Pat Sajak: Major League Baseball is Lucky He Doesn’t Work There Anymore
By Evan Weiner
November 12, 2010
(New York, N. Y.) --It is probably a good thing that Pat Sajak no longer hosts a show on the Major League Baseball owned mlb.com because someone in MLB's hierarchy probably would have called the long time emcee of television's Wheel of Fortune what exactly was he thinking when he penned a column for Ricochet.com calling for voter suppression in some cases.
Sajak can express whatever opinion he wants and he did nothing wrong except perhaps in the court of public opinion. He basically told a lot of his elderly and working class public sector viewers that are unfit to vote on certain issues because they could benefit financially if an election result favors the candidate they supported.
Sajak might have missed that civics class at Columbia College Chicago when the democracy topic was discussed.
Sajak is on a roll. Less than a month after he suggested that someone, somewhere at least give thought to his voter suppression idea, he picked on sportscaster turned news pundit Keith Olbermann in his latest Ricochet ranting called "Mea Culpa, I Put Keith Olbermann on National TV". Olbermann did appear on Sajak's very short lived television show in 1989 but here is the credibility problem that Sajak has in his piece. Olbermann was working for CNN in New York as the network's lead sports reporter in the early and mid 1980s and Sajak should have known that before apologizing for his sin. Sajak liked Olbermann, the Los Angeles sportscaster and thought he would be a great guest on the show.
A note to Pat Sajak, Keith Olbermann will eat you alive in a competition between intellects. Keith is the smartest guy in the room although he tends to be his own worst enemy. Pat, with your voter suppression opus, you have shown you are not very bright as the people who you suggest should be denied the chance to vote, school teachers, union members, baseball fans who are asked to vote on referendums to raise taxes for baseball stadiums watch your show and some of them might decide to contact Sumner Redstone, whose CBS TV distributes Wheel or show owner Sony or some advertisers asking questions about the "likeable" host who thinks in certain cases, public employees should be disqualified from voting on certain issues.
They could lead to a backlash and a viewer boycott of Wheel of Fortune. No sane game show host would ever venture into those waters.
Sajak's two column voter suppression opinion came out on October 13 and while he acknowledges that his idea might not fly, his argument goes against the conventional wisdom of product selling. Don't infuriate your customers which Sajak manages to do. The Wheel of Fortune customers are older and some of them are on Medicare and social security and those people along with public sector workers according to Sajak could be disqualified for conflict of interest.
"None of my family and friends is allowed to appear on Wheel of Fortune," wrote Sajak "Same goes for my kids’ teachers or the guys who rotate my tires. If there’s not a real conflict of interest, there is, at least, the appearance of one. On another level, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from nearly half the cases this session due to her time as solicitor general. In nearly all private and public endeavors, there are occasions in which it’s only fair and correct that a person or group be barred from participating because that party could directly and unevenly benefit from decisions made and policies adopted. So should state workers be able to vote in state elections on matters that would benefit them directly? The same question goes for federal workers in federal elections.
"I’m not suggesting that public employees should be denied the right to vote, but that there are certain cases in which their stake in the matter may be too great. Of course we all have a stake in one way or another in most elections, and many of us tend to vote in favor of our own interests. However, if, for example, a ballot initiative appears that might cap the benefits of a certain group of state workers, should those workers be able to vote on the matter? Plainly, their interests as direct recipients of the benefits are far greater than the interests of others whose taxes support such benefits. I realize this opens a Pandora’s box in terms of figuring out what constitutes a true conflict of interest, but, after all, isn’t opening those boxes Ricochet’s raison d’être?"
Sajak, a man who has made his living by being a modestly talented host of a TV game show, has basically told a lot of his audience that a game show has higher standards than the American democracy and some of you viewers should lose your right to vote.
Wheel of Fortune has been on television for four decades. It was an established franchise when Sajak became the host of the daytime version of the program in 1981. He got lucky. The show's creator Merv Griffin liked his style as a TV weatherman in Los Angeles and decided to hire him to replace Chuck Woolery who wanted more money to host the show. NBC said no to Sajak, Griffin stopped production until he got his man. NBC caved and Sajak was the host.
Sajak has probably been hosting a game show too long and has made too much money to understand the makeup of his audience. Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig got lucky on this one. He doesn't need to worry about someone hosting a show on mlb.com who clearly doesn't understand the makeup of the consumer base nor does Selig have to worry about a backlash.
Sajak though is now in a fight with someone whose intellectual prowess (Olbermann) is superior to him and someone who has a following (250,000 signatures on a petition telling msnbc to put him back on the cable channel after Olbermann was suspended for making campaign contributions) that can hurt Sajak's Wheel audience by simply not watching his show. The Wheel is an old brand name that could get scoffed up because the show's emcee is picking fights with the wrong people, voters and Olbermann followers.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Issa, Brown and California’s Stadium Problem
By Evan Weiner
November 10, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/issa-brown-and-califronia-s-stadium-problem
(New York, N. Y.) --Sometime in January, perhaps Darrell Issa will find time in his busy schedule as a Congressman in Washington and start a recall campaign of the new California Governor Jerry Brown. Congressman Issa, a Republican from Southern California, probably will head up the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- a fitting committee for someone who has had a couple of brushes with the law in the past -- and his plans are to call members of the Obama Administration to discuss all possible areas of corruption during the first two years of the Obama presidency.
Issa was one of the architects of the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray Davis. He contributed $1.6 million to get enough names on a petition that ultimately forced the recall of Davis and forced an election. The former body builder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger won a special election in 2003 and California voters returned Schwarzenegger to Sacramento in 2006.
The Schwarzenegger years didn't exactly turn out well and the state is still grappling with massive debt. Jerry Brown now has to deal with California fiscal problems. Meanwhile Issa will probably go about calling people before his committee, wasting time and money in the process because that is what politicians do so well in Washington.
Brown's priority will be to get California back to fiscal solvency and more than likely that means that Ed Roski and AEG will not get that much help from the state in their attempts to build new football facilities in the City of Industry and Los Angeles. Brown's record as California governor from 1976 through 1982 is empty when it comes to the stadium game although Los Angeles Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom took his team south to Anaheim and Raiders owner Al Davis also went south from Oakland to Los Angeles. As Oakland mayor between 1999 and 2007, Brown did little to help of two Oakland A's ownership groups who were looking for a publicly funded baseball park.
Brown was governor when Los Angeles landed the 1984 Summer Olympics but that was more Peter Ueberroth's baby and Ueberroth did not depend on the state to build facilities for the Games although the Coliseum did get a facelift.
Schwarzenegger was in favor of building a Los Angeles football stadium and had hoped to attract two franchises in that facility.
In sports, the National Football League has a California problem. The football facilities in San Francisco, Oakland and Sand Diego need to be replaced. The league has not had a team in the Los Angeles area since 1994. Georgia Frontiere moved her Anaheim-based Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis and Raiders owner Al Davis left the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for Oakland.
Davis might have remained in Los Angeles had the NFL not changed the terms of a deal that would have seen Davis moved his team from the Coliseum to a stadium in the parking lot of the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood. The details of the broken down agreement have come out over the past 15 years although Los Angeles reporters never really report how the deal fell apart.
Davis and the NFL were going to put up money to erect the facility. Davis was promised that five Super Bowls would be played in the building over a 10 year period to help pay down the debt and his team was going to be the only franchise in the facility which meant that Davis would have been able to get lucrative revenue streams like luxury boxes and club seat sales. But the NFL started changing the details of the contract. The promise of five Super Bowls in the facility was gone; the NFL offered three in a ten year period, then one. Davis also found out that his team would share the facility with another NFL team one year after the stadium opened and while he would sell the luxury boxes and club seats, he would have to start sharing revenues with another franchise.
The proposed deal became untenable and Davis took an offer from Oakland and left Los Angeles in the spring of 1995.
The National Football League gave Los Angeles a conditional expansion franchise in 1999 but the state didn't have the money to build a facility on a toxic waste site in Carson and lost an opportunity to secure the team. Houston, whose voters approved a referendum to build a stadium after Bud Adams took his Houston Oilers to Nashville, ended up with the franchise.
Phil Anschutz's AEG eventually built a soccer stadium in the Carson area.
While Los Angeles business people like Roski and the Anschutz Entertainment Group scramble to get financing for a facility, the state of California is cutting back on sports. The University of California, Berkeley will drop five of its intercollegiate sports programs, baseball, men's and women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse and rugby at the end of the 2011 academic year with the hope of saving $4 million annually. Cal's athletic program has been losing more than $10 million annually over the past few years. Sports losses though a just part of California's large fiscal problems.
Roski is hoping to build his $ 800 million stadium along with a retail facility with private money. The project appears to be dormant at the moment. Roski's group claims that seven NFL franchises have been targeted as potential tenants in his stadium including Zygi Wilf's Minnesota Vikings, Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills, Wayne Weaver's Jacksonville Jaguars, the York family's San Francisco 49ers, Stan Kroenke's St. Louis Rams, the Spanos family’s San Diego Chargers and Davis' Oakland Raiders. Roski's $800 million price tag may be just a dream considering the cost of the new stadiums in East Rutherford, New Jersey and Arlington, Texas, the New Meadowlands Stadium and Cowboys Stadium cost well over a billion dollars.
The Spanos family has been seeking a new facility in San Diego since 2000 and could leave San Diego at any moment if someone had a new stadium ready somewhere else. That has not happened. Wilf's lease in Minnesota ends after 2011. Wilson's lease in Orchard Park expires in 2012. Jacksonville's business community has offered the Jaguars franchise lukewarm support partially because the Jacksonville business community is not very big. Davis' Oakland lease ends in 2013. Kroenke's St. Louis lease ends in 2014. The York family has an agreement to move to Santa Clara but no one knows when a stadium will be built there. Denise York's brother Eddie DeBartolo had an agreement to build a new San Francisco stadium in 1997 when he ran the 49ers. The facility was never built. DeBartolo lost control of the franchise and the York family is running things. The franchise remains in Candlestick Park.
AEG wants to build a football stadium near the arena-entertainment-hotel complex that the company has built in downtown Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger, in October 2009, signed an environmental exemption bill that waived an environment study of the project. One of California's major obstacles in building stadiums has been environmental studies. One question that should be explored though, can California justify sports spending when the California education system is scaling back?
While business titans in the Los Angeles areas figure out a way to build an NFL facility, up the 101 freeway in Santa Clara is supposed to build a private-publicly funded stadium in that city after voters last June approved by referendum. But the project seemingly has been halted until NFL owners and the National Football League Players Association sign off on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Santa Clara has committed $444 million dollars to the stadium, the York family is supposed to provide the rest of the funding. Here is a question that should be asked. Do the Yorks have that money which might be more than $500 million to get the construction started?
Any delays in stadium building will hike the construction cost.
The NFL wants stadiums built in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Oakland. The National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern allegedly is washing his hands of trying to build a new basketball arena in Sacramento for the Maloof brothers' Kings franchise after striking out repeated in the Sacramento arena game since 2006. Stern has put contraction on the table as a negotiating point in the NBA owners-players association on-going collective bargaining agreement talks. Stern's ploy gets the players attention as the association doesn't want to lose jobs and also puts cities like Sacramento on notice that they better play ball with him or the league will take the franchise away without a new arena.
Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff has struck out in his attempts to get a new baseball stadium built in Oakland (Brown apparently didn't pursue that with any vigor while he was Oakland's mayor) and down the I-880 in Fremont. There may be a deal in the works for Wolff to move his A's to San Jose but Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's crack committee on the A's relocation to San Jose and how that might impact the San Francisco Giants franchise has still not reporting the results of the study.
