The Sports Media Thread

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 hour ago, infrared41 said:

 

That's a bit of a misrepresentation of the conversation, don't you think? The conversation I listened to was about how baseball has gone from a national sport to a regional sport and why. I don't recall either one of them saying "no one likes baseball." Anyway, it was a pretty good listen. It was nice to hear from KO. 

 

You're right.  I oversimplified and didn't give enough credit to the purpose of the podcast.

 

Sam Hinkie is on the Zach Lowe podcast today. He seems too risk-averse -- or maybe defeatist -- to be a general manager. All he does is complain about how other people get lucky to build good teams, and it's too hard for his teams to compete.

 

Also, he looks at his phone during theater performances so eff him.

[MadmanLA]

I haven't listened to the Lowe Post in awhile, but given what just happened with Sam Hinkie, I may go back and give it a listen.

 

Meanwhile, Bill Simmons poached someone else from ESPN--David Shoemaker, who covered wrestling for Grantland and co-hosted with Peter Rosenberg their "Cheap Heat" podcast.  The Masked Man is on Simmons' most recent episode (posted last night) talking about WrestleMania.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Good for Shoemaker, but I've never been impressed by his writing or podcasting.  However, it is cool that Simmons is incorporating pro wrestling into his media empire. Yes, it straddles the line between entertainment and athletics, but there's definitely semi-mainstream interest in it.

 

Simmons was at Wrestlemania last Sunday, which was held at Jerry World. They put him in the Jumbotron, and he in turn posted a Pats logo on his phone to massive boos. Total heel manuver, but really funny.

 

ALSO, in light of the Hinkie resignation, the Lowe podcast has become a must listen. It's an incredible coda to and incredible story. I'd like to know how connected that podcast was to his resignation. I bet more than a little.

[The_Admiral]

I think Shoemaker writes pretty well. Of course, I grew up on Scott Keith, so I'm coming in with a pretty low bar.

[dfwabel]

So Simmons is doing his best to "bring the band back together", but that band didn't make money in its first run. 

He is going to rely on Medium as their advertising network for the website.   

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Scott Keith is a good writer! Lots of Fs and Ss, but he's quick witted and treats his audience with respect. That's hard to do after 15 years.

 

I'm a print subscriber to the Wrestling Observer, because I've psychotic. It's 18 pages weekly, size 8 font, single space, no graphics. Dave Meltzer is not a good writer. He exhaustive (and exhausting), but not nearly as witty as SK.

[The_Admiral]

I didn't know he was still at it! I'm talking red-hot-poker-up-the-ass Scott Keith. I don't think his old stuff aged well, particularly the C**** B***** worship, but whose internet writing does? I regret my posts the second they're made.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Apologies if this takes us down the Redskins path (and I understand if this gets pulled), but this is worth reading: http://deadspin.com/bomani-jones-wears-shirt-1769642578

 

Quote

 

Bomani Jones filled in for one of the Mikes on ESPN’s Mike and Mike this morning and wore a “Caucasians” shirt, which featured a parody of the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo logo. Molly Qerim and Jones actually dedicated airtime to the shirt, which was supposedly “dominating the social media conversation” as the show progressed.

After saying that he chose to wear the shirt because “it was clean,” Jones discussed the idea behind it: It would be weird to have the Caucasians as a sports mascot, so why is a baseball team still called the Indians?

 

 

EDIT: I should have included this passage, which is what makes it Sports Media-worthy:

Quote

Later in the show, Jones’s sweatshirt was partially zipped:

 

When asked for comment, an ESPN spokesperson said this:

As the show progressed, we felt Bomani had made his point and had openly discussed why he was wearing the shirt, and we wanted to keep the focus to the topics of the day.

The spokesperson declined comment on whether there were any known instances of an ESPN personality being asked to cover up the Chief Wahoo logo.

 

[Sport]

2 hours ago, dfwabel said:

So Simmons is doing his best to "bring the band back together", but that band didn't make money in its first run. 

He is going to rely on Medium as their advertising network for the website.   

 

I don't think they made money in their first run because they weren't trying to make money, at least not early on. ESPN was footing the bill so they were free to be advertisingly spartan by design and they even mentioned that they wanted to start with a simple, uncluttered home page that felt more like a news paper than a website.

 

Now with the HBO show, and a podcast network that's allowed to have personalities employed from other sports networks, and without a sugar daddy conglomerate as large as Disney I expect them to push more advertisements. Simmons definitely does more plugs in his podcast now than he did in the old BS Report. I have to think that if Grantland would've stuck around they would've started to go about searching out more revenue creating avenues. 

[The_Admiral]

7 hours ago, DG_Now said:

Apologies if this takes us down the Redskins path (and I understand if this gets pulled), but this is worth reading: http://deadspin.com/bomani-jones-wears-shirt-1769642578

 

More power to him. I'm glad he got to wear it and talk about it, even if I'm not dead-set myself on getting rid of Wahoo and the Indians.

[dfwabel]

On 4/5/2016 at 9:06 AM, MadmanLA said:

I just came across this today...Twitter (yes, Twitter!) has won the streaming rights to the ten Thursday Night Football games CBS and NBC have rights to.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000650453/article/thursday-night-football-to-be-streamed-live-on-twitter

There are reports that Facebook and the NFL were off on the split of ad revenue, but there is a man more important to all negotiations... Anthony Noto.

 

Currently, Noto is the CFO for Twitter, but inbetween stints at Goldman Sachs, he was the NFL's CFO.  

