The Big Sports Media Secret
It seems to me the sports media has taken a lot of heat recently, what with its perceived over-coverage of Terrell Owens' apparent prescription drug overdose and a myriad of other issues ranging from a love affair with anything involving the New York Yankees and/or Boston Red Sox to pundits asking what's wrong with an NFL team after they have the gaul to lose a division game on the road.
Don't mistake what I'm about to say, though; this is not a piece in which I defend the profession I am in the process of making my name in. I'm not here to praise ESPN and the countless other sports media outlets, saying they can do no wrong and if it weren't for today's sports media, we wouldn't be a fan base so connected and knowledgeable we can discuss issues important to us and come to sites like ArmchairGM one to write opinions and debate.
Okay, so the last part's true...my argument of not defending the media still stands.
No, I merely seek to explain how the media (in fact, all mainstream media, not just sports) works. Having spent my undergraduate years studying the mass media and the last five years teetering between sports writing and sportscasting, my eyes have been opened to the reality of news.
And that reality, as it so often is in life, is money. The almighty dollar.
Media outlets today are usually a part of a larger entity, some massive corporation which, by and large, has no interest in the media (or, for the purposes of this piece, sports). CNN is merely a cog in the wheel that is Time-Warner, ESPN is but a limb of the mighty Disney Corp.
Sports Illustrated? Again, see Time-Warner.
These corporations obtain these entities and companies not out of some deeper purpose, some societal need to inform the general populous of the issues pertinent to them. No, they do it to add to the bottom line, fill their bellies with the bastion of American capitalism every way they can.
And if owning a media outlet means higher profits, well...sign Big Business up.
Because of this, the media outlet's content (again, we'll use ESPN as an example, since this is a sports blog) is directly related to sponsorship and, by extension, revenue. Advertisers love large audiences, so the bigger the audience ESPN can offer, the more advertising dollars pour into the Worldwide Leader.
How does ESPN guarantee the audience? By covering what it perceives to be the things we, the audience, want. If that involves as much T.O. news as possible, so be it. If that means all the Yanks-Sox we can stand, then bet your trusty foam finger that's what you'll get.
How do they know whether we want something? We watch it, they look at the ratings. We read the magazine, they look at subscription numbers. We visit the web site, they track the hits. If they see high ratings when covering T.O., they're gonna keep milking the egomaniacal wide receiver until we show them we want no more.
By turning the TV away from ESPN.
In this the age of the 24-hour news channel (and ESPN seems to have become that, even with the advent of ESPNews) and the development of the Internet (thus leading to more up-to-the-minute reporting and blogging), the bottom line has become even more important.
This leads to content that is very similar from one outlet to another. A homogonization of content, I believe one of my journalism professors called it. Corporate media means we're gonna get a lot of the same thing, and we're going to get it over and over again.
Because that's what makes money.
Not only does content correlate with money, so too do personnel decisions. Most newspapers, when consolidating into a corporate entity, lose staff in the interest of the bottom line. We've seen this most recently in the acquisition by the Tribune Company of the Los Angeles Times. Shortly after the acquisition, a number of jobs at the Times were cut.
Not because the people in question couldn't do their jobs; I'm sure they were quite capable. But they weren't cost-effective. It's a sad reality in the mass media, but a reality it is.
(As an aside, the newspaper I currently write for as a high school football correspondent, the Daily Press, is owned by the Tribune Company.)
I've already written about the personnel at ESPN--see "Changes at ESPN?" below. The bottom line dictates not only what ESPN reports or what kind of shows it airs, but who does the reporting and the analyzing. If the network really is looking to get away from the Stuart Scott-"Booya!" style, it's likely because someone in charge of the company's finances has seen...wait a minute, that's not making money anymore.
People are starting to turn off, and they're taking advertising dollars with them.
I wish I had better news; I wish I could report that media outlets are getting away from the 24-hour cycle mentality of reporting first, no matter what. I wish I could say these companies are no longer so concerned with the bottom line and are again starting to concentrate on good, focused reporting--giving us the information we want and need without constantly forcing it down our throats.
I won't be able to say that until it no longer becomes profitable for those companies.
But there is something we can do. For those of us who are either in the sports media business or are looking to break in, try focusing on reporting differently than your colleagues. If that means a different writing or reporting style, then so be it. If that means looking at a story from an angle nobody else thought of or cared to consider, that's great, too.
Blogs are great for this sort of thing, and the Internet has truly been a blessing to the media in this regard.
But for the general audience, I offer this advice: if you don't like something the media's doing, don't pay attention to it. You want less T.O.? Stop watching the stories and press conferences about him. Leave the columns and blogs about him on ESPN.com alone. Don't patronize with sponsors affiliated with anything related to him (that means put down the Dr. Pepper, Redskins fan; Dr. Pepper sponsors the Cowboys).