San Francisco ownership may have territorial rights to San Jose despite the fact that two referendums to build stadiums in the South Bay failed and the distance between San Jose and San Francisco is considerably larger than the distance between the two ball parks in San Francisco and Oakland. The two baseball teams share the over-the-air and cable TV market where big money is made. Wolff is getting a San Jose stadium for his Major League Soccer franchise in the city.
Oakland is looking into building a football stadium that would host Davis' Raiders and perhaps the York family's 49ers if the Santa Clara option fails.
Issa may be too busy to start a Jerry Brown recall drive in January considering how many investigations he wants to start on the Hill. Brown may have other more important items on his desk than supporting a Los Angeles area stadium and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell may not care about getting stadiums built until the league gets an agreement with the players on a new collective bargaining deal and that may not be easy. The players association might disband and head to the National Labor Relations Board, a group that is friendlier to workers with a Democrat sitting in the White House, and that is a messy process that could take a while to settle down.
All of this means that it might be another five to eight years before the National Football League plays another game in Los Angeles or stadiums are built in Santa Clara or Oakland or San Diego. The California problem is not going away anytime soon.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
November 10, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/issa-brown-and-califronia-s-stadium-problem
(New York, N. Y.) --Sometime in January, perhaps Darrell Issa will find time in his busy schedule as a Congressman in Washington and start a recall campaign of the new California Governor Jerry Brown. Congressman Issa, a Republican from Southern California, probably will head up the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- a fitting committee for someone who has had a couple of brushes with the law in the past -- and his plans are to call members of the Obama Administration to discuss all possible areas of corruption during the first two years of the Obama presidency.
Issa was one of the architects of the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray Davis. He contributed $1.6 million to get enough names on a petition that ultimately forced the recall of Davis and forced an election. The former body builder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger won a special election in 2003 and California voters returned Schwarzenegger to Sacramento in 2006.
The Schwarzenegger years didn't exactly turn out well and the state is still grappling with massive debt. Jerry Brown now has to deal with California fiscal problems. Meanwhile Issa will probably go about calling people before his committee, wasting time and money in the process because that is what politicians do so well in Washington.
Brown's priority will be to get California back to fiscal solvency and more than likely that means that Ed Roski and AEG will not get that much help from the state in their attempts to build new football facilities in the City of Industry and Los Angeles. Brown's record as California governor from 1976 through 1982 is empty when it comes to the stadium game although Los Angeles Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom took his team south to Anaheim and Raiders owner Al Davis also went south from Oakland to Los Angeles. As Oakland mayor between 1999 and 2007, Brown did little to help of two Oakland A's ownership groups who were looking for a publicly funded baseball park.
Brown was governor when Los Angeles landed the 1984 Summer Olympics but that was more Peter Ueberroth's baby and Ueberroth did not depend on the state to build facilities for the Games although the Coliseum did get a facelift.
Schwarzenegger was in favor of building a Los Angeles football stadium and had hoped to attract two franchises in that facility.
In sports, the National Football League has a California problem. The football facilities in San Francisco, Oakland and Sand Diego need to be replaced. The league has not had a team in the Los Angeles area since 1994. Georgia Frontiere moved her Anaheim-based Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis and Raiders owner Al Davis left the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for Oakland.
Davis might have remained in Los Angeles had the NFL not changed the terms of a deal that would have seen Davis moved his team from the Coliseum to a stadium in the parking lot of the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood. The details of the broken down agreement have come out over the past 15 years although Los Angeles reporters never really report how the deal fell apart.
Davis and the NFL were going to put up money to erect the facility. Davis was promised that five Super Bowls would be played in the building over a 10 year period to help pay down the debt and his team was going to be the only franchise in the facility which meant that Davis would have been able to get lucrative revenue streams like luxury boxes and club seat sales. But the NFL started changing the details of the contract. The promise of five Super Bowls in the facility was gone; the NFL offered three in a ten year period, then one. Davis also found out that his team would share the facility with another NFL team one year after the stadium opened and while he would sell the luxury boxes and club seats, he would have to start sharing revenues with another franchise.
The proposed deal became untenable and Davis took an offer from Oakland and left Los Angeles in the spring of 1995.
The National Football League gave Los Angeles a conditional expansion franchise in 1999 but the state didn't have the money to build a facility on a toxic waste site in Carson and lost an opportunity to secure the team. Houston, whose voters approved a referendum to build a stadium after Bud Adams took his Houston Oilers to Nashville, ended up with the franchise.
Phil Anschutz's AEG eventually built a soccer stadium in the Carson area.
While Los Angeles business people like Roski and the Anschutz Entertainment Group scramble to get financing for a facility, the state of California is cutting back on sports. The University of California, Berkeley will drop five of its intercollegiate sports programs, baseball, men's and women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse and rugby at the end of the 2011 academic year with the hope of saving $4 million annually. Cal's athletic program has been losing more than $10 million annually over the past few years. Sports losses though a just part of California's large fiscal problems.
Roski is hoping to build his $ 800 million stadium along with a retail facility with private money. The project appears to be dormant at the moment. Roski's group claims that seven NFL franchises have been targeted as potential tenants in his stadium including Zygi Wilf's Minnesota Vikings, Ralph Wilson's Buffalo Bills, Wayne Weaver's Jacksonville Jaguars, the York family's San Francisco 49ers, Stan Kroenke's St. Louis Rams, the Spanos family’s San Diego Chargers and Davis' Oakland Raiders. Roski's $800 million price tag may be just a dream considering the cost of the new stadiums in East Rutherford, New Jersey and Arlington, Texas, the New Meadowlands Stadium and Cowboys Stadium cost well over a billion dollars.
The Spanos family has been seeking a new facility in San Diego since 2000 and could leave San Diego at any moment if someone had a new stadium ready somewhere else. That has not happened. Wilf's lease in Minnesota ends after 2011. Wilson's lease in Orchard Park expires in 2012. Jacksonville's business community has offered the Jaguars franchise lukewarm support partially because the Jacksonville business community is not very big. Davis' Oakland lease ends in 2013. Kroenke's St. Louis lease ends in 2014. The York family has an agreement to move to Santa Clara but no one knows when a stadium will be built there. Denise York's brother Eddie DeBartolo had an agreement to build a new San Francisco stadium in 1997 when he ran the 49ers. The facility was never built. DeBartolo lost control of the franchise and the York family is running things. The franchise remains in Candlestick Park.
AEG wants to build a football stadium near the arena-entertainment-hotel complex that the company has built in downtown Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger, in October 2009, signed an environmental exemption bill that waived an environment study of the project. One of California's major obstacles in building stadiums has been environmental studies. One question that should be explored though, can California justify sports spending when the California education system is scaling back?
While business titans in the Los Angeles areas figure out a way to build an NFL facility, up the 101 freeway in Santa Clara is supposed to build a private-publicly funded stadium in that city after voters last June approved by referendum. But the project seemingly has been halted until NFL owners and the National Football League Players Association sign off on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Santa Clara has committed $444 million dollars to the stadium, the York family is supposed to provide the rest of the funding. Here is a question that should be asked. Do the Yorks have that money which might be more than $500 million to get the construction started?
Any delays in stadium building will hike the construction cost.
The NFL wants stadiums built in San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Oakland. The National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern allegedly is washing his hands of trying to build a new basketball arena in Sacramento for the Maloof brothers' Kings franchise after striking out repeated in the Sacramento arena game since 2006. Stern has put contraction on the table as a negotiating point in the NBA owners-players association on-going collective bargaining agreement talks. Stern's ploy gets the players attention as the association doesn't want to lose jobs and also puts cities like Sacramento on notice that they better play ball with him or the league will take the franchise away without a new arena.
Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff has struck out in his attempts to get a new baseball stadium built in Oakland (Brown apparently didn't pursue that with any vigor while he was Oakland's mayor) and down the I-880 in Fremont. There may be a deal in the works for Wolff to move his A's to San Jose but Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's crack committee on the A's relocation to San Jose and how that might impact the San Francisco Giants franchise has still not reporting the results of the study.
San Francisco ownership may have territorial rights to San Jose despite the fact that two referendums to build stadiums in the South Bay failed and the distance between San Jose and San Francisco is considerably larger than the distance between the two ball parks in San Francisco and Oakland. The two baseball teams share the over-the-air and cable TV market where big money is made. Wolff is getting a San Jose stadium for his Major League Soccer franchise in the city.
Oakland is looking into building a football stadium that would host Davis' Raiders and perhaps the York family's 49ers if the Santa Clara option fails.
Issa may be too busy to start a Jerry Brown recall drive in January considering how many investigations he wants to start on the Hill. Brown may have other more important items on his desk than supporting a Los Angeles area stadium and National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell may not care about getting stadiums built until the league gets an agreement with the players on a new collective bargaining deal and that may not be easy. The players association might disband and head to the National Labor Relations Board, a group that is friendlier to workers with a Democrat sitting in the White House, and that is a messy process that could take a while to settle down.
All of this means that it might be another five to eight years before the National Football League plays another game in Los Angeles or stadiums are built in Santa Clara or Oakland or San Diego. The California problem is not going away anytime soon.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Monday, November 8, 2010
Keith Olbermann, cable TV sports and news and a political boondoggle
MONDAY, 08 NOVEMBER 2010 09:18
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/keith-olbermann-cable-tv-sports-and-news-and-a-political-boondoggle
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
It may be wishful thinking but when Ohio Congressman John Boehner becomes the Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, he will decide to tap the shoulder of whoever is the head of the committee that oversees cable TV and ask that person to hold hearings on cable TV socialism and support pro-choice for cable TV subscribers. Boehner and his Minority Leader counterpart in the US Senate, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell claim that they are doing the business of the American people and want to cut spending.
Here's a way to cut spending in the home.
Let the free market dictate what the true cost of a cable TV channel should be instead of burying it into a law that helps multiple systems operators and cable TV networks.
Write new legislation that will undo the 1984 Cable TV Act and give subscribers a chance to choose what they want instead of having a multiple systems operator reach deals with cable networks and throw together a basic expanded tier that includes a myriad of sports channels and news channels that very few watch yet 100 percent are supporting in a strange form of socialism — the kind that Boehner and his GOP counterparts decry.
But don't count on the Ohio Congressman or the Kentucky Senator to suggest actually holding hearings. Congress, whether it is in the hands of Democrats or Republicans, gleefully ignores the socialist set up that they signed off on in 1984 and gave to the White House for President Ronald Reagan's signature.
Cable TV subscribers provide the dollars needed for sports salaries (New Jersey cable subscribers that pay for the YES Network should see their money go to the Yankees and stay in the area, and question the legality of Major League Baseball's revenue sharing which takes money out of the area and gives it to fiscally ailing baseball teams such as the Florida Marlins.
Most New Jersey cable TV subscribers never watch the YES Network, yet they are paying for it and seeing their money go out of the market for other channels they never put on). Cable TV gives the Steinbrenner family annual big paydays. The Steinbrenners may fight the Texas Rangers to sign Cliff Lee. Texas is also stuffed with cable TV cash.
