Coast to Coast with Explorer Post 50

The Bulls 14-10 win over Buffalo aired on the MLB Network Monday afternoon. With our national footprint, we quickly added a couple hundred Twitter followers bringing the total to 9500. A contest to pinpoint our most distant fan went to a viewer in Olympia WA - 2900 miles from the Bull City. 

We try to include a few more "Chamber of Commerce" signature shots of downtown Durham in these telecasts - the snorting bull, the Lucky Strike chimney and water tower, the downtown skyline. (SunTrust makes out like a bandit with the gratis promotion.) 

As always, the game broadcast was produced by Explorer Post 50, our student TV crew. The extracurriculars on their college applications will look pretty impressive. Already this year, they have produced a game that was broadcast in Japan and two games for the MLB net. 

Multi-tasking: directing, audio & graphics in the control room

Close quarters: the instant replay booth

the arts AND sports

The arts and sports profoundly influence a community’s quality of life. It’s not an either-or proposition. We need museums, theaters and sports venues. (I’m particularly fond of the culinary arts!) The arts AND sports work TOGETHER. 

I was looking at some attendance figures last week that make it perfectly clear. West Side Story had a very successful run at the Durham Performing Arts Center June 5th – 10th drawing a total of 19,000 patrons. The Bulls - playing next door (literally!) - were at home during that time frame. Over the same six-day period we drew 34,000 fans. 

That goes a long way toward explaining downtown Durham’s renaissance - the arts and sports working side-by-side. 

For a couple of decades Durham has been playing defense, but we’re on offense now! That’s the gist of recent remarks from Mike Schoenfeld. He’s chair of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and VP of Public Affairs at Duke University. Under Mike’s leadership, the Chamber is looking at arts and sports as a new economic development tool. We market higher education, our highly educated workforce and the creative class of designers, software developers and entrepreneurs. Our arts organizations and sports teams should be on the list, too. 

Americans for the Arts released a study on Monday addressing the arts’ local economic impact. In Durham County, expenditures by nonprofits and their audiences (in 2010) totaled $125.5 million. Now, it’s on my list to aggregate the value of Duke and NCCU sports, the Bulls, USA Baseball and other amateur sporting events in Durham. 

50% Attendance Increase

Man's best friend meets America's Pastime...

Wednesday night was Bark at the Park, presented by Walker Lambe Rhudy Costley & Gill, PLLC. We stopped counting at 200 canines, and that represents a 50% increase over last year's event. This is catching on! 

CLICK HERE for the slideshow at wral.com

Bark in the Park benefiting Second Chance Pet Adoptions

Press Clippings

The grounds crew collects grass clippings, and in the front office, I gather up press clippings. Dig into our digital compost!

Time Magazine's Joe Klein was blogging from the American Tobacco Campus on Saturday. Our CEO, Jim Goodmon, was his subject. Click here for Jim - unfiltered and unplugged.

Durham Magazine just posted a Q1 interview with Jim and Michael Goodmon. It's a lively chat about baseball, community and real estate development. 

Fox8 News from the Triad recently paid a visit to downtown Durham. Here's their perspective:

Minor League Baseball: SERIOUS BUSINESS

This picture is worth a thousand words...about job satisfaction.

Faith Inman of our sponsorship staff snapped this candid shot at the May 19th game. That was the night former Bulls' skipper Bill Evers was inducted into the International League Hall of Fame.

I'm chatting up Wool E. Bull along with visiting IL President Randy Mobley. It appears to be a lively conversation, but please know, the iconic mascot doesn't speak. I'm reminded of this Colin Powell quote:

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves…

Speaking of Wool E. Bull, Minor League Baseball has just completed the first round of MASCOT MANIA - a contest to determine the #1 mascot in the minors. With 1st round of voting complete, I can report that Wool E. Bull has defeated Tennessee Tex to move on to the next round where he faces off against Manny the Manatee of the Brevard County Manatees. 2nd round voting runs through June 4th. CLICK HERE to support Wool E. Bull. (You can vote up to 25 times per e-mail address.)

Yes, this is serious business! 

That's THE TICKET!

I'll take a break from Matsui Madness at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and post on another favorite subject - Sports Radio.

Harkening back to March Madness and the Triangle's affection for college hoops, we had very strong ratings during the NCAA tourney. Sports blogger (and number cruncher) Clay Travis has 99.9 The Fan tied for number three sports radio station in the country:

From outkickthecoverage.com

Another development on the bleeding edge of HD Radio...

We just premiered a new sports outlet - 99.9 (HD-3) The Ticket. This station is unconventional. You need an HD receiver. And you can listen online via PC or smartphone. 

The Ticket is affiliated with Yahoo! Sports Radio and they serve up Tim Brando from 10a-1p each day. The new HD station is also the home of Carolina Railhawks soccer and Appalachian State sports.

The Ticket gives us the opportunity to do more local play-by-play. This past Saturday we aired the state championship high school lacrosse match. 

Digital technology...digital radio...more sports...more local programming...that's the ticket!

More on The Ticket
More on HD Radio

Matsui's Entourage

BIG, BIG week at the DBAP. The atmosphere is Major League. Hideki Matsui is in the house. Aaron Shoonmaker writes about his debut for wralSPORTSfan.com. Tonight, Kevin Youkilis plays for the PawSox, and Dice-K pitches on Thursday. 

We have thirty-five members of the Japanese sports press visiting Durham, and more are expected by Thursday. It was crowded in the press box last night. 

Our press box is the size of your kitchen...so we created a media work room in our storage area.

Another international aspect of Matsui’s donning a Bulls uniform - we have Japanese advertisers. Notice the media back drop. That’s an ad for a Japanese law firm. 

And behind home plate - in the right-hand corner of this screenshot - that sponsor is a Japanese men's salon. 

 

Mayberry goes global! And WELCOME to our Japanese visitors.