Are 77 Million Paying Customers Irrelevant?

I have a lot of opportunity to listen to sports talk radio -- not that I do, just that I have the opportunity. For one thing, there's no such thing as sports talk radio anymore; there's 24/7 NFL radio with an NBA side dish and some miscellaneous dessert. Around this time golf and Olympics comprise the postprandial offerings. 

In the process, baseball, hockey and all other sports have been relegated to sports talk Siberia. Someone should inform Mike, and also Mike, that Major League baseball games are actually being played during the summer, whereas there is absolutely nothing happening in pro football and basketball, save the verbal diarrhea that pours out across the airwaves about an irrelevant tweet, arrest or contract dispute.

Which brings me to the main point here: how utterly preposterous NBA talk is until the second round of the playoffs in May. Consider this:

• Today is August 6.
• The NBA finals take place in June, 2017, 10 months from now.
• We can agree with nearly 100% certainty that the Cleveland Cavaliers will play in the NBA finals in 2017 unless LeBron James gets hurt.
• We can agree with nearly 100% certainty that if the Cavs don't advance, the East representative will get shellacked in the finals.
• We can agree with nearly 100% certainty that the Golden State Warriors or San Antonio Spurs will represent the West in the NBA finals.
• No other team has any reasonable hope of vying for the title.

And yet, there have been several times more NBA talk on the radio than baseball talk the last two weeks -- even during the run-up to the trade deadline and while the pennant races are shaping up. Actually, that undersells the discrepancy because there was essentially no baseball talk despite the flurry of trade activity.

I understand that football and basketball are young fans' universe, though with supply-side pressure like that, how could they not be? But more than twice as many people attended MLB games last year than NBA and NFL games -- combined. 

So if 77 million people paid hard-earned American legal tender to enjoy ballgames, doesn't it stand to reason that a few of them, occasionally, would rather hear about baseball games actually being played than about some off-season hypotheticals in a league whose first meaningful contests are months away?