If Congress changed the cable TV law, sports would probably be in the words of economist Andrew Zimbalist "eviscerated" with cable TV money drying up. The cable TV news networks could not afford to pay the millions of dollars a year to "popular" personalities who know nothing about issues and yet pontificate as if they are global experts. That is why Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is right in condemning General Electric-NBC's decision to suspend the former UPI, CNN, ESPN and FOX sportscaster turned political expert Keith Olbermann for contributing to three political campaigns. FOX "personalities" give money and there is no outcry from their viewers. FOX just masquerades as a so-called news operation as does MSNBC and CNN and network TV.
Truth is none of them do an adequate job informing viewers. (Keith is a smart guy but spending a lifetime reading the back of baseball cards and explaining the virtues of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders — the worst team ever in Major League Baseball — does not make him an expert on global economy, regional conflicts, the crumbling infrastructure in the country and taxation laws in the United States.)
Sanders should take it one step further.
He should call hearings in the Senate and really talk about the cable TV law that is wasting consumers' money and push for a la carte which means that subscribers just pay for what they want and let the free market dictate costs. It is a frightening thought for Rupert Murdoch and FOX, Bob Iger and Disney, Jeff Immelt and GE, the Time Warner people and CBS. But all the networks have lobbyists on the Hill to make sure Congress doesn't do anything stupid like pushing for a la carte.
Cable TV networks are using other people's money — their subscribers' — to provide money for sports and prompt up what would be considered failing "news" departments at FOX, MSNBC and CNN along with CNN's Headline News and CNBC and whatever fare Rupert Murdoch's FOX is serving up on cable.
Cable TV operators are pretty slick. They send out bills never breaking down costs. You want ESPN and FOX News Channel, you have to get something else with it and you have no choice. Of course the counter argument is that if Congress broke up the basic expanded tier and allowed a la carte, ESPN might cost $20 or more a month for those who want the network because the buy rate for the channel would slip dramatically. The same would hold true for woefully performing networks like the FOX News Channel, CNN and MSNBC. None of them reach a mass audience but a mass audience is paying for something they don't use.
Executives from Sirius/XM radio can tell you that Howard Stern never pulled in his listeners from terrestrial radio in the numbers that they thought they would get. The buy rate for Stern on a pay service was abysmal.
The Olbermann suspension is troubling although he did have a clause in his contract apparently says that NBC News employees should keep out of the political campaign fray as it "may create the appearance of a conflict of interest ... Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns."
On Friday, Politico reported Olbermann gave $2,400 apiece in late October to Kentucky candidate Jack Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. The donation to Grijalva came on the same day the Democratic incumbent appeared on "Countdown," according to Politico.
Olbermann's bosses at General Electric have given money to candidates forever. GE is in the news operations business whether they like it or not. NBC's new owners to be, Comcast, had Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter as a really good friend. Murdoch's friends included Newt Gingrich, the former Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives. There are political operatives all over the place at FOX (Karl Rove, Sarah Palin), CNN (Elliot Spitzer), MSNBC/CNBC (Chris Matthews, Lawrence Kudlow and the former chief of staff for New York Governor Mario Cuomo, the late Tim Russert is an NBC saint far ahead of David Brinkley and Edwin Newman in the line of NBC's great newsmen.)
Let's get one thing straight. Cable TV news isn't news. It is, to use a polite term, a hodgepodge of opinions which serves as a supplement to AM talk radio in the United States. AM radio has a problem, most of AM listeners are aging and they are not being replaced and AM radio is an old medium and young people have many other ways of communication and in some instances don't own a radio.
AM talk radio does well in the ratings, even though it skews older and male, with a nasty and sardonic host complaining about the raw deal he is getting in life and the listeners should be angry to. Sam Donaldson, the ABC newsman, once told the story of his dismal tenure as a radio talk show host at WMAL in Washington because he was not angry enough. Donaldson's typical listener should have been an older white male who hated his wife, kids, job, lot in life and was looking for a friendly voice that understood his plight. Donaldson could not capture that listener. That wasn't Donaldson.
Radio news talk is a mean spirited medium that Donaldson didn't need.
(Note this columnist appeared regularly on Donaldson's ABCNewsNow show in 2005.)
The talk show genre is cheap but dishonest. The talk on cable TV news is also cheap except for expensive "talent." Beck, Hannity, Matthews, Spitzer to name a few are not news people and Larry King is nothing more than a neighborhood yenta to use a term from his old Brooklyn neighborhood. None of these people would ever be confused with Edward R. Murrow who inadvertently might have taken down "serious" journalism when he interviewed Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and helped bring down the Senator.
CBS choked after the program as CBS Chairman William Paley had no stomach anymore for real journalism — Paley had no stomach for political satire either as CBS decided the Smothers Brothers criticism of President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War were too much and fired the comedy duo in 1969.
Olbermann was kind of a news reporter back in the mid 1980s when he was on the streets of New York covering sports news on CNN (labor disagreements) but he is no newsman.
The cable TV dishonesty is simple. A host, usually an older white male, screams and yells and is the omnipotent, all knowing overseer and the guests are encouraged to argue. The host comes back on and shows his minions how correct he is and then the show ends.
It doesn't matter if it is a liberal or a conservative, conflict sells ads (the news channels are getting money up front and then a second stream — ads). Congress will not bail out newspapers but they sure have bailed out cable TV news and with the 1996 Telecommunications Act signed into law by Bill Clinton, radio as the fragmented radio ownership was whittled down to two main players Clear Channel and Infinity — with both doing away with a lot of local personnel nationally and moving into radio syndication fare and loudmouth omnipresent hosts who lord over their show, with minimum wage screeners answering phones and turning the call over to the lord and master for either thumbs up or a verbal lashing and tirade designed to humiliate a caller.
This is now what passes for importance: Newsweek, another failing news entity — a weekly magazine — had Rush Limbaugh on the cover as an important pundit.
The Newsweek cover is a sad statement on how the journalism community has ceded its seat at the table in legitimate discussions. Limbaugh, a nasty and sarcastic character, is taken far too seriously. So is Glenn Beck. So is Keith Olbermann. None of them are in the same area code as Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Douglas Edwards or Howard K. Smith as TV journalists in the 1950s, 60s, 70s or 80s.
Radio news talk and cable TV news are intellectually dishonest and do not inform the listener/viewer. Day after day after day there are outrageous opinions that are designed to shock listeners and keep them glued to the next commercial and the extreme partisanship and it was all created by Congress and Ronald Reagan (Cable TV Act 1984 and dismantlement of the Fairness Doctrine), and Congress and Bill Clinton (1996 Telecommunications Act). None of these actions really did much in helping the democracy although the "good" hosts rake in millions.
Keith Olbermann is a lightning rod at his workplace. He is the left's answer to Bill O'Reilly, a character who seems to relish his pro wrestling-like role, of the right. Give O'Reilly his due; he is on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report and David Letterman. He knows it is all show business. He might be the only one though. But even conservatives are questioning GE's decision.
Oh, by the way: Comcast is supposed to buy out GE and eventually take over NBC. You know who will oversee the acquisition? Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.
As Don King once said, "Only in America."
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 08 NOVEMBER 2010 09:18
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/keith-olbermann-cable-tv-sports-and-news-and-a-political-boondoggle
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
It may be wishful thinking but when Ohio Congressman John Boehner becomes the Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, he will decide to tap the shoulder of whoever is the head of the committee that oversees cable TV and ask that person to hold hearings on cable TV socialism and support pro-choice for cable TV subscribers. Boehner and his Minority Leader counterpart in the US Senate, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell claim that they are doing the business of the American people and want to cut spending.
Here's a way to cut spending in the home.
Let the free market dictate what the true cost of a cable TV channel should be instead of burying it into a law that helps multiple systems operators and cable TV networks.
Write new legislation that will undo the 1984 Cable TV Act and give subscribers a chance to choose what they want instead of having a multiple systems operator reach deals with cable networks and throw together a basic expanded tier that includes a myriad of sports channels and news channels that very few watch yet 100 percent are supporting in a strange form of socialism — the kind that Boehner and his GOP counterparts decry.
But don't count on the Ohio Congressman or the Kentucky Senator to suggest actually holding hearings. Congress, whether it is in the hands of Democrats or Republicans, gleefully ignores the socialist set up that they signed off on in 1984 and gave to the White House for President Ronald Reagan's signature.
Cable TV subscribers provide the dollars needed for sports salaries (New Jersey cable subscribers that pay for the YES Network should see their money go to the Yankees and stay in the area, and question the legality of Major League Baseball's revenue sharing which takes money out of the area and gives it to fiscally ailing baseball teams such as the Florida Marlins.
Most New Jersey cable TV subscribers never watch the YES Network, yet they are paying for it and seeing their money go out of the market for other channels they never put on). Cable TV gives the Steinbrenner family annual big paydays. The Steinbrenners may fight the Texas Rangers to sign Cliff Lee. Texas is also stuffed with cable TV cash.
If Congress changed the cable TV law, sports would probably be in the words of economist Andrew Zimbalist "eviscerated" with cable TV money drying up. The cable TV news networks could not afford to pay the millions of dollars a year to "popular" personalities who know nothing about issues and yet pontificate as if they are global experts. That is why Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is right in condemning General Electric-NBC's decision to suspend the former UPI, CNN, ESPN and FOX sportscaster turned political expert Keith Olbermann for contributing to three political campaigns. FOX "personalities" give money and there is no outcry from their viewers. FOX just masquerades as a so-called news operation as does MSNBC and CNN and network TV.
Truth is none of them do an adequate job informing viewers. (Keith is a smart guy but spending a lifetime reading the back of baseball cards and explaining the virtues of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders — the worst team ever in Major League Baseball — does not make him an expert on global economy, regional conflicts, the crumbling infrastructure in the country and taxation laws in the United States.)
Sanders should take it one step further.
He should call hearings in the Senate and really talk about the cable TV law that is wasting consumers' money and push for a la carte which means that subscribers just pay for what they want and let the free market dictate costs. It is a frightening thought for Rupert Murdoch and FOX, Bob Iger and Disney, Jeff Immelt and GE, the Time Warner people and CBS. But all the networks have lobbyists on the Hill to make sure Congress doesn't do anything stupid like pushing for a la carte.
Cable TV networks are using other people's money — their subscribers' — to provide money for sports and prompt up what would be considered failing "news" departments at FOX, MSNBC and CNN along with CNN's Headline News and CNBC and whatever fare Rupert Murdoch's FOX is serving up on cable.
Cable TV operators are pretty slick. They send out bills never breaking down costs. You want ESPN and FOX News Channel, you have to get something else with it and you have no choice. Of course the counter argument is that if Congress broke up the basic expanded tier and allowed a la carte, ESPN might cost $20 or more a month for those who want the network because the buy rate for the channel would slip dramatically. The same would hold true for woefully performing networks like the FOX News Channel, CNN and MSNBC. None of them reach a mass audience but a mass audience is paying for something they don't use.
Executives from Sirius/XM radio can tell you that Howard Stern never pulled in his listeners from terrestrial radio in the numbers that they thought they would get. The buy rate for Stern on a pay service was abysmal.
The Olbermann suspension is troubling although he did have a clause in his contract apparently says that NBC News employees should keep out of the political campaign fray as it "may create the appearance of a conflict of interest ... Such activities may include participation in or contributions to political campaigns."
On Friday, Politico reported Olbermann gave $2,400 apiece in late October to Kentucky candidate Jack Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. The donation to Grijalva came on the same day the Democratic incumbent appeared on "Countdown," according to Politico.
