everything he controls and destroy and hate on everything he doesn’t.
I was also shocked to see that in a convention hall with 10,000 Baltimore people on a Saturday in January the Orioles had just ONE sponsor and it resembled a lizard. Nothing else of note in the entire room had any corporate sponsorship other than MASN or similar trade deals.
In Dallas after the Super Bowl on Sunday night I rode back to my hotel on the media shuttle (yes, the NFL still considers me a media member) and a very well-placed national business journalist said that MASN is worst-run regional sports network in the country. That was his quote, not mine. I think it’s the best run because it’s printing Angelos $50 million in profit every year without needing to sell an ad.
Seems that they’ve hired a new firm to try to sell some of the advertising in the Orioles games because the team can’t seem to do it on their own. On my flight home on Monday, I also ran into the guy charged with running MASN these days who assured me that John Angelos is alive and well despite no one in town getting a return call from him since May, when he was unceremoniously escorted outta The Warehouse.
I won’t write his name here because he’d be fired by sundown for actually exchanging pleasantries with me because I’m such a mortal enemy. (And I actually like the guy who runs MASN, personally.)
Yet despite our continued commitment to giving Baltimore sports fans the truth – and that includes a pretty positive development in the signing of Vladimir Guerrero this week, which might actually make them a respectable .500 team this summer – the Orioles continue to play their petty games in trying to put WNST.net out of business by discriminating and restricting our access not only to the players and coaches but also to many “off the field” issues.
(I have a feeling that the NFL and the Ravens won’t be revoking our credentials this summer because they don’t like the way we’re going to cover the lockout.)
To give you an example of how petty they still are these days, WNST.net has now been denied entrance by four different hotels in Sarasota, Fla. to do our radio show for a week in March because apparently the Orioles have had every major hotel in the area sign “partnership” agreements that allow them to dictate which media entities can do business with them.
Some deal those folks at the Sarasota Visitors Association have cut, huh?
The biggest and most authentic baseball fans in town and the only place employing all local talent with the largest web community and verified daily audience can’t get a return phone call from area hotels when we only want to come down and promote the virtues of Florida sunshine and spring training to the largest sports audience in Baltimore for free and we’ve been declined over and over again.
The good folks at the MLB offices have promised that we’ll get fair treatment here in Baltimore yet somehow our emails and requests have wound up in the Milwaukee spam trap. (Well, not really, because Bud Selig doesn’t have an email account so he can’t have a spam trap!)
Somewhere, there’s a restraint of trade lawsuit for someone far smarter than me but WNST.net forges ahead in telling you the truth about the baseball team.
When the Orioles do the right thing we report it. When the Orioles do the wrong thing – and they do that a lot – we also report that.
And that won’t change as long as I’m breathing.
But it did change for Baltimore’s “news leader” last night at WBAL.
Their words are for sale — again.
Last night, Hearst and WBAL were the highest bidder.
Well, at least I hope John Patti can have his press pass back now!
