The Minnesota Twins announced today that their radio broadcast have returned to WCCO, 830 on your AM radio dial after an 11 year absence. The 50,000 watt WCCO was the radio home of the Minnesota Twins from the time they moved to Minnesota in 1961 through the 2006 season. The Midwest “Good Neighbor” was outbid for the rights to Twins games after the 2006 season and the Twins switched to KSTP 1500 AM where they stayed for six seasons. KSTP had a decent signal but the station seemed to have no clue on how to promote Minnesota Twins baseball and their in-house broadcasters for pre and post game shows sounded like a bunch of clowns doing rookie league baseball.
The Pohlad family then switched the Twins radio broadcasts to a FM station at 96.3 (that the family bought back in 2007) starting with the 2013 baseball season. Switching MLB broadcasts from AM to FM seemed to be a hot trend at the time. The greedy Pohlads jumped on the bandwagon and figured that they could make more money from ad revenue rather than by selling the rights to Twins radio broadcasts. The Pohlad owned radio station changed call signs over the next few years more often than Paul Molitor brought in relief pitchers and their promotion of Twins games was non-existent on a station that features alternative rock music when the Twins weren’t playing. If the Twins were not playing, there was no baseball talk on the station. The station signal was so weak you had to almost stand next to the radio station itself to get a signal. It was almost as if the Minnesota Twins had no radio outlet at all.
The wheels in the Minnesota Twins organization turn ever so slowly and the rights to their radio broadcasts seem to fit right in, it took the organization 11 years to correct their original mistake and make things right again. When the Twins left WCCO it was like their team had lost its major league status and was sent to the minors. Eleven seasons of bush league baseball and now the Minnesota Twins have been upgraded to the major leagues once again, it’s about time. The Minnesota Twins radio “Dark Ages” have finally ended.
WCCO is expected to retain the current Twins broadcasting team of Cory Provus and Dan Gladden who are actually Minnesota Twins employees.
The ‘dark ages’ will not end until Dan Gladden no longer slaughters 3 innings of every game. You’d think the guy would get better. But I still have no idea who is pitching, who is batting, what the score is, what inning it is, or any other pertinent detail when it is a Dazzle inning.
The story I read is that the Twins will handle the production – including pre-game and post-game shows. So I would expect provus and Gladden to continue to be Twins employees.
But I’m glad they’re back on ‘CCO; now maybe I can actually listen to the games in my western Wisconsin home.