Olbermann's bosses at General Electric have given money to candidates forever. GE is in the news operations business whether they like it or not. NBC's new owners to be, Comcast, had Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter as a really good friend. Murdoch's friends included Newt Gingrich, the former Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives. There are political operatives all over the place at FOX (Karl Rove, Sarah Palin), CNN (Elliot Spitzer), MSNBC/CNBC (Chris Matthews, Lawrence Kudlow and the former chief of staff for New York Governor Mario Cuomo, the late Tim Russert is an NBC saint far ahead of David Brinkley and Edwin Newman in the line of NBC's great newsmen.)
Let's get one thing straight. Cable TV news isn't news. It is, to use a polite term, a hodgepodge of opinions which serves as a supplement to AM talk radio in the United States. AM radio has a problem, most of AM listeners are aging and they are not being replaced and AM radio is an old medium and young people have many other ways of communication and in some instances don't own a radio.
AM talk radio does well in the ratings, even though it skews older and male, with a nasty and sardonic host complaining about the raw deal he is getting in life and the listeners should be angry to. Sam Donaldson, the ABC newsman, once told the story of his dismal tenure as a radio talk show host at WMAL in Washington because he was not angry enough. Donaldson's typical listener should have been an older white male who hated his wife, kids, job, lot in life and was looking for a friendly voice that understood his plight. Donaldson could not capture that listener. That wasn't Donaldson.
Radio news talk is a mean spirited medium that Donaldson didn't need.
(Note this columnist appeared regularly on Donaldson's ABCNewsNow show in 2005.)
The talk show genre is cheap but dishonest. The talk on cable TV news is also cheap except for expensive "talent." Beck, Hannity, Matthews, Spitzer to name a few are not news people and Larry King is nothing more than a neighborhood yenta to use a term from his old Brooklyn neighborhood. None of these people would ever be confused with Edward R. Murrow who inadvertently might have taken down "serious" journalism when he interviewed Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and helped bring down the Senator.
CBS choked after the program as CBS Chairman William Paley had no stomach anymore for real journalism — Paley had no stomach for political satire either as CBS decided the Smothers Brothers criticism of President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War were too much and fired the comedy duo in 1969.
Olbermann was kind of a news reporter back in the mid 1980s when he was on the streets of New York covering sports news on CNN (labor disagreements) but he is no newsman.
The cable TV dishonesty is simple. A host, usually an older white male, screams and yells and is the omnipotent, all knowing overseer and the guests are encouraged to argue. The host comes back on and shows his minions how correct he is and then the show ends.
It doesn't matter if it is a liberal or a conservative, conflict sells ads (the news channels are getting money up front and then a second stream — ads). Congress will not bail out newspapers but they sure have bailed out cable TV news and with the 1996 Telecommunications Act signed into law by Bill Clinton, radio as the fragmented radio ownership was whittled down to two main players Clear Channel and Infinity — with both doing away with a lot of local personnel nationally and moving into radio syndication fare and loudmouth omnipresent hosts who lord over their show, with minimum wage screeners answering phones and turning the call over to the lord and master for either thumbs up or a verbal lashing and tirade designed to humiliate a caller.
This is now what passes for importance: Newsweek, another failing news entity — a weekly magazine — had Rush Limbaugh on the cover as an important pundit.
The Newsweek cover is a sad statement on how the journalism community has ceded its seat at the table in legitimate discussions. Limbaugh, a nasty and sarcastic character, is taken far too seriously. So is Glenn Beck. So is Keith Olbermann. None of them are in the same area code as Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Douglas Edwards or Howard K. Smith as TV journalists in the 1950s, 60s, 70s or 80s.
Radio news talk and cable TV news are intellectually dishonest and do not inform the listener/viewer. Day after day after day there are outrageous opinions that are designed to shock listeners and keep them glued to the next commercial and the extreme partisanship and it was all created by Congress and Ronald Reagan (Cable TV Act 1984 and dismantlement of the Fairness Doctrine), and Congress and Bill Clinton (1996 Telecommunications Act). None of these actions really did much in helping the democracy although the "good" hosts rake in millions.
Keith Olbermann is a lightning rod at his workplace. He is the left's answer to Bill O'Reilly, a character who seems to relish his pro wrestling-like role, of the right. Give O'Reilly his due; he is on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report and David Letterman. He knows it is all show business. He might be the only one though. But even conservatives are questioning GE's decision.
Oh, by the way: Comcast is supposed to buy out GE and eventually take over NBC. You know who will oversee the acquisition? Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.
As Don King once said, "Only in America."
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The end of the Wisconsin high speed rail, job creation and Milwaukee's sports teams
By Evan Weiner
November 7, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/the-end-of-the-wisconsin-high-speed-rail-job-creation-and-milwaukee-s-sports-teams
(New York, NY) -- Journalism should be about wondering and asking questions. With that in mind, you have to wonder what the owners of the Milwaukee Brewers and the Milwaukee Bucks sports franchises are thinking about the results of last Tuesday’s Election Day in Wisconsin.
Elections have consequences and in Milwaukee, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and Bucks owner (Wisconsin Senator) Herb Kohl must be thinking about how much of a hit their businesses will take because the Republican candidate and now Wisconsin Governor elect Scott Walker didn't like a federal funded high speed train project that would have connected Madison with Milwaukee.
It was a waste of money.
Funny Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his two terms between 1953 and 1961 understood the value of infrastructure and built the highway system in the country. The Eisenhower built infrastructure is crumbling from neglect and politicians are killing infrastructure projects that are badly needed because the projects are too costly.
At least that is the reason given.
Draw your own conclusions depending on what side of the aisle or if you are a member of the red or blue team.
Walker apparently isn't a big fan of mass transit based on his eight-year record as Milwaukee County Executive and called the $810 million project a waste of money. Outgoing Democratic Governor Jim Doyle ordered a stop to the project on Thursday which Walker approved. But here is the problem that Walker faces and here is where the Milwaukee business community should be up in arms along with voters. The end of the project will eventually cost Milwaukee construct jobs and probably will end the Spanish construction company Talgo deal with the city to build a Wisconsin headquarters in the city in a shuttered warehouse in a depressed section of town where the trains would be assembled.
The Madison to Milwaukee or Milwaukee to Madison high speed trains would have started operating in 2013. Walker had run on a platform that would create jobs. His decision could ultimately cost Wisconsin 4,000 or so jobs and for sports teams, that means a loss of potential customers in a small market. Walker wants the money for road improvements but the feds want the rail line and the feds were willing to pick up most of the maintenance costs on the rail line.
That is not good for Attanasio's business nor is it good for Kohl's fiscally ailing franchise. But Governor-elect Walker joins another Republican elect governor, Ohio’s John Kasich in killing an infrastructure project. Kasich wants no part of federal money to build the 3C passenger rail route along the I-71 corridor or a high speed rail in his state since he thinks it would not be useful for state residents. The $400 million in federal money will go elsewhere and jobs will be lost. That should not come as good news to the owners of the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Browns, Columbus Blue Jackets, Cincinnati Reds and Cincinnati Bengals. Ohio has a high unemployment rate and a potential job creation by the federal government won't happen.
Republican-elect governors are on a roll since New Jersey's Chris Christie killed a Hudson River rail tunnel because his state could not afford the project that would provide another way of New Jersey residents to go to work in New York City. Christie killed an estimated 6,000 jobs. For some reason, the word “popular” precedes Christie’s name in news articles.
Christie’s team is trying to build a perceived perception in the radio noise chamber, the cable TV claptrap and in political circles. Perceived perception often is more useful than an actual record.
If the goal is to take cars off the road and replacing the ride with high speed trains for people, then the new batch of Republicans aren't playing ball and that is not good for an energy dependent country like the United States
Republicans want smaller government and want to cut government costs but in the end, it is going to impact on businesses. Walker has also sent out a very strange message to Spain. Wisconsin is not open for business. Other countries will take notice. Other states will also take notice. New York Governor elect Andrew Cuomo will gladly take the federal funds for rail development. Say what you want about the Olympics and how political leaders trip all over themselves to kiss the ring of the International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge and IOC delegates but a bid for the Olympics (which may be considered in some cases a loss leader for host countries) does tell the international business community that a region is open for business. Walker has shut the door on a Spanish construction company although he is asking that company to stay in Milwaukee. Meanwhile business is looking to Rio and the 2016 Summer Olympics and the business bazaar that is the Olympics.
There seems to be no reason for Talgo to stick around Milwaukee, much less build a factory in the city.
But there is a new wave of fiscal austerity that has enveloped suddenly scared politicians particularly Republicans who cower to the voices of conservative talk show hosts on radio. Those radio talk show hosts talk a good game but have no idea of how things actually operate. There job is to get their listeners into frenzy and when things go wrong, they absolve themselves of blame as they are only entertainers.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern has put on the table the possibility of contracting teams in advance of serious collective bargaining talks between MBA owners and NBA players/. Milwaukee probably would be on that list except for one factor. The team owner is Wisconsin democrat Herb Kohl and it would be tough for a sitting Senator from Wisconsin to fold up his business in Milwaukee because of poor economic conditions. Governor elect Walker needs to create jobs but his first decision may cost Milwaukee and Wisconsin a whole lot of jobs. Sometimes reading the fine print is helpful, Walker apparently didn't realize that a Spanish construction company was part of the deal and that without the rail project, there is no need for that company to build a plant in Milwaukee.
Elections have consequences. Mark Attanasio and Herb Kohl will find that out quickly when there is one less company to buy a luxury box or club seats and there are less workers who can afford to see a Brewers game or a Bucks game or maybe if they are lucky enough, score a ticket to a Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
By Evan Weiner
November 7, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/the-end-of-the-wisconsin-high-speed-rail-job-creation-and-milwaukee-s-sports-teams
(New York, NY) -- Journalism should be about wondering and asking questions. With that in mind, you have to wonder what the owners of the Milwaukee Brewers and the Milwaukee Bucks sports franchises are thinking about the results of last Tuesday’s Election Day in Wisconsin.
Elections have consequences and in Milwaukee, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and Bucks owner (Wisconsin Senator) Herb Kohl must be thinking about how much of a hit their businesses will take because the Republican candidate and now Wisconsin Governor elect Scott Walker didn't like a federal funded high speed train project that would have connected Madison with Milwaukee.
It was a waste of money.
Funny Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his two terms between 1953 and 1961 understood the value of infrastructure and built the highway system in the country. The Eisenhower built infrastructure is crumbling from neglect and politicians are killing infrastructure projects that are badly needed because the projects are too costly.
At least that is the reason given.
Draw your own conclusions depending on what side of the aisle or if you are a member of the red or blue team.
Walker apparently isn't a big fan of mass transit based on his eight-year record as Milwaukee County Executive and called the $810 million project a waste of money. Outgoing Democratic Governor Jim Doyle ordered a stop to the project on Thursday which Walker approved. But here is the problem that Walker faces and here is where the Milwaukee business community should be up in arms along with voters. The end of the project will eventually cost Milwaukee construct jobs and probably will end the Spanish construction company Talgo deal with the city to build a Wisconsin headquarters in the city in a shuttered warehouse in a depressed section of town where the trains would be assembled.
The Madison to Milwaukee or Milwaukee to Madison high speed trains would have started operating in 2013. Walker had run on a platform that would create jobs. His decision could ultimately cost Wisconsin 4,000 or so jobs and for sports teams, that means a loss of potential customers in a small market. Walker wants the money for road improvements but the feds want the rail line and the feds were willing to pick up most of the maintenance costs on the rail line.
