Tue Aug 26, 2008 10:42 am EDT
And please note that when I was in school, my college radio station was only available over the Internet to an audience that consisted only of my parents and the various conspiracy theorists around town.
The Washington Nationals, last in the National League East and closing fast on a 100-loss season, have attracted the smallest radio following in the major leagues, according to audience research from Arbitron.
How low? So low that even the microscopic numbers reported by the rating service might be too low to be statistically valid.
The team's broadcasts on the station formerly known as WWWT (107.7 FM and 1500 AM) attracted a cumulative weekly audience of about 26,500 from May through July, the most recent period measured by Arbitron.
Incredible. Given that the Nats' TV ratings are also by far the worst and that they can't sign their top draft picks and that two of their biggest fans moved to North Carolina to simply get away from that mess, when is Major League Baseball finally going to admit they just airlifted the Montreal Expos across the border and made them our nation's problem?
With an average home attendance of 29,990 fans per game, that means more people go out to Nationals Park for one game then carry on with their Nats-free lives than there are people listening to them on the radio in an entire week. While I'm sure Nats' management is still happy to be drawing those fans to the game, what happens when the novelty of the new stadium wears off? Unless this team figures things out — and I highly doubt they will — you can easily see the end game here.
Luckily Nationals Enquirer (gracias) is still listening to the games.
However, this guy probably isn't:
For more on Washington's situation, read this 3-part grilling of Stan Kasten by a guy dressed in Nationals gear. (Morley Safer, he ain't.)
Big League Stew is an MLB blog edited by Kevin Kaduk. Email him, and follow him on Twitter.

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The weird thing is, they nearly were. The first half of '05 was jaw-dropping and they were contending for the wildcard until pretty late in the season. Then the rebuilding began...sigh. You make a good point about the pain of the rebulding process. Few teams ever have fans stick around in the lousy years. Even storied franchises like the Yankees played to a half-empty stadium back before Steinbrenner showed up with his bags o' cash.
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