[dfwabel]

9 hours ago, McCarthy said:

I don't think they made money in their first run because they weren't trying to make money, at least not early on. ESPN was footing the bill so they were free to be advertisingly spartan by design and they even mentioned that they wanted to start with a simple, uncluttered home page that felt more like a news paper than a website.

 

Now with the HBO show, and a podcast network that's allowed to have personalities employed from other sports networks, and without a sugar daddy conglomerate as large as Disney I expect them to push more advertisements. Simmons definitely does more plugs in his podcast now than he did in the old BS Report. I have to think that if Grantland would've stuck around they would've started to go about searching out more revenue creating avenues. 

I just look at Simmons as just attempting to follow what others try. In this case, his buddy Adam Carolla when CBS fired him in 2009 when he was a semi-replacement for Stern.

 

Same $hit, but lacks Adam's hustle as Adam can at least get a weekend crowd at a comedy club or small theater but Simmons doesn't even try to do such events even with a service like Paranoid Fan.

[The_Admiral]

Not really sports media per se but even I wouldn't start a whole thread about it:

 

Does anyone else not like the Crying Jordan meme? The greatest basketball player of all time being made into a joke, often by kids who never even saw him play, just doesn't sit right with me.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

22 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Not really sports media per se but even I wouldn't start a whole thread about it:

 

Does anyone else not like the Crying Jordan meme? The greatest basketball player of all time being made into a joke, often by kids who never even saw him play, just doesn't sit right with me.

 

On the one hand, yes, I agree with you. On the other hand, he should have taken more :censored: for those terrible Hanes commercials and Space Jam. Jordan was the best and coolest athlete ever for the better part of 30 years.

 

And also, I think defending the heros of your youth makes you an old. So, for me, it's a tough argument to make.

[infrared41]

32 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Not really sports media per se but even I wouldn't start a whole thread about it:

 

Does anyone else not like the Crying Jordan meme? The greatest basketball player of all time being made into a joke, often by kids who never even saw him play, just doesn't sit right with me.

 

I don't like it either. I suppose it would be "funnier" if the original picture was MJ crying about something silly - a UNC loss for example - but it's from his HOF speech. Using that picture as the basis for a meme seems a little lazy to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't take much wit to find a picture of someone crying and apply it to different situations for comedic effect...does that make sense? 

[monkeypower]

I guess I'm technically part of the sports media and now we're (do I get to say we're since I do colour?) about to go into double overtime facing elimination right now.

 

Man it's intense.

[monkeypower]

26 minutes ago, monkeypower said:

I guess I'm technically part of the sports media and now we're (do I get to say we're since I do colour?) about to go into double overtime facing elimination right now.

 

Man it's intense.

 

Update: Lost in 2OT.

 

Now BASS' Flin Flon Bombers are going to the finals.

[2001mark]

The Masters without Feherty is like being in church.

[dfwabel]

On 4/7/2016 at 1:27 PM, DG_Now said:

Apologies if this takes us down the Redskins path (and I understand if this gets pulled), but this is worth reading: http://deadspin.com/bomani-jones-wears-shirt-1769642578

 

 

EDIT: I should have included this passage, which is what makes it Sports Media-worthy:

 

 

The fallout was immediate for the shirt seller.
 

Quote

 

Sales of 'Caucasians' shirts, depicting the Cleveland Indians' team mascot as a caricature of a white person, skyrocketed one day after ESPN's Bomani Jones wore one on a show, the shirt's creator said Friday.

Brian Kirby, who runs Shelf Life Clothing Co., told The Associated Press that more than 2,000 shirts have been sold since Jones sported one on Thursday while co-hosting the network's "Mike & Mike" show. At one point, Kirby said, traffic to his website was so heavy that the site crashed, and his internet host dropped him.

"I haven't slept since Thursday at 5:45 a.m.," Kirby said.

The site, which offers the shirts for $22 each plus shipping and handling, has since been restored. The company typically sells around 7,000 shirts in a year, Kirby said.

 

 

[Sport]

On 4/10/2016 at 8:37 PM, the admiral said:

Not really sports media per se but even I wouldn't start a whole thread about it:

 

Does anyone else not like the Crying Jordan meme? The greatest basketball player of all time being made into a joke, often by kids who never even saw him play, just doesn't sit right with me.

 

On 4/10/2016 at 9:08 PM, infrared41 said:

 

I don't like it either. I suppose it would be "funnier" if the original picture was MJ crying about something silly - a UNC loss for example - but it's from his HOF speech. Using that picture as the basis for a meme seems a little lazy to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't take much wit to find a picture of someone crying and apply it to different situations for comedic effect...does that make sense? 

 

Not saying I'm funny, but memes are shorthand crutches for unfunny people to participate in being funny, which is why almost zero memes work for me. The Crying Jordan one is especially tiresome because it's so easy for dummies to do and takes no thought. UNC loses NCG on a buzzer beater and 15,000 knuckleheads crudely paste Jordan's head on top of Jordan even though that wasn't even close to his actual reaction. His actual reaction was actually pretty awesome. There is no originality anymore. Everything is hack. 

 

It's so easy that until recently I (incorrectly) assumed there was some backstory that I didn't know about. I should've just known that "HA HE SAD JORDAN SAD HE HAZ JORDAN SAD HEAD NOW HA" was the entirety of the joke. Excuse me for expecting a little more out of an internet joke. I like my comedy to be nuanced and multilayered. I guess the ones where someone finds a creative way to implement Crying Jordan are okay, but at best I'm giving those a shrug rather than a groan. 

Also, why Michael Jordan? What about his sad face is any different than say the millions of pictures of Kim Kardashian crying? I'd rather she be the one to gain ignominious meme status. She's far more detestable and doesn't actually have any talent.