pmoehrin

What else would it be? There's literally nothing else on that network worth watching aside from sports. That's why I said if they're not going to have NBA basketball, they might as well go ahead and close up shop. They have all the programming diversity of me falling asleep with Hulu on.

Not for nothing, but what else does he think TNT is good for besides broadcasting NBA basketball and being HBO lite? I'm good with watching Rocky I-IV and Con Air for the 8,000th time. I'm good with seeing Mrs. Kevin Bacon yelling at people in a small room. And I'm good with seeing rich aholes buying cars I'll never drive. If TNT is good with not having the NBA, they can go ahead and go the way of Nitro which I'm still PO'd they canceled. I have no other reason to watch.

If you want to make a million dollars, the best way to do it is to start with ten million. The second best way to is to play the lottery every day and hope you hit. So much of what makes a business successful comes down to timing and luck. If you look at your Fortune 500 companies, almost all of them are less than 100 years old. Why? They had big businesses around the turn of the century. Where did they go? And the answer is typically, they had an idea, it worked for a while, but then things changed, and they failed to adjust. I deal with executives on almost a daily basis. Most of them are smarter than your average bear. I've been lucky never to have met an executive whom I walked away thinking boy, this person is just a loudmouth idiot. I know they exist, but thankfully, I feel they are in the extreme minority of what's out there. But I don't know if I ever met an executive who's ever blown me away with what they know, either. I have gotten that feeling more than once from people who work directly underneath them. I worked once with one of the people who helped design the Amazon Alexa, and his insights on what the product was designed to do were impressive. That's someone who stands out to me as