Once the media starts losing money doing things the way they do them, their tactics--and the things they cover--will change.
Because it all comes back to the almighty dollar.
Don't mistake what I'm about to say, though; this is not a piece in which I defend the profession I am in the process of making my name in. I'm not here to praise ESPN and the countless other sports media outlets, saying they can do no wrong and if it weren't for today's sports media, we wouldn't be a fan base so connected and knowledgeable we can discuss issues important to us and come to sites like ArmchairGM one to write opinions and debate.
Okay, so the last part's true...my argument of not defending the media still stands.
No, I merely seek to explain how the media (in fact, all mainstream media, not just sports) works. Having spent my undergraduate years studying the mass media and the last five years teetering between sports writing and sportscasting, my eyes have been opened to the reality of news.
And that reality, as it so often is in life, is money. The almighty dollar.
Media outlets today are usually a part of a larger entity, some massive corporation which, by and large, has no interest in the media (or, for the purposes of this piece, sports). CNN is merely a cog in the wheel that is Time-Warner, ESPN is but a limb of the mighty Disney Corp.
Sports Illustrated? Again, see Time-Warner.
These corporations obtain these entities and companies not out of some deeper purpose, some societal need to inform the general populous of the issues pertinent to them. No, they do it to add to the bottom line, fill their bellies with the bastion of American capitalism every way they can.
And if owning a media outlet means higher profits, well...sign Big Business up.
Because of this, the media outlet's content (again, we'll use ESPN as an example, since this is a sports blog) is directly related to sponsorship and, by extension, revenue. Advertisers love large audiences, so the bigger the audience ESPN can offer, the more advertising dollars pour into the Worldwide Leader.
How does ESPN guarantee the audience? By covering what it perceives to be the things we, the audience, want. If that involves as much T.O. news as possible, so be it. If that means all the Yanks-Sox we can stand, then bet your trusty foam finger that's what you'll get.
How do they know whether we want something? We watch it, they look at the ratings. We read the magazine, they look at subscription numbers. We visit the web site, they track the hits. If they see high ratings when covering T.O., they're gonna keep milking the egomaniacal wide receiver until we show them we want no more.
By turning the TV away from ESPN.
In this the age of the 24-hour news channel (and ESPN seems to have become that, even with the advent of ESPNews) and the development of the Internet (thus leading to more up-to-the-minute reporting and blogging), the bottom line has become even more important.
This leads to content that is very similar from one outlet to another. A homogonization of content, I believe one of my journalism professors called it. Corporate media means we're gonna get a lot of the same thing, and we're going to get it over and over again.
Because that's what makes money.
Not only does content correlate with money, so too do personnel decisions. Most newspapers, when consolidating into a corporate entity, lose staff in the interest of the bottom line. We've seen this most recently in the acquisition by the Tribune Company of the Los Angeles Times. Shortly after the acquisition, a number of jobs at the Times were cut.
Not because the people in question couldn't do their jobs; I'm sure they were quite capable. But they weren't cost-effective. It's a sad reality in the mass media, but a reality it is.
(As an aside, the newspaper I currently write for as a high school football correspondent, the Daily Press, is owned by the Tribune Company.)
I've already written about the personnel at ESPN--see "Changes at ESPN?" below. The bottom line dictates not only what ESPN reports or what kind of shows it airs, but who does the reporting and the analyzing. If the network really is looking to get away from the Stuart Scott-"Booya!" style, it's likely because someone in charge of the company's finances has seen...wait a minute, that's not making money anymore.
People are starting to turn off, and they're taking advertising dollars with them.
I wish I had better news; I wish I could report that media outlets are getting away from the 24-hour cycle mentality of reporting first, no matter what. I wish I could say these companies are no longer so concerned with the bottom line and are again starting to concentrate on good, focused reporting--giving us the information we want and need without constantly forcing it down our throats.
I won't be able to say that until it no longer becomes profitable for those companies.
But there is something we can do. For those of us who are either in the sports media business or are looking to break in, try focusing on reporting differently than your colleagues. If that means a different writing or reporting style, then so be it. If that means looking at a story from an angle nobody else thought of or cared to consider, that's great, too.
Blogs are great for this sort of thing, and the Internet has truly been a blessing to the media in this regard.
But for the general audience, I offer this advice: if you don't like something the media's doing, don't pay attention to it. You want less T.O.? Stop watching the stories and press conferences about him. Leave the columns and blogs about him on ESPN.com alone. Don't patronize with sponsors affiliated with anything related to him (that means put down the Dr. Pepper, Redskins fan; Dr. Pepper sponsors the Cowboys).
Once the media starts losing money doing things the way they do them, their tactics--and the things they cover--will change.
Because it all comes back to the almighty dollar.
posted by Jeff Cunningham at 10:09 PM
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