Changes at the Sporting News?

You're right.

Griping about TSN's paper stock is a lot like looking at a guy with 17 gunshot wounds and noticing the ingrown toenail.

 

The so-called small markets are cleaning up on the revenue sharing and the luxury tax trickle down. You think Pittsburgh is poor? Think again. That incompetent ownership is turning a profit by making the system work for them. The Yankees pay the luxury tax, because the system works for them, too.

 

Sorry. I'm looking at it from a fan perspective, not as a billionaire.

 

Sometimes I have to admit to myself that I don't know the answer and that maybe there isn't an answer. A few years ago, our editor asked my opinion of something The Miami Herald was trying. I told him that, having worked there, I understand that their market is unique and that, while I don't think the experiment will work, I have to think that the people there have already considered any option I'm likely to come up with, and that, while I can sit back from a distance and say, "I think they're screwed no matter what they do," the people there right now don't have that luxury. They have to do something in order to convince corporate they are doing something, even if the people suggesting the solution aren't convinced it will work. (My tolerance wanes only when there is a phony facade that of course this new (ridiculous) solution will work, how dare you even question it?)

I don't know what I'd do. I know a few people there and they are very good; one interviewed me for a job somewhere else, another taught me quite a bit. I have to think they've pretty much considered everything.

 

It's been very sad watching TSN go from being my favorite periodical to something so mind-numbingly craptacular. Kindred was pretty much the only thing I made a point of reading any more.

I'm no marketing genius, but I think "niche" would indeed be the way to go. The bible-of-baseball-revival idea isn't a bad one, although there'd have to be some way it was doing more than mark time during the off season. Doing more features instead of "lite" news? Covering pro sports only? I don't know.

The old TSN was so valuable because of the team-by-team reports and the stats. Internet has nuked that role. Used to be, if you lived in Phoenix and wanted news and numbers on the Phillies, you had to pick up TSN. Now, you make a few mouse clicks. Don't know what can be done here, but watching TSN suck is painful for me.

 

That's all true, but it lacks one thing: perspective.

In the 1950s, when baseball truly was the national pastime, attendance was awful compared to today. And there were few games on TV to give fans an excuse to stay home.

The 1955 Dodgers, the epitome of that era, drew a whopping 14,200 fans per game. Draw 14,000 fans today and you are one of the bottom half-dozen and a candidate for relocation or contraction. In 1975 the Braves oftentimes had attendance figures of around 800. The 1979 A's drew 3,700 fans per game. That is not a typo.

As to the ratings, they are down across the board for practically everything. It's just the nature of a 1,000 channel universe. In the 60s top programs got ratings in the low 30s. Today anything above 15 is great.

 

Having worked there for (almost) a year awhile back, I concur with what Kindred said about "playing it safe".

As a writer at heart (who left running after 10 months for a baseball beat job), I felt like I was screaming in a room full of whisperers half the time. The weekly headline scrum usually left me banging my head as yet another boring hed made the cut.

All hard workers, and earnest, but a thorough lack of imagination. I don't if much has changed, except that an intern who was there when I was, and not even kept on after the summer, miraculously morphed into a basketball 'expert" overnight a few years later. It was nothing against him, he had talent, but I wonder where all that expertise miraculously sprung from.

I'd say that was a problem right there. But that's just me.


The mantra at that time was "inside the game" or some such crap. What resulted were a bunch of boring stories explaining Xs and Os. And frankly, the staff writers they had at that time were, too often, not up to the task of making those Xs and Os interesting enough. A fairly average group, IMHO. Besides, to me, sports is all about the personalities.

I will say that my boss was an exception to all that. Probably the best boss I've ever had (at least until the current one, also a good one), a prince at handling my frustrated hissy fits too.

P.S. Baseball's audience may be aging, but it's also a generation that READS.

 

No, more misplaced, loudmouth pride in not covering anything other than baseball, basketball, football, NASCAR and a minimal amount of hockey.

At least, that was the attitude when I cancelled five years ago. And it still kept coming. A week late. Was awesome to get the world series preview in the mail the day it ended.

 

The "inside the game" or "see a different game" mantra at TSN these days is beyond boring. It's brutal. Ballscribe's dead on: "Breakdowns" of Xs and Os are only worthwhile if you have great, unique access or if you're a great writer with a unique perspective.

The guys they've got going through the motions over there right now don't do either.

And is there really an opening in the market for a serious, all-baseball-all-the-time weekly magazine? I thought the Sporting News -- and Baseball Weekly -- got out of an all-baseball focus because they were getting killed by the Internet on one end and Baseball America on the other.

And Rasputin's absolutely right about their delivery problems. Terrible.

 

whoa. that sounds depressing. now i understand why it's such a dull read.

 

Seems like they've been running from the "Baseball Bible" association -- using mlb.com team notes, dropping their series of annual reference books.

Besides, isn't that niche now filled by Baseball America? Extensive minor league/college coverage, detailed transactions and obits. Seems like BA is now the "trade paper" for baseball that TSN was a generation ago.

 

the buck stops at the top. whoever that is.