That is not good for Attanasio's business nor is it good for Kohl's fiscally ailing franchise. But Governor-elect Walker joins another Republican elect governor, Ohio’s John Kasich in killing an infrastructure project. Kasich wants no part of federal money to build the 3C passenger rail route along the I-71 corridor or a high speed rail in his state since he thinks it would not be useful for state residents. The $400 million in federal money will go elsewhere and jobs will be lost. That should not come as good news to the owners of the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Browns, Columbus Blue Jackets, Cincinnati Reds and Cincinnati Bengals. Ohio has a high unemployment rate and a potential job creation by the federal government won't happen.
Republican-elect governors are on a roll since New Jersey's Chris Christie killed a Hudson River rail tunnel because his state could not afford the project that would provide another way of New Jersey residents to go to work in New York City. Christie killed an estimated 6,000 jobs. For some reason, the word “popular” precedes Christie’s name in news articles.
Christie’s team is trying to build a perceived perception in the radio noise chamber, the cable TV claptrap and in political circles. Perceived perception often is more useful than an actual record.
If the goal is to take cars off the road and replacing the ride with high speed trains for people, then the new batch of Republicans aren't playing ball and that is not good for an energy dependent country like the United States
Republicans want smaller government and want to cut government costs but in the end, it is going to impact on businesses. Walker has also sent out a very strange message to Spain. Wisconsin is not open for business. Other countries will take notice. Other states will also take notice. New York Governor elect Andrew Cuomo will gladly take the federal funds for rail development. Say what you want about the Olympics and how political leaders trip all over themselves to kiss the ring of the International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge and IOC delegates but a bid for the Olympics (which may be considered in some cases a loss leader for host countries) does tell the international business community that a region is open for business. Walker has shut the door on a Spanish construction company although he is asking that company to stay in Milwaukee. Meanwhile business is looking to Rio and the 2016 Summer Olympics and the business bazaar that is the Olympics.
There seems to be no reason for Talgo to stick around Milwaukee, much less build a factory in the city.
But there is a new wave of fiscal austerity that has enveloped suddenly scared politicians particularly Republicans who cower to the voices of conservative talk show hosts on radio. Those radio talk show hosts talk a good game but have no idea of how things actually operate. There job is to get their listeners into frenzy and when things go wrong, they absolve themselves of blame as they are only entertainers.
National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern has put on the table the possibility of contracting teams in advance of serious collective bargaining talks between MBA owners and NBA players/. Milwaukee probably would be on that list except for one factor. The team owner is Wisconsin democrat Herb Kohl and it would be tough for a sitting Senator from Wisconsin to fold up his business in Milwaukee because of poor economic conditions. Governor elect Walker needs to create jobs but his first decision may cost Milwaukee and Wisconsin a whole lot of jobs. Sometimes reading the fine print is helpful, Walker apparently didn't realize that a Spanish construction company was part of the deal and that without the rail project, there is no need for that company to build a plant in Milwaukee.
Elections have consequences. Mark Attanasio and Herb Kohl will find that out quickly when there is one less company to buy a luxury box or club seats and there are less workers who can afford to see a Brewers game or a Bucks game or maybe if they are lucky enough, score a ticket to a Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Thursday, November 4, 2010
New York City Marathon is area's biggest one-day sports event
THURSDAY, 04 NOVEMBER 2010 08:49
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-york-city-marathon-is-areas-biggest-one-day-sports-event
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is no football game at the Meadowlands this Sunday as the both New Jersey teams are on the road with the Jets in Detroit and the Giants in Seattle so there cannot be a side by side comparison of two Sunday area sporting events and judge both sports economic impact.
Still a question should be raised.
What is more important to the local economy? A National Football League game or a marathon?
The answer is simple.
The New York City Marathon is the biggest one-day economic sports event in the New York City area and there probably is some residual impact in New Jersey. The New York Road Runners Club estimates the economic impact of the annual event to be about $250 million. That is a bit less than the Super Bowl economic impact and while money numbers can be argued from sport to sport, the New York City Marathon might actually really have a significant economic impact on the area.
After all, the 2009 Marathon drew 40,000 runners and a good many of them were not from the metropolitan area so those runners and their families would either have to drive, take a train or fly into one of the New York City airports. The travelers would have to stay at local hotels, eat at local restaurants and use local mass transportation.
It is highly unlikely that either the Jets or Giants can get more than 20,000 visitors to rent hotel rooms for a week, use local restaurants for a week or even hold a football fan for a week even during the Super Bowl. The Mets, Yankees, Devils, Islanders, Rangers, Knicks, Nets, Rutgers football, Red Bulls combined couldn't do that in a week.
The marathon visitors aren't a Super Bowl crowd where high rollers parachute into an area on Friday night and leave by Monday afternoon. Participants in the marathon, everyday people not super athletes; actually spend time in the area.
In 2007, the New York Road Runners claimed that "Marathon participants and spectators spend $71 million on hotels, $45 million on food and beverages, $42 million on retail merchandise, over $16 million on entertainment, $14 million on transportation, and $11 million on running and fitness gear at the New York City Marathon Health and Fitness Expo."
The Road Runners study also claimed "that 15 percent of the runners had an income of more than $250,000 with an overall average household income of $130,000. The study also suggests that runners are likely to spend more money than an average tourist because they view the race as a celebratory event. Half of those runners come from abroad and stay in the city for an average of six days."
Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins earlier this week said the marathon is the top one-day economic impact event and that tennis' US Open during his days as mayor between 1988 and 1992 was the biggest sports event in the city as the event generated more financial good for the city than the Yankees, Mets, Knicks and Rangers combined.
The traditional sports, baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer are local market driven. Marathons and tennis are globally fueled and New York is still a major international destination.
Because a marathon is international in scope, the New York City Marathon served a major purpose back in 2001 in the days following the 911 attacks on the two World Trade Center towers. It was the first international event that took place after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and it showed the city was open for business.
The 2001 New York City Marathon did more for the area than the 2001 World Series, which featured the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks and here is why:
That marathon had about 30,000 runners and about two million people on the streets. It showed the world that the bruised New York City area might have been knocked down but not knocked out. The World Series was for domestic consumption and there was a photo opportunity for President George W. Bush to throw out the first pitch and that is not to demean the former president or baseball but running is a global sport, baseball is not.
For even more New Jersey sports, visit the NJNR Press Box
The ex-president's pitch in Yankee Stadium was a powerful message but not as strong as more than 30,000 people running not far from lower Manhattan and two million people lining the streets to watch them. Visually that was a strong message in Kenya, Australia and other countries that had runners in that year's race.
In 2001, the Road Runners claimed that the 2000 race added $114,693,883 to the city's bottom line. That was the claim and it might be partially right. In 2001, it was estimated that 10,000 foreigners participated in the race and that another 10,000 came from outside of the New York area. Two-thirds of the field was from outside the New York market.
The hotels will make money. The Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, an official marathon partner, has rooms starting at $399 a night. The marathon has "official" travel partners in 40 countries.
The marathon will be followed by a concert that will be broadcast nationally on radio stations throughout the United States featuring Blues Traveler.
Local games, whether they are played by the Giants or the Jets or Nets or Devils over a full season, will not bring in 10,000 international visitors for a one-day event. The Super Bowl could, but only if the National Football league was really a global entity and despite the league's best efforts, NFL football is largely an American sport that appeals to Americans, some Canadians, some Mexicans and a scattering of others around the world.
The New York City Marathon gets an estimated 315 million eyeballs in front of televisions around the world, which is more than the Super Bowl. The NFL doesn't come close to that number worldwide.
The New York City Marathon is a big deal around the world, bigger than a weekly NFL game in East Rutherford ever could be. It is an international event.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
THURSDAY, 04 NOVEMBER 2010 08:49
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/new-york-city-marathon-is-areas-biggest-one-day-sports-event
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
There is no football game at the Meadowlands this Sunday as the both New Jersey teams are on the road with the Jets in Detroit and the Giants in Seattle so there cannot be a side by side comparison of two Sunday area sporting events and judge both sports economic impact.
Still a question should be raised.
What is more important to the local economy? A National Football League game or a marathon?
The answer is simple.
The New York City Marathon is the biggest one-day economic sports event in the New York City area and there probably is some residual impact in New Jersey. The New York Road Runners Club estimates the economic impact of the annual event to be about $250 million. That is a bit less than the Super Bowl economic impact and while money numbers can be argued from sport to sport, the New York City Marathon might actually really have a significant economic impact on the area.
After all, the 2009 Marathon drew 40,000 runners and a good many of them were not from the metropolitan area so those runners and their families would either have to drive, take a train or fly into one of the New York City airports. The travelers would have to stay at local hotels, eat at local restaurants and use local mass transportation.
It is highly unlikely that either the Jets or Giants can get more than 20,000 visitors to rent hotel rooms for a week, use local restaurants for a week or even hold a football fan for a week even during the Super Bowl. The Mets, Yankees, Devils, Islanders, Rangers, Knicks, Nets, Rutgers football, Red Bulls combined couldn't do that in a week.
The marathon visitors aren't a Super Bowl crowd where high rollers parachute into an area on Friday night and leave by Monday afternoon. Participants in the marathon, everyday people not super athletes; actually spend time in the area.
In 2007, the New York Road Runners claimed that "Marathon participants and spectators spend $71 million on hotels, $45 million on food and beverages, $42 million on retail merchandise, over $16 million on entertainment, $14 million on transportation, and $11 million on running and fitness gear at the New York City Marathon Health and Fitness Expo."
The Road Runners study also claimed "that 15 percent of the runners had an income of more than $250,000 with an overall average household income of $130,000. The study also suggests that runners are likely to spend more money than an average tourist because they view the race as a celebratory event. Half of those runners come from abroad and stay in the city for an average of six days."
Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins earlier this week said the marathon is the top one-day economic impact event and that tennis' US Open during his days as mayor between 1988 and 1992 was the biggest sports event in the city as the event generated more financial good for the city than the Yankees, Mets, Knicks and Rangers combined.
The traditional sports, baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer are local market driven. Marathons and tennis are globally fueled and New York is still a major international destination.
Because a marathon is international in scope, the New York City Marathon served a major purpose back in 2001 in the days following the 911 attacks on the two World Trade Center towers. It was the first international event that took place after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and it showed the city was open for business.
The 2001 New York City Marathon did more for the area than the 2001 World Series, which featured the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks and here is why:
That marathon had about 30,000 runners and about two million people on the streets. It showed the world that the bruised New York City area might have been knocked down but not knocked out. The World Series was for domestic consumption and there was a photo opportunity for President George W. Bush to throw out the first pitch and that is not to demean the former president or baseball but running is a global sport, baseball is not.
For even more New Jersey sports, visit the NJNR Press Box
The ex-president's pitch in Yankee Stadium was a powerful message but not as strong as more than 30,000 people running not far from lower Manhattan and two million people lining the streets to watch them. Visually that was a strong message in Kenya, Australia and other countries that had runners in that year's race.
In 2001, the Road Runners claimed that the 2000 race added $114,693,883 to the city's bottom line. That was the claim and it might be partially right. In 2001, it was estimated that 10,000 foreigners participated in the race and that another 10,000 came from outside of the New York area. Two-thirds of the field was from outside the New York market.
The hotels will make money. The Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, an official marathon partner, has rooms starting at $399 a night. The marathon has "official" travel partners in 40 countries.
The marathon will be followed by a concert that will be broadcast nationally on radio stations throughout the United States featuring Blues Traveler.
