Media Coverage of Baseball

During football season, there is an extra half hour show on every Friday night covering most of the area football teams with tape of the big plays as they fly around on helicopters. During football season, there is almost an entire section in the Saturday newspaper covering the local games.

Charlotte has two teams in the final four of the west 4A baseball bracket (Providence and Ardrey Kell), with additional great teams from the local region in South Caldwell and North Davidson.

Where is the media coverage? Local television has no tape of the games. A half page in the sports section of the newspaper on page 6. I wonder why they are losing television market share, and newspaper subscriptions have fallen off the edge of the map? They have lost the local coverage that they used to have when I was growing up. I pity the soccer, softball, lacrosse and other "smaller" sports teams that get a paragraph on page 8 at the most during the playoffs.

Is it the same outside Charlotte?

 

It is basically the same in the east as it seems baseball is a stepchild of football in the high school ranks. Newspaper coverage is very weak when the local teams are on the road as evidenced by Rocky Mount Academy playing in yesterday's state championship with no reporter on sight and the article in this morning's paper written based on a telephone interview with the RMA coach. However this same paper sees fit to send a reporter to the Carolina Hurricanes and Carolina Mudcat games on a regular basis. High school baseball, as well as the majority of high schools sports get the cold shoulder among the printed media not only down east but state wide as well. Newspapers in Gastonia, Salisbury, High Point, Henderson, Hendersonville, Ahoskie, Wilson, and Goldsboro are among those that seem to provide the best coverage.

However hats must go off to Stretchy as he hosts the Stretchlon Sports Show on local channel WHIG in Rocky Mount where we have the luxury of seeing the game of the week every Sunday night at 8:30. It is one of my highlights of the week.

A special thank you RS (Stretchy) for making this possible.

 

Agreed

Not to dwell on the poor coverage as it is well documented and known. But, what really got me this week was the coverage dedicated to the football combine held recently. One day last week, the N&O sports page had a front page story with about 1/4 page inside on the football combine, while the night before there were several teams in the playoffs (and I don't care whether it was baseball, softball, lacrosse, whatever) and they get the standard all-in-one column notes. That did it for me. When football, out of season, gets that much coverage over playoff sports in season, there is something wrong with the high school coverage.

I'll just depend on the tried and true -- this board is the only place to get any type of baseball coverage. Better yet, you can get good information about baseball statewide! That beats any newspaper in the state. So, TBR is my baseaball "paper" and it's the source I depend on for High School baseball in this state.

 

Charlotte is pitiful

I know more about the football Panthers first draft picks toe problems than I know about the Providence Panthers excellent wins this week from the News and Observer.

I am with you, GreatestGame - Does the newspaper not realize that the only advantage they have over USA Today is local coverage of the community? Including sports?

Does the television news not know that national news is on every half hour on CNN?

Give me a break...

 

I concur!

 

When the Hurricanes were in the Stanley Cup hunt and became the Champs, the News & Observer had no less than 6 full pages of coverage, while at the same tmie the local baseball scores got their usual 1 column with 6 lines per games. That is, if your team's score appeared at all.

Since this is really the only place to get baseball info, why don't we have Braves set up a special tread next year where we can have daily or weekly updates of each conference's standings, each conference's leading players and the state's leading players.

We could form a committee in each reagion to oversee it and pay dues to support someone's efforts to keep it updated properly.

Just a thought, but perhaps the only place we could be confident of getting the right info.

 

This would be exactly what I would like to do. We have a new TBR website that would be perfect to do something like this. The important part is to find somebody from each area to keep it updated. We can do this for each conference. It is no problem to set it up...and there is no additional cost either. It is just a matter of doing it.

It is set up for scores, recaps, pictures and stats.

 

Count me in, I'll cover the Tri-8, if you like.

 

Media Coverage Slack

I complained to a newspaper this season about no reporters at any of our games. We played our county rivals the last game of the season, and not one reporter was there. They told a friend of mine that this is like their off season until football begins since they work so hard during the fall. Is it the same in the west part of the state as it is the east.

 

I seen

a little clip after Glenn's loss. It was a great shot of the Glenn player throwing his bat and helment after striking out and the joy of the Mooreville player after the final out. That is about it. Around here.