page_title: Washington Nationals
section_title: Radio and television
hierarchical_section_title: Washington Nationals / Radio and television
caption_attribution_description: English: The four racing US presidents posing before a game at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.
context_page_description: The Washington Nationals are an American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C. The Nationals compete in Major League Baseball as a member club of the National League East division. From 2005 to 2007, the team played in RFK Stadium while their permanent stadium was being built. In 2008, they moved in to Nationals Park, located on South Capitol Street in the Southeast quadrant of D.C., near the Anacostia River.
  The Nationals are the eighth major league franchise to be based in Washington, D.C., and the first since 1971. The current franchise was founded in 1969 as the Montreal Expos as part of the MLB expansion. After a failed contraction plan, the Expos were purchased by MLB, which sought to relocate the team to a new city. Washington, D.C. was chosen in 2004, and the Nationals were established in 2005 as the first franchise relocation in MLB since the third Washington Senators moved to Texas in 1971.
  While the team initially struggled after moving to Washington, the Nationals had considerable success throughout the 2010s. The team had two back-to-back first overall picks in the MLB draft in 2009 and 2010, where they drafted Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper.
context_section_description: The Nationals' flagship radio station is WJFK-FM (106.7 FM) "The Fan", which is owned by Entercom. Charlie Slowes and Dave Jageler are the play-by-play announcers. WJFK fronts a radio network of 19  stations serving portions of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware as well as the District.
  WFED (1500 AM) had been the flagship station since the 2006 season until a multi-year agreement was reached between the Nationals and WJFK before the 2011 season. WFED remains on the network as an affiliate; its 50 kilowatt clear-channel signal allows the Nationals' home-team call to be heard up and down the East Coast.
  WWZZ (104.1 FM), which carried games in the 2005 season, was the team's first flagship radio station.
  Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) televises all games not picked up by one of MLB's national television partners. Bob Carpenter has been the TV play-by-play announcer since 2006 and F.P. Santangelo was hired in January 2011 as color analyst. Mel Proctor was the TV play-by-announcer in 2005, and former color analysts are Ron Darling (2005), Tom Paciorek (2006), Don Sutton (2007–2008), and Rob Dibble, who took over the job in 2009 and was fired in September 2010 after criticizing Stephen Strasburg for not pitching while injured. Ray Knight filled in as color analyst in September 2010 after Dibble was fired.
  Previously, WDCA (channel 20) carried 76 games in the 2005 season while the newly founded MASN was still negotiating cable carriage. From 2009 through 2017, MASN syndicated a package of 20 games for simulcast on an over-the-air television station in Washington. Broadcast partners under this arrangement were WDCW (channel 50) from 2009 through 2012 and CBS affiliate WUSA (channel 9) from 2013 through 2017. MASN did not continue the syndication deal for the 2018 season.
  In the midst of a season in which they finished with the worst record in Major League Baseball, the Nationals' television ratings were among the worst in the National League in July 2008 but increased during the 2010 and 2011 seasons. Since 2012, when they began to achieve consistent success on the field, their television viewership has grown continually and dramatically. By 2016, the Nationals′ prime-time television ratings were 15th highest among the 29 U.S. MLB teams, and they rose to 12th in 2017. Ratings declined to 18th among the 29 U.S. teams for the 2018 season.
caption: Mascots dressed as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln before a 2019 game against the Milwaukee Brewers. They compete in the Presidents Race every mid-fourth inning of a home game.
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