Local games, whether they are played by the Giants or the Jets or Nets or Devils over a full season, will not bring in 10,000 international visitors for a one-day event. The Super Bowl could, but only if the National Football league was really a global entity and despite the league's best efforts, NFL football is largely an American sport that appeals to Americans, some Canadians, some Mexicans and a scattering of others around the world.
The New York City Marathon gets an estimated 315 million eyeballs in front of televisions around the world, which is more than the Super Bowl. The NFL doesn't come close to that number worldwide.
The New York City Marathon is a big deal around the world, bigger than a weekly NFL game in East Rutherford ever could be. It is an international event.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Did Mesa voters get the stop wasteful spending message on election day?
By Evan Weiner
November 3, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/did-mesa-voters-get-the-shop-wasteful-spending-message-on-election-day
(New York, N. Y.) -- In the so-called Republican 2010 electoral wave that the cable TV news talking heads and the radio noisemakers spew out over sometimes static signals, the lathered up carnival barkers on both platforms are screaming that the voters have spoken and they want less government, particularly in places like Arizona where Republicans won. But something funny happened in Arizona, specifically Mesa that the carnival barkers are not talking about. Local voters decided they wanted bigger government and were pro-government spending as they approved a measure that allows the city to spend up to $99 million to help build a new spring training facility for Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs.
Try figuring out what voters really want is tough. They want lower taxes yet won’t give up services and programs and sports. Arizona voters, at least in Mesa, are hypocrites.
The Mesa government claims no taxpayers money will be used in building the stadium. Talk about voodoo economics, someone has to foot the bill for the stadium. Apparently Mesa plans to sell off some farmland that the city owns to Pinal County to provide land for the stadium to help pay for the stadium. Chicago ownership apparently will put up some money for the stadium thorough rent and pay for cost overruns if the price of the stadium exceeds $84 million. Mesa will put up $15 million for infrastructure. The team ownership plans to build a “stadium-village” complete with retail space surrounding the new stadium.
The “stadium-village” concept has not really worked in St. Louis even before the 2008 economic crash. Will it work in the Valley of the Sun? It hasn’t in nearby Glendale with a new football stadium and arena.
Arizona is selling off state buildings yet there seems to be money available for a stadium in Mesa and Glendale is putting up about $25 million to keep the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes solvent in 2010-11
When it comes to sports, Arizona features the dumbest politicians in the country when it comes to sports spending.
Mesa just keeps the tradition going. When in doubt, spend on sports.
Had the Phoenix city council been smart, which they were not, they would have approved a multi-purpose arena back in the late 1980s that would have accommodated the NBA's Phoenix Suns and an NHL team. Instead lawmakers approved a $90 million expenditure that was designed to appease Suns owner Jerry Colangelo. The arena was built in such a way that the building was only good for basketball and not hockey or Arena Football or indoor soccer and that severely limited the potential revenues that could be generated in the place. Making sure they further satisfied Colangelo, the terms of the lease between the city and the NBA team required that the franchise pay the bulk of lease payments in years 36-40 of the 40-year lease agreement. The real rent is supposed to kick in around 2028 but given the lifespan of facilities (the Miami Arena was viable for about 11 years, the Charlotte Coliseum for about 13), it is doubtful that the team will even be playing in the arena in 2028 or 2029.
The arena opened in 1992. In 2003, the city kicked in another $17 million to modernize the place when a second Valley of the Sun indoor athletic facility opened in Glendale, which is west of downtown Phoenix.
After taking care of Colangelo, Phoenix planners decided that a new downtown could be built with the arena and a baseball park as anchors so Phoenix politicians went about the task of getting a referendum in front of the public asking for support to build a ballpark for a Major League baseball team.
Over in Tempe, Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill, who came to the Valley of the Sun with his St. Louis Cardinals football team in 1988, wasn't too happy with his stadium in Tempe. Bidwill started to shop around looking for an Arizona community that wanted his team and was willing to build a stadium that the public would fund and put most of the stadium revenues in Bidwill's pocket. It took 12 years for Bidwill to find the right partner — Glendale — as votes in 2000 said yes to putting up $300 million of the estimated $465 million dollars needed to build a stadium. The money would come from a rise in the hotel/motel tax and car rentals (that is a mechanism designed to placate the locals, out of towners will pay, you won't, however most of the money on the car rental side comes from locals who rent cars more than visitors), Bidwill would recoup the $165 million through stadium naming rights and through a loophole in the 1986 Federal Tax Act which limits the money a municipality can take from stadium generator revenues to eight cents on a dollar.
Mesa said no to Bidwill in 1999.
Colangelo spearheaded the baseball stadium drive. He wanted a Major League Baseball team and went back to Phoenix-area politicians to make his pitch. They listened again.
In 1994, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (despite huge budget deficits and cutbacks in the funding of services) said yes to Colangelo and gave the go ahead for a quarter-cent increase in the county sales tax to pay for a part of the stadium's cost. There was a string attached, the approval had to come by March 31, 1995 which meant Major League Baseball had to either relocate a team to Phoenix (unlikely as there was nowhere to play in Phoenix) or expand. MLB awarded Phoenix and St. Petersburg teams beginning in 1998 when the Phoenix stadium would be completed.
The Maricopa sales tax hike was a problem. Maricopa County residents were not allowed to vote on the issue of funding a baseball stadium with general sales tax revenue. In August 1997, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was shot by Larry Naman after leaving a county board meeting. The shooter testified in court that Wilcox's support for the tax justified the attack. In May 1998, Naman was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder.
Colangelo had his stadium whether Maricopa County residents liked it or not. Colangelo's stadium was supposed to have cost $279 million but the ballpark actually price tag was over $350 million and Colangelo's group had to make up the difference. Colangelo's group paid $130 million for the expansion team, there was the cost overruns and a high payroll and throw in the fact that Major League Baseball didn't give Arizona and Tampa Bay full revenue sharing between 1998 and 2002, and that nearly caused the team to declare bankruptcy by 2004.
While Colangelo was looking for a baseball team, he also wanted a National Hockey League team to take up dates in the city's new arena. In 1994, Colangelo told this reporter that Phoenix was a perfect spot for the NHL. The NHL needed to fill the Mountain Time zone for TV purposes and Phoenix and Denver were in the mix for NHL franchises.
Colangelo, who was not a hockey guy, was spot on. Denver investors bought the Quebec Nordiques in 1995 and moved the team to the Colorado city and Richard Burke put together a group that included Steven Gluckstern and bought the Winnipeg Jets. Burke and Gluckstern moved the team to Colangelo's building in 1996 and that is when trouble started.
The building approved by Phoenix politicians in 1988 had more than 3,000 view-obstructed seats or about 25 percent of the house. No NHL team can survive in a flawed arena even if the building was just four years old. Burke bought out Gluckstern in 1998 after Gluckstern teamed up with Howard Milstein to buy the New York islanders (in a real estate deal).
In 1999, Burke was hoping to move the team to Scottsdale. Bidwill had struck out in his bid to win voter approval for a $1.8 billion football stadium-village on May 18 of that year but Burke had won a preliminary vote on that date for a new arena with the help of Steve Ellman.
Burke got his arena project approved by Scottsdale voters in November 1999 but the arena was never built. Ellman bought the Coyotes in 2001 after the Scottsdale deal fell through. Ellman worked out an arena-land developing deal with Glendale officials in 2001 and moved his Coyotes to a new arena in 2003. Glendale paid $180 million for the building, Ellman did some developing but the real estate deal turned bad and the NHL now owns the team. Glendale could be kicking in as much as $25 million to keep the team going in 2010-11
Glendale is working with a group called Ice Edge Holdings to keep the team in the arena and create a tax district around the building to help stabilize the Coyotes bleak financial picture. The entertainment district might be opposed by Bidwill whose business is across the street from the rink. If the team is not sold by the end of the year to a local group who plans to stay in Glendale, the NHL will allow the franchise to relocate.
Meanwhile Glendale has another problem. The Arizona Stadium and Tourism Authority (AZSTA) is broke. That is the group that has raised funds for the Cardinals Glendale stadium and various Major League Spring Training ballparks that ring the Valley of the Sun. Hotel/motel and car rental taxes (which is 3.25 percent) from tourists that fund the authority are flat.
Arizona public officials decided in the 1990s to become a sports destination. Spring Training would be a big money maker for Arizona as baseball fans would flock to see their favorite teams in March of every year. The authority took in $34 million last year and has $37 million in expenses, $16 million of which goes to the Cardinals football stadium. Surprise (Kansas City and Texas), Scottsdale (San Francisco) and Tempe (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) will be getting less money to pay the bills at three spring training facilities. Youth sports will take a million dollar or so hit.
All of this is a product of Proposition 302 that was approved by Maricopa County residents 10 years ago.
The Maricopa County Stadium District and the Arizona Stadium and Tourism Authority are responsible for stadiums around Phoenix. The stadium district was formed in 1991 to make sure Phoenix area-based spring training teams were not lured by Las Vegas.
How expensive is spring training?
The Los Angeles Dodgers now share a new $110 million stadium in Glendale with the Chicago White Sox, who moved from Tucson. Glendale is providing $54 million in financing for the stadium.
Scottsdale and the stadium authorities put together a $23 million package to refurbish Scottsdale Stadium to make the San Francisco Giants ownership happy. About $13.3 million is from the AZSTA funds, $6.67 million from the Maricopa Stadium District, and $3.1 million from the city.
Arizona officials contend that the 2010 spring training slate had an economic impact of $348 million yet there is a deficit.
All of the maneuvering has left an impression. The baseball landscape has changed with all 15 Major League Baseball teams that train in Arizona are located around Phoenix. Tucson has lost three teams (the White Sox, Colorado Rockies and the Diamondbacks). The arena in Phoenix has to fight Glendale for non basketball events. Glendale, not Phoenix or Tempe has the Super Bowl and while Phoenix gets a piece of the event buck, it is Glendale that gets sports spending money from those crown jewel events. The downtown envisioned with the arena and stadium as the pillars of a new downtown Phoenix has not materialized.
The question of whether it was worth spending billions in a state that is broke is never addressed by politicians. Arizona is selling off state buildings to plug a financial gap which in part was caused by poor sports decisions on every level.
They could have said no to Colangelo. They could have said no to Bidwill. They could have said no to the NHL. They could have said no to Major League Baseball. Don't blame the owners for asking for money, they could have asked for whatever they wanted.
There was an awful lot of economic miscalculation when it came to sports planning in Arizona and the battle is far from over. Mesa will more than likely hold onto the Chicago Cubs, the franchise that allegedly is the economic engine of the Cactus League. The next team that needs a spring training stadium upgrade is Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Brewers ownership could be looking to exit Maryvale.
Americans want politicians to cut government spending but not sports spending. It is clear that government has overspent on building sports facilities which has raised taxes in subtle ways – a rise in hotel, motel, car rental, sewer and water taxes along with programs such as payment in lieu of taxes and tax increment funding and just straight cash payments (such as in Louisiana) to a team owner (Tom Benson of the New Orleans Saints). All Americans are paying substantially for sports but there is no move to cut sports programs. Just look at Mesa. All Americans are paying substantially for sports but they is no move to cut sports programs. Just look at Mesa.
Evan Weiner is the winner of the United States Sports Academy’s 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com.
