I Miss Local Radio Ads on the MLB App

MLB's radio streaming service recently switched from airing local commercial breaks to selling their ad space to a third party. Here's why that's a bad thing.

Almost exactly a year ago, MLB reached an agreement with Audacy (the second largest radio company in the United States behind iHeartMedia) that made them “the official digital audio and podcast partner of MLB”. I vaguely remember hearing about this at the time and thinking nothing of it because I haven’t routinely listened to podcasts since I had a regular commute, which was in the Before Times™. But, unbeknownst to me, buried deep in that announcement was something that eventually would affect me:

“Audacy will be the exclusive advertising sales partner for MLB audio streams within the league’s subscription products.”

Simply put, this meant that all advertising space on MLB Audio, the league’s radio subscription service, would belong to Audacy. This didn’t go into effect immediately; it couldn’t possibly. Even as this 2022 season started, nothing had changed. But sometime last month — I’m not sure exactly when — MLB Audio finally made the switch and began playing Audacy’s ads during commercial breaks, and the product immediately became unquestionably worse.

Every commercial break is now filled with four or five ads selected from a very narrow pool, to the point that you often hear some ads several breaks in a row. If you’ve ever watched MLB.tv, you know getting spammed with the same ads a dozen times a game should be a violation of the Eighth Amendment, but on MLB Audio, it’s even worse because there are no highlight reels for Tim Anderson or Austin Riley, there are no zany spots for MLB Network, and — most unfortunately — there is no Baseball Zen. All you get are the same few dull ads played over and over again until your ears bleed, and then one more time afterwards for good measure.

Baseball Zen is genuinely fun and makes MLB.tv commercial breaks far less agonizing than they used to be.

Most of the time, they have nothing to do with anything. Some ads are for Audacy podcasts (but, curiously enough, never their MLB podcasts), some are general spots meant for a national audience like you see on MLB.tv, and a few are local spots meant to be played for specific team broadcasts. These last ones seem to be inconsistent; I’ve heard ads for the New York market while listening to a Minnesota Twins vs. Detroit Tigers game and being located in North Carolina.

More depressing than adopting what we now have, though, is losing what we had. Before this switch, MLB Audio gave us an essentially unedited radio broadcast of every game from the beginning of the pregame show through the end of the postgame show. This included local commercial breaks which were, to me, just as important to the product as the games themselves. Every break was a two-minute aural vacation to the city whose team you were listening to. You got the crazy ads for regional businesses, the local jingles and bumpers, hell, sometimes you just got complete nonsense, as detailed on this episode of Effectively Wild.¹ It was a great time if you’re the type of nerd who still listens to baseball on the radio in 2022.

The Treasure Island Baseball Network is the radio network of my hometown Minnesota Twins.

More than that, as someone who no longer lives in his team’s city and misses it quite often, these commercial breaks were a nice little slice of home and comforted me a lot when I felt homesick, as dumb as that might sound. I miss hearing Dick Bremer announce some family’s Target run like he’s calling the bottom of the 9th. I miss hearing Byron Buxton try to sell me Sheboygan sausages. I miss that damn Treasure Island Resort and Casino jingle.

Additionally, the Twins radio broadcast runs a good amount of between-innings programming that brings fans closer to the players and the team. Every game, they have a “meet the player” interview in which a current player answers a bunch of personality questions like “what’s the last concert you went to?” or “who was your favorite player when you were a kid?”. They also have “Today in Twins History”, bringing listeners back to a key moment in the history of the franchise from that date, almost always paired with an excellent John Gordon radio call. These features are unequivocally good and hearing them during the game makes me a better fan. And now they’re just gone.

I’m not under the impression that any amount of complaining about this is going to revert things back to the way they were. I’m also not saying that MLB Audio is completely unlistenable now; I do end up muting the commercial breaks after the first couple innings, but I am primarily there for the games, and the games are still all there. MLB’s streaming options are still leagues better than, say, NBA League Pass, a product so broken that pirating NBA games is legitimately a more consistent option (to say nothing about the price). I’ll just put local radio ads in the same bin as MLB.tv’s Park Audio overlay² and this wackadoo scorebug³ as awesome MLB streaming features that I’m disappointed are probably never to be seen (or heard) again.

1. Relevant segment begins at 9:03.

2. Until a few years ago, MLB.tv allowed you to listen to Park Audio, which essentially just muted the announcers and made the field mics somewhat louder to simulate actually being at the park.

3. It’s so terrible; I love it.