Out Kick the Coverage has the goods....Interest in Sports is in the toilet.

Have you guys ever read Out Kick the Coverage? It's a sport site that has a pretty good handle on what is going on with sports these days. He also has interesting political posts. I check in every couple of days to see what is going on as I don't really follow sports anymore. He has a post that is really interesting.

A poll has been generated by Gallup that shows that the audience view of sports has dropped 30% this year. All across the board. But precipitously by conservative middle aged white men. You know. The bedrock of sports fans. The guys that get the cable packages and the season tickets and the beers and the cars that they advertise. Now I don't put my faith in polls but this corresponds to the sense I get from people I know. As has been said it takes two months to start a habit and two week to break it. I think a lot of America has gotten out of the habit of watching sports during the pandemic. Many people have fallen out of the habit of following teams and found a lot of ways to spend their time and money rather than worship at the alter of overpaid steroid assholes. The Anti-Americanism and the woke political correctness they are downing us in has been the final nail in the coffin.

I will never watch another football, basketball or heartbreakingly baseball ever again. Many people feel the same way. Sports is in denial. They believe the BLM hype and have killed the Golden Goose.

One of the worst side effects is that it kills so many of my continuing series on the blog.

Photo courtesy of ND Spinelli.

WKRLEM: When you get older you will understand

The final word on Sports and the National Anthem.

"Go ask Mickey Mantle if you can't pay the rent. Nobody cares."

(Best Mafia Movie ever)

WKRLEM: When sports programing with great.....speaking of sports!

With the great Heather Thomas and play by play by Howard Cosell.

They couldn't talk like this or even do this today. Who would they put in the tank? Lena Dunham?

Where's my time machine.

VIdeo killed the Radio seStar.....and Live Streaming cut it up and burned it.

Radio broadcasters have a rough future ahead: ex-exec’s book

By Claire Atkinson

September 25, 2016 | 2:00am

  New York Post

Former Cumulus Chief Executive Lew Dickey has penned a tome about the media business, with some gnarly words for those in terrestrial radio broadcasting.

Dickey’s new book, “The New Modern Media,” from publisher Tourbillon International, a unit of Dickey-owned Modern Luxury Media, points out just how tough it is for ad-supported media businesses to make a shift into subscriptions.

“Radio broadcasters will be unlikely to benefit from subscription revenue for their core service, leaving them highly exposed to the ad markets,” he writes.

Cumulus acquired a stake in subscription music outfit Rdio as a hedge against the vagaries of the ad business. Then Rdio was acquired out of bankruptcy by Web radio player Pandora, and servic57 e was discontinued.

On Friday, the nation’s No. 1 radio station owner, iHeartMedia, announced it is getting into the subscription music business.

“Broadcast has a narrow path to participating in subscription revenue with its core business,” observed Dickey.

That’s a viewpoint that’s bound to spark a lot of static within the business.

(Pandora has totally changed the radio business. I am the biggest radio fan you will ever see. The other streaming services like Spotify are going to totally wipe out regular radio. Sure some people will still have cd players but it is a thing of the past. I listen to music on my phone now. 

I also listen to all the games on the radio these days. Much better than watching it on TV. It takes me back to the days when I was listening to a transistor radio under the covers when the Yankees were on the West Coast. Or sneaking it when I was in class in grammar school. The fact was I was always so far ahead the nuns gave me special dispensation. I used to love to listen to radio comedy like Opie and Anthony. Now all of that stuff is on Youtube. Both of them are on subscription radio separately these days. Opie and Jim Norton are on Sirius and I am  not going to pay that. Anthony has a private podcast for about seven dollars a month. Radio is going the same way as television. You should only get the product you want. You don't need 57 channels because nothing is on. You just bundle what you need. The few podcasts I enjoy like Bob Kelly are either on Youtube or on their own pay-wall for a minimal fee.

It is a new world. Old industries like radio and TV need to adapt or die. Of course you know what the tv and radio executives have been saying.

Those horseless carriages will never catch on.)

They once were Giants.

At one time I was just about the biggest sports fan you could find. I had season tickets to the Knicks for around twenty years. I had season tickets to the Giants for ten years. I had season ticket plans for the Yankees for about thirty years. I mean not full plans. But a Saturday or a Sunday plan. I have been to innumerable playoff games. World Series Games. NBA championship games when the Knicks were in it.

But little by little my fandom has been stripped away. The greed of the owners and players has a lot to do with it. Giant fans used to be a family. The tickets were passed down from father to son. The waiting list had 20,000 people on it. You couldn't get a seat inYankee Stadium or the first Meadowlands unless you knew somebody. But then they started with the seat licenses. And most of the old timers gave up their seats. I mean they could pay even $100 a game but not twenty thousand in seat licenses. So new people came in. Tickets are easy to get on Stubhub or on the internet. You don't have to go to a broker. Or have to sell to a broker if you have extra seats.

The Yankees were a different case. When they decided to trash tradition and get a new Stadium I was heart broken.  I had been to the old Stadium so many times it is impossible to count. I went to the original stadium with my dad in the sixties. I practically lived there in the 1970's and 1980's. I saw all the great Jeter teams with my season ticket package. But the new stadium leaves me cold. It is all cordoned off and they move you like cattle. No more sneaking down for a better seat. It just sucks.

Mr. Hockey has slipped past the goalie.

Gordie Howe has passed away at the age of 88. A four time Stanley Cup Winner with the Red Wings he was one of the greatest hockey players I ever saw. I remember seeing him in 1968 when he was on line with Delvecchio and  Mahovlich. That was one of the best lines I ever saw up there with Gretzky and the one on the Islanders. Gordie must have been in his forties by then.

Teams.

My favorite Final Four stories revolve around the great rivalry of UNLV and Duke in 1989 and 1990. I was really into college basketball at the time. I had season tickets to St. Johns at the Garden. They had just went through a great run with Walter Berry and Chris Mullin and had a great rivalry with Patrick Ewing at Georgetown. I went to both the Pre-season NIT and the NIT at the end of the year with all the losers who didn't make the NCAA tournament. So the rivalry of UNLV and Duke was a riveting story at the time.

That rivalry is in fact a meataphor. A meataphor for our political scene these days. One of the best meataphors I have seen. You see these two teams were set up to embody different world views. Different values. Different parts of what makes up America.