Radio and Television
After years of stability, the Braves have faced a period of transition in their radio and television coverage.
The 2007 season was the last for Braves baseball on the TBS Superstation. TBS showed 70 games throughout the country, then cleared the decks to make way for a new national broadcast package that began in earnest with the 2007 postseason, and expanded to Sunday afternoon games in 2008. Until his dismissal in 2009, Chip Caray, one of the Braves' current broadcasters, called play-by-play for the national package, which includes the Division Series every season and alternating coverage of the American League Championship Series and National League Championship Series. Braves baseball has been seen on TBS since it was WTCG in 1971 and has been a cornerstone of the national superstation since it began in 1976. WPCH-TV/Peachtree TV, formerly WTBS Atlanta, will still carry Braves games after this point, but only in parts of the Southern United States. After the transfer of the channel's operations from Time Warner to Meredith Corporation, all Peachtree TV games will be simulcast on Fox Sports South outside of the Peachtree TV coverage area, beginning in 2011.
After the 2004 season, longtime radio flagship station 750 WSB was replaced by WGST 640AM. Due to WGST's weak signal at night, which fails to cover the entire Atlanta metropolitan area, all games began to be simulcast on FM radio when the rights were transferred. The games first appeared on 96.1 WKLS (formerly "96rock") in 2005, but moved to country music station 94.9 WUBL ("94.9 The Bull") in 2007 after WKLS underwent a change in format from classic rock to active rock and became Project 9–6–1. As of the 2009 season, the Braves returned to WKLS on the FM frequency but remained on WGST on AM. It was announced that for the 2010 season, the Braves will be flagshipped on WCNN 680 The Fan and in Atlanta on the AM dial and WNNX 100.5 FM.
The Atlanta Braves radio network currently serves 134 radio stations across the Southern United States, including 20 in Alabama, 4 in Florida, 68 in Georgia, 1 in Mississippi, 13 in North Carolina, 14 in South Carolina, and 14 in Tennessee.
Since 2009, the radio announcers have been former Brewers announcer Jim Powell and Don Sutton. Sutton was released after the 2006 season and called Washington Nationals games on television from 2007 to 2008, but he has since returned for the 2009 season. Longtime Braves voices Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren were the primary play-by-play voices of Braves baseball until Skip's sudden death on August 3, 2008, and Van Wieren's retirement after the 2008 season.
On television, Chip Caray will serve as play-by-play announcer for all 105 games on both SportSouth (formerly Turner South) and the Sunday games shown on Fox Sports South, while doing some of the 45 games shown on Peachtree TV. Joe Simpson provides color commentary for games Caray announces, and serves as the play-by-play announcer for games on Peachtree TV that Caray does not work. Tom Glavine, who retired from the Braves following the 2009 season, is the second color commentator on Sunday home games on Fox Sports South. Starting in 2011, Ron Gant and Brian Jordan will join the Peachtree TV broadcasting team. Caray, Simpson, Glavine, Gant and Jordan will call games on Peachtree TV on a rotating basis.
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Famous quotes containing the words radio and, radio and/or television:
“We spend all day broadcasting on the radio and TV telling people back home what’s happening here. And we learn what’s happening here by spending all day monitoring the radio and TV broadcasts from back home.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children.”
—Anonymous. BBC Radio 4 (April 8, 1990)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)