cardinals and Browns increased in 1934. The Cardinals, who won the National League pennant and World Series championship that year, drew 325,056 in 77 home games, an increase of almost 70,000. The Browns, who placed sixth at 67-85 in 1934, attracted 115,305, a spike of 27,000.
But the business models in Chicago and Cincinnati may have convinced the St. Louis clubs to end the ban. In 1935, the broadcasts of Cardinals and Browns games were restored.
Capitalizing on their status as reigning World Series champions, Cardinals home attendance jumped to 506,084 in 1935. But the Browns, who fell back to seventh place in 1935, drew only 80,922 to 76 home games that year, including 300 to a Friday afternoon game on May 10 against the Athletics. Boxscore
Previously: Top 5 reasons Sam Breadon should be in Hall of Fame
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