By Evan Weiner
November 3, 2010
http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/did-mesa-voters-get-the-shop-wasteful-spending-message-on-election-day
(New York, N. Y.) -- In the so-called Republican 2010 electoral wave that the cable TV news talking heads and the radio noisemakers spew out over sometimes static signals, the lathered up carnival barkers on both platforms are screaming that the voters have spoken and they want less government, particularly in places like Arizona where Republicans won. But something funny happened in Arizona, specifically Mesa that the carnival barkers are not talking about. Local voters decided they wanted bigger government and were pro-government spending as they approved a measure that allows the city to spend up to $99 million to help build a new spring training facility for Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs.
Try figuring out what voters really want is tough. They want lower taxes yet won’t give up services and programs and sports. Arizona voters, at least in Mesa, are hypocrites.
The Mesa government claims no taxpayers money will be used in building the stadium. Talk about voodoo economics, someone has to foot the bill for the stadium. Apparently Mesa plans to sell off some farmland that the city owns to Pinal County to provide land for the stadium to help pay for the stadium. Chicago ownership apparently will put up some money for the stadium thorough rent and pay for cost overruns if the price of the stadium exceeds $84 million. Mesa will put up $15 million for infrastructure. The team ownership plans to build a “stadium-village” complete with retail space surrounding the new stadium.
The “stadium-village” concept has not really worked in St. Louis even before the 2008 economic crash. Will it work in the Valley of the Sun? It hasn’t in nearby Glendale with a new football stadium and arena.
Arizona is selling off state buildings yet there seems to be money available for a stadium in Mesa and Glendale is putting up about $25 million to keep the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes solvent in 2010-11
When it comes to sports, Arizona features the dumbest politicians in the country when it comes to sports spending.
Mesa just keeps the tradition going. When in doubt, spend on sports.
Had the Phoenix city council been smart, which they were not, they would have approved a multi-purpose arena back in the late 1980s that would have accommodated the NBA's Phoenix Suns and an NHL team. Instead lawmakers approved a $90 million expenditure that was designed to appease Suns owner Jerry Colangelo. The arena was built in such a way that the building was only good for basketball and not hockey or Arena Football or indoor soccer and that severely limited the potential revenues that could be generated in the place. Making sure they further satisfied Colangelo, the terms of the lease between the city and the NBA team required that the franchise pay the bulk of lease payments in years 36-40 of the 40-year lease agreement. The real rent is supposed to kick in around 2028 but given the lifespan of facilities (the Miami Arena was viable for about 11 years, the Charlotte Coliseum for about 13), it is doubtful that the team will even be playing in the arena in 2028 or 2029.
The arena opened in 1992. In 2003, the city kicked in another $17 million to modernize the place when a second Valley of the Sun indoor athletic facility opened in Glendale, which is west of downtown Phoenix.
After taking care of Colangelo, Phoenix planners decided that a new downtown could be built with the arena and a baseball park as anchors so Phoenix politicians went about the task of getting a referendum in front of the public asking for support to build a ballpark for a Major League baseball team.
Over in Tempe, Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill, who came to the Valley of the Sun with his St. Louis Cardinals football team in 1988, wasn't too happy with his stadium in Tempe. Bidwill started to shop around looking for an Arizona community that wanted his team and was willing to build a stadium that the public would fund and put most of the stadium revenues in Bidwill's pocket. It took 12 years for Bidwill to find the right partner — Glendale — as votes in 2000 said yes to putting up $300 million of the estimated $465 million dollars needed to build a stadium. The money would come from a rise in the hotel/motel tax and car rentals (that is a mechanism designed to placate the locals, out of towners will pay, you won't, however most of the money on the car rental side comes from locals who rent cars more than visitors), Bidwill would recoup the $165 million through stadium naming rights and through a loophole in the 1986 Federal Tax Act which limits the money a municipality can take from stadium generator revenues to eight cents on a dollar.
Mesa said no to Bidwill in 1999.
Colangelo spearheaded the baseball stadium drive. He wanted a Major League Baseball team and went back to Phoenix-area politicians to make his pitch. They listened again.
In 1994, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (despite huge budget deficits and cutbacks in the funding of services) said yes to Colangelo and gave the go ahead for a quarter-cent increase in the county sales tax to pay for a part of the stadium's cost. There was a string attached, the approval had to come by March 31, 1995 which meant Major League Baseball had to either relocate a team to Phoenix (unlikely as there was nowhere to play in Phoenix) or expand. MLB awarded Phoenix and St. Petersburg teams beginning in 1998 when the Phoenix stadium would be completed.
The Maricopa sales tax hike was a problem. Maricopa County residents were not allowed to vote on the issue of funding a baseball stadium with general sales tax revenue. In August 1997, Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox was shot by Larry Naman after leaving a county board meeting. The shooter testified in court that Wilcox's support for the tax justified the attack. In May 1998, Naman was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder.
Colangelo had his stadium whether Maricopa County residents liked it or not. Colangelo's stadium was supposed to have cost $279 million but the ballpark actually price tag was over $350 million and Colangelo's group had to make up the difference. Colangelo's group paid $130 million for the expansion team, there was the cost overruns and a high payroll and throw in the fact that Major League Baseball didn't give Arizona and Tampa Bay full revenue sharing between 1998 and 2002, and that nearly caused the team to declare bankruptcy by 2004.
While Colangelo was looking for a baseball team, he also wanted a National Hockey League team to take up dates in the city's new arena. In 1994, Colangelo told this reporter that Phoenix was a perfect spot for the NHL. The NHL needed to fill the Mountain Time zone for TV purposes and Phoenix and Denver were in the mix for NHL franchises.
Colangelo, who was not a hockey guy, was spot on. Denver investors bought the Quebec Nordiques in 1995 and moved the team to the Colorado city and Richard Burke put together a group that included Steven Gluckstern and bought the Winnipeg Jets. Burke and Gluckstern moved the team to Colangelo's building in 1996 and that is when trouble started.
The building approved by Phoenix politicians in 1988 had more than 3,000 view-obstructed seats or about 25 percent of the house. No NHL team can survive in a flawed arena even if the building was just four years old. Burke bought out Gluckstern in 1998 after Gluckstern teamed up with Howard Milstein to buy the New York islanders (in a real estate deal).
In 1999, Burke was hoping to move the team to Scottsdale. Bidwill had struck out in his bid to win voter approval for a $1.8 billion football stadium-village on May 18 of that year but Burke had won a preliminary vote on that date for a new arena with the help of Steve Ellman.
Burke got his arena project approved by Scottsdale voters in November 1999 but the arena was never built. Ellman bought the Coyotes in 2001 after the Scottsdale deal fell through. Ellman worked out an arena-land developing deal with Glendale officials in 2001 and moved his Coyotes to a new arena in 2003. Glendale paid $180 million for the building, Ellman did some developing but the real estate deal turned bad and the NHL now owns the team. Glendale could be kicking in as much as $25 million to keep the team going in 2010-11
Glendale is working with a group called Ice Edge Holdings to keep the team in the arena and create a tax district around the building to help stabilize the Coyotes bleak financial picture. The entertainment district might be opposed by Bidwill whose business is across the street from the rink. If the team is not sold by the end of the year to a local group who plans to stay in Glendale, the NHL will allow the franchise to relocate.
Meanwhile Glendale has another problem. The Arizona Stadium and Tourism Authority (AZSTA) is broke. That is the group that has raised funds for the Cardinals Glendale stadium and various Major League Spring Training ballparks that ring the Valley of the Sun. Hotel/motel and car rental taxes (which is 3.25 percent) from tourists that fund the authority are flat.
Arizona public officials decided in the 1990s to become a sports destination. Spring Training would be a big money maker for Arizona as baseball fans would flock to see their favorite teams in March of every year. The authority took in $34 million last year and has $37 million in expenses, $16 million of which goes to the Cardinals football stadium. Surprise (Kansas City and Texas), Scottsdale (San Francisco) and Tempe (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) will be getting less money to pay the bills at three spring training facilities. Youth sports will take a million dollar or so hit.
All of this is a product of Proposition 302 that was approved by Maricopa County residents 10 years ago.
The Maricopa County Stadium District and the Arizona Stadium and Tourism Authority are responsible for stadiums around Phoenix. The stadium district was formed in 1991 to make sure Phoenix area-based spring training teams were not lured by Las Vegas.
How expensive is spring training?
The Los Angeles Dodgers now share a new $110 million stadium in Glendale with the Chicago White Sox, who moved from Tucson. Glendale is providing $54 million in financing for the stadium.
Scottsdale and the stadium authorities put together a $23 million package to refurbish Scottsdale Stadium to make the San Francisco Giants ownership happy. About $13.3 million is from the AZSTA funds, $6.67 million from the Maricopa Stadium District, and $3.1 million from the city.
Arizona officials contend that the 2010 spring training slate had an economic impact of $348 million yet there is a deficit.
All of the maneuvering has left an impression. The baseball landscape has changed with all 15 Major League Baseball teams that train in Arizona are located around Phoenix. Tucson has lost three teams (the White Sox, Colorado Rockies and the Diamondbacks). The arena in Phoenix has to fight Glendale for non basketball events. Glendale, not Phoenix or Tempe has the Super Bowl and while Phoenix gets a piece of the event buck, it is Glendale that gets sports spending money from those crown jewel events. The downtown envisioned with the arena and stadium as the pillars of a new downtown Phoenix has not materialized.
The question of whether it was worth spending billions in a state that is broke is never addressed by politicians. Arizona is selling off state buildings to plug a financial gap which in part was caused by poor sports decisions on every level.
They could have said no to Colangelo. They could have said no to Bidwill. They could have said no to the NHL. They could have said no to Major League Baseball. Don't blame the owners for asking for money, they could have asked for whatever they wanted.
There was an awful lot of economic miscalculation when it came to sports planning in Arizona and the battle is far from over. Mesa will more than likely hold onto the Chicago Cubs, the franchise that allegedly is the economic engine of the Cactus League. The next team that needs a spring training stadium upgrade is Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Brewers ownership could be looking to exit Maryvale.
Americans want politicians to cut government spending but not sports spending. It is clear that government has overspent on building sports facilities which has raised taxes in subtle ways – a rise in hotel, motel, car rental, sewer and water taxes along with programs such as payment in lieu of taxes and tax increment funding and just straight cash payments (such as in Louisiana) to a team owner (Tom Benson of the New Orleans Saints). All Americans are paying substantially for sports but there is no move to cut sports programs. Just look at Mesa. All Americans are paying substantially for sports but they is no move to cut sports programs. Just look at Mesa.
Evan Weiner is the winner of the United States Sports Academy’s 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Changing economics of radio and sports
MONDAY, 01 NOVEMBER 2010 12:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/changing-economics-of-radio-and-sports#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
At one time, there were a lot of New York Islanders fans in New Jersey and in Connecticut. There probably are still Islanders fans in New Jersey despite the presence of the New Jersey Devils and the New York Rangers and in the southern part of the state, the Philadelphia Flyers. New Jersey-based Islanders fans can see the team in a variety of ways whether it is on cable TV, satellite TV, or part of a NHL league-wide pay TV package or on the Internet. What Islanders fans cannot do in New Jersey and in a good chunk of the metropolitan New York region is listen to the game on a radio because the Islanders radio broadcasts are being aired on a signal challenged college radio station on the low FM band from Hofstra University.
Welcome to the 21st century where radio is an afterthought long after announcers brought games into the living room and created legends in the 1920s and 1930s. No one outside of the arena ever saw Joe Louis box live but Joe Louis' boxing matches were there on radio in the living room.
