The Cardinals have decided to leave KMOX’s 50,000 watt signal that can be heard in 40 states because they weren’t getting enough money (spare me) and have bought puny KTRS-AM in St. Louis that often can’t even be heard in East St. Louis. To help Illinois listeners, they will also be broadcasting on WSMI, an FM station in Litchfield.

However, neither of these stations can be heard in Peoria.

And that’s bad news for Cardinals fans, because when WMBD doesn’t broadcast Cardinals games, we’ll now have no way of listening to the game. WMBD has decided the past couple of years not to preempt Rush Limbaugh for Cardinals day games, forcing fans to listen to KMOX instead. Starting in 2006, that will no longer be an option.

This is a really stupid move on the part of the Cardinals. Many people become fans of a particular team because of TV and radio range — for instance, people all over the country become Cubs fans or Braves fans because of superstations WGN and TBS, respectively. And many people have become Cardinals fans throughout the nation because of the wide reach of KMOX. A smaller-wattage station means a smaller audience any way you look at it. The idea that people are going to run out and sign up for internet streaming of the games or purchase a satellite radio system is unlikely, even for already committed fans.

Locally, the owners of WMBD and WIRL should reconsider their preemption policy. My suggestion: go for the win-win; put the Cardinals’ day games on WIRL so they don’t conflict with Rush, but local fans can still hear them. And if there’s a Cubs game on at the same time, preempt the Cubs — we can still hear them crystal clear from Chicago’s WGN-AM.

You can say “Bye Bye Bye” to the 90s as our weather gets back “N’Sync” this weekend.

In the mid-1960s the city of Peoria proposed to annex Richwoods Township, which consisted of roughly 10 square miles of and, much of it already developed. Opposition was bitter and was fueled by fears of school integration that might result if and when the Peoria school district expanded to encompass the new territory. The vote by township residents on the annexation referendum was close, but the referendum was approved.

 

The annexation nearly doubled the size of Peoria, providing room for future expansion. During the four-year period, 1970-73, when Springfield approved 237 annexations, Peoria approved only four, amounting to only a tenth of a square mile. Most of Peoria’s development occurred within its newly enlarged boundaries. The population of “old” Peoria slipped from 106,000 in 1960 to less than 100,000 in 1970, but the addition of Richwoods added some 25,000 new residents to its population. Present city officials believe that the tax revenues collected from the Richwoods section have been vital to the city in maintaining its services in the older parts of Peoria.

 

The annexation has not been without cost to the city. Because Richwoods, like so many fringe areas around Illinois cities, had been developed according to the relatively lax zoning, construction and planning standards of county government, resulting deficiencies became Peoria’s responsibility to remedy. Fortunately, a preannexation agreement with Peoria County spared the city from having to remedy all the problems at once. As Peoria’s Mayor Richard E. Carver complained recently: “Our city is, even today, spending millions of dollars developing the basic road network which would normally have been constructed as the area developed had there been an adequate degree of planning and control present at that time.”

 

Peoria suffers as well from the presence of an unincorporated urbanized enclave situated well inside its boundaries. But because it is larger than 60 acres, may not be annexed unilaterally by the city even though, in the mayor’s words, it is “receiving indirectly many of our services, yet [is] contributing nothing to the revenues of our city.”

 

The need to control the urbanization of land (especially unincorporated land) within and immediately outside their borders is a common topic of conversation among mayors across the country. Peoria’s Carver, who is an officer of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and a director of the National League of Cities, shares their concerns. “A direct correlation can, in fact, be drawn between the health of American cities,” he wrote recently, “and their ability to move their boundaries in conjunction with urban expansion.”

As I reported a couple months ago, Famous Barr will be renamed Macy’s as a result of the merger between Federated Department Stores and May Department Stores. You can read all about it here.

Maybe they can start sponsoring the Santa Claus Parade and bring in some floats from New York. I want to see a gigantic, helium-filled Snoopy going down Main Street this November!