This better not give anyone any ideas

I've known about this one for awhile, but didn't mention anything about it directly. Then, Ben got the job with the Whitecaps and the cat was out of the bag.

A Cardinals fan actually put it all together between complaining about untucked shirts and this was the result.

Quad Cities River Bandits silence radio broadcasts

Back in March 2008, the River Bandits and Miller Media Group, the owner of WYEC (93.9 FM, Geneseo, Illinois), had announced a three-year agreement to air the team’s 140-game schedule on the station. Games were also streamed on the team’s website.

Ending the deal a year early seems especially counterintuitive as the Quad Cities baseball operation is definitely on the rise. Total attendance (236,401) and average attendance (3,694) last season were both the highest since 1995 and rank among the top five years the history of the franchise. Since the ownership change, attendance has grown 64 percent on a per-game basis (from 2,254 in 2007) and 59 percent on an annual view (from 148,773).

A 2009 study by Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal ranked the Quad Cities #31 of 239 minor league sports markets, best of all Cardinals minor league affiliate metro areas.

In confirming the news, Miller Media Group’s Kewanee, Illinois cluster sales manager Fletcher M. Ford was quite direct. He explained how the change was made and communicated.

“Your Easy Choice 93.9 WYEC was served notice from Kirk A. Goodman, Vice President and General Manager in late 2009 explaining the intention of the Quad City River Bandits not having a radio broadcast partner in the upcoming season for its fans,” Ford explained.

Ford wanted to make it clear that Miller Media Group was not a part of any evaluation process.

“This decision was made solely by the management of the Quad City River Bandits,” Ford said.

Goodman offered further details.

“We are indeed discontinuing our radio broadcast,” Goodman stated Monday. “We were being charged a very high rate to be on a station located 55 miles from our ballpark and in addition to that cost and the expense of paying for the salary and travel for a broadcaster did not make fiscal sense for our team.”

Apparently no alternatives that offered a match could be found.

“We made an effort to bring the broadcast to a more local station but none of the formats of the stations for the two main radio groups in our market worked with what we were willing to offer in return.

“It was strictly a financial decision…to pay what was necessary for our broadcast to be on the air was not worth the return we saw from having a broadcast,” Goodman said.

Nothing personal. Just business. That worked out so well for Tessio.