The way radio and sports work now is quite different from the halcyon days of the marriage of the two industries when radio brought games, particularly, baseball games to all parts of the United States and Canada. The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was immensely popular outside of St. Louis because the team's broadcast partner KMOX's signal boomed around the country. Eventually the Cardinals and KMOX divorced because KMOX after 51 years didn't want to pay the Cardinals a large chunk of cash after the 2005 baseball season. St. Louis' management opted to buy into a much weaker station, KTRS, and all of a sudden the team lost a huge chunk of market penetration in just St. Louis. KMOX and the Cardinals just signed a new contract and Cardinals management is trying to sell off the team's portion of KTRS.
Despite the rather poor signal, St. Louis Cardinals baseball on KTRS and the Cardinals radio network based on the percentage on the size of market was the most listened to team of the all 25 teams participating in Arbitron's rating of baseball teams among 25-54 year old men in 2009. One in every five in that category listened to Cardinals baseball during the season or about 135,200 men. Neither the New York Yankees nor the New York Mets came close to that percentage, although because of market size both New York teams had more than twice the number of Cardinals listeners. The Yankees, the 2009 champions, had on average 412,500 listeners in the 25 to 54 category and the Mets did about 277,000 just slightly less than the big market Chicago Cubs. The Steinbrenner-family Yankees was seventh on the list; Wilpon's Flushing squad was 12th. Oakland was 25th with a 1.7 share but Seattle and Washington had fewer listeners. Five teams did not participate in the 2009 survey. All 30 teams were included in this year's Arbitron's service.
Baseball gets more listeners than basketball and hockey and the numbers are quite low which is why radio stations are no longer giving cash to teams. Radio stations on the AM dial would rather have packaged syndicated program than sports events which interrupt regular schedules. An Islanders broadcast say on WOR (a station that used to carry Islanders games) would get in the way of the syndicated Michael Savage and his daily hate spewed rants. Although Rutgers football and basketball is on WOR for some reason.
The Rutgers aberration might be explained this way. The sports fan is the prime demographic for a lot of advertising companies. And WOR makes more money because Rutgers buys the airtime.
In New York, the sports stations WFAN and WEPN do most of the radio play by play. WFAN has the Mets and sells time to the Giants, Nets and Devils and WEPN sells time to the Jets, Knicks and Rangers. Overlap games go to smaller and weaker signals for the most part although WBBR, with a robust signal, will air a game here and there to break up all financial all the time radio. In Philadelphia, WPHT breaks up its stellar lineup of "conservative" talkers to broadcast Phillies baseball and Temple sports but sports station WIP has the Flyers and 76ers. Some overlap games head over to WPHT. The Eagles broadcasts are on an FM station, WYSP.
In 2008, Michael Weiner, who assumed the Michael Savage character, said that nearly every child with autism is "a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out." The AM radio band has evolved into a pile of rubbish with older men playing the role of nasty creatures who just say things to cause shock and grab listeners' attention. As this has happened, the radio audience has aged dramatically which is exemplified by the number of commercials with products aimed at an audience of 60 and older. A sport brings in a younger audience but it is very costly where as a talk show is cheap.
Just about all radio stations don't want to pay for sporting events.
The radio industry is in awfully poor shape and has been that way for years. The radio "stars" of today are older and cut their teeth at small stations. Because of syndication, there are few stations that allow youngsters to develop a style and radio stations are not looking for intellectual talk either. The poster boy for radio today is Glenn Beck. In the glory days of the industry it was Jack Benny, Fred Allen and lots of sports.
Most sports teams buy airtime and then sell commercials as part of an overall media package. Charles Wang's Islanders either did not want to buy airtime or no stations had any interest in airing Islanders games. The Yankees and WCBS contract may be one of the few exceptions to the rule. The Bronx team actually gets some cash as part of a $14 million annual deal.
Wang's Islanders team can be picked up on a variety of sources. The Hofstra radio signal is available on Long Island, there is the Internet and pay XM radio as well so it is not that the Islanders play hockey in a radio vacuum. The Islanders games are on FM and FM station owners are pressing for an FM tuner as an app on phones and that could help the radio industry.
There probably are a good many reasons why Islanders games are on a college radio station. For those who don't understand the changing broadcast spectrum and have condemned the Islanders brass perhaps they should be paying attention to what is going on in the radio industry. Sure the Islanders marketing strategy has consolidated to Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York but the team's cable TV deal dovetails the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils cable TV roadmap as all three teams are on the Madison Square Garden cable network. Cable TV is where the money is made. Radio is an afterthought these days. It provides market coverage but it is no longer a money maker.
Islanders hockey is on a college radio station. Oakland A's baseball was once on a college station. The days of Mel Allen and the Yankees, Russ Hodges and the Giants, Red Barber and the Dodgers, Marty Glickman and the Knicks, Marv Albert and the Knicks are gone. It is a different world out there. Last year the Islanders radio broadcasts was a voice feed from TV, this year the Islanders actually have a real radio announcer. The games are available but unlike the two New York baseball teams that are on 50,000 watt stations or the other teams that are on sports stations, Islanders fans in New Jersey have to look for the games.
In the near future, all teams will have apps available for phones and that will appeal to the 18 to 24 year olds who don't own a radio and many in that age group will not buy a radio.
Radio does have an advantage. Radio is a mobile medium. You can have it with you out jogging and in your car. But you need a big signal for a sports team. That is where the Islanders lose.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Business and Politics of Sports." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
MONDAY, 01 NOVEMBER 2010 12:31
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/changing-economics-of-radio-and-sports#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
At one time, there were a lot of New York Islanders fans in New Jersey and in Connecticut. There probably are still Islanders fans in New Jersey despite the presence of the New Jersey Devils and the New York Rangers and in the southern part of the state, the Philadelphia Flyers. New Jersey-based Islanders fans can see the team in a variety of ways whether it is on cable TV, satellite TV, or part of a NHL league-wide pay TV package or on the Internet. What Islanders fans cannot do in New Jersey and in a good chunk of the metropolitan New York region is listen to the game on a radio because the Islanders radio broadcasts are being aired on a signal challenged college radio station on the low FM band from Hofstra University.
Welcome to the 21st century where radio is an afterthought long after announcers brought games into the living room and created legends in the 1920s and 1930s. No one outside of the arena ever saw Joe Louis box live but Joe Louis' boxing matches were there on radio in the living room.
The way radio and sports work now is quite different from the halcyon days of the marriage of the two industries when radio brought games, particularly, baseball games to all parts of the United States and Canada. The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was immensely popular outside of St. Louis because the team's broadcast partner KMOX's signal boomed around the country. Eventually the Cardinals and KMOX divorced because KMOX after 51 years didn't want to pay the Cardinals a large chunk of cash after the 2005 baseball season. St. Louis' management opted to buy into a much weaker station, KTRS, and all of a sudden the team lost a huge chunk of market penetration in just St. Louis. KMOX and the Cardinals just signed a new contract and Cardinals management is trying to sell off the team's portion of KTRS.
Despite the rather poor signal, St. Louis Cardinals baseball on KTRS and the Cardinals radio network based on the percentage on the size of market was the most listened to team of the all 25 teams participating in Arbitron's rating of baseball teams among 25-54 year old men in 2009. One in every five in that category listened to Cardinals baseball during the season or about 135,200 men. Neither the New York Yankees nor the New York Mets came close to that percentage, although because of market size both New York teams had more than twice the number of Cardinals listeners. The Yankees, the 2009 champions, had on average 412,500 listeners in the 25 to 54 category and the Mets did about 277,000 just slightly less than the big market Chicago Cubs. The Steinbrenner-family Yankees was seventh on the list; Wilpon's Flushing squad was 12th. Oakland was 25th with a 1.7 share but Seattle and Washington had fewer listeners. Five teams did not participate in the 2009 survey. All 30 teams were included in this year's Arbitron's service.
Baseball gets more listeners than basketball and hockey and the numbers are quite low which is why radio stations are no longer giving cash to teams. Radio stations on the AM dial would rather have packaged syndicated program than sports events which interrupt regular schedules. An Islanders broadcast say on WOR (a station that used to carry Islanders games) would get in the way of the syndicated Michael Savage and his daily hate spewed rants. Although Rutgers football and basketball is on WOR for some reason.
The Rutgers aberration might be explained this way. The sports fan is the prime demographic for a lot of advertising companies. And WOR makes more money because Rutgers buys the airtime.
In New York, the sports stations WFAN and WEPN do most of the radio play by play. WFAN has the Mets and sells time to the Giants, Nets and Devils and WEPN sells time to the Jets, Knicks and Rangers. Overlap games go to smaller and weaker signals for the most part although WBBR, with a robust signal, will air a game here and there to break up all financial all the time radio. In Philadelphia, WPHT breaks up its stellar lineup of "conservative" talkers to broadcast Phillies baseball and Temple sports but sports station WIP has the Flyers and 76ers. Some overlap games head over to WPHT. The Eagles broadcasts are on an FM station, WYSP.
In 2008, Michael Weiner, who assumed the Michael Savage character, said that nearly every child with autism is "a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out." The AM radio band has evolved into a pile of rubbish with older men playing the role of nasty creatures who just say things to cause shock and grab listeners' attention. As this has happened, the radio audience has aged dramatically which is exemplified by the number of commercials with products aimed at an audience of 60 and older. A sport brings in a younger audience but it is very costly where as a talk show is cheap.
Just about all radio stations don't want to pay for sporting events.
The radio industry is in awfully poor shape and has been that way for years. The radio "stars" of today are older and cut their teeth at small stations. Because of syndication, there are few stations that allow youngsters to develop a style and radio stations are not looking for intellectual talk either. The poster boy for radio today is Glenn Beck. In the glory days of the industry it was Jack Benny, Fred Allen and lots of sports.
Most sports teams buy airtime and then sell commercials as part of an overall media package. Charles Wang's Islanders either did not want to buy airtime or no stations had any interest in airing Islanders games. The Yankees and WCBS contract may be one of the few exceptions to the rule. The Bronx team actually gets some cash as part of a $14 million annual deal.
Wang's Islanders team can be picked up on a variety of sources. The Hofstra radio signal is available on Long Island, there is the Internet and pay XM radio as well so it is not that the Islanders play hockey in a radio vacuum. The Islanders games are on FM and FM station owners are pressing for an FM tuner as an app on phones and that could help the radio industry.
There probably are a good many reasons why Islanders games are on a college radio station. For those who don't understand the changing broadcast spectrum and have condemned the Islanders brass perhaps they should be paying attention to what is going on in the radio industry. Sure the Islanders marketing strategy has consolidated to Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York but the team's cable TV deal dovetails the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils cable TV roadmap as all three teams are on the Madison Square Garden cable network. Cable TV is where the money is made. Radio is an afterthought these days. It provides market coverage but it is no longer a money maker.
Islanders hockey is on a college radio station. Oakland A's baseball was once on a college station. The days of Mel Allen and the Yankees, Russ Hodges and the Giants, Red Barber and the Dodgers, Marty Glickman and the Knicks, Marv Albert and the Knicks are gone. It is a different world out there. Last year the Islanders radio broadcasts was a voice feed from TV, this year the Islanders actually have a real radio announcer. The games are available but unlike the two New York baseball teams that are on 50,000 watt stations or the other teams that are on sports stations, Islanders fans in New Jersey have to look for the games.
In the near future, all teams will have apps available for phones and that will appeal to the 18 to 24 year olds who don't own a radio and many in that age group will not buy a radio.
Radio does have an advantage. Radio is a mobile medium. You can have it with you out jogging and in your car. But you need a big signal for a sports team. That is where the Islanders lose.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Business and Politics of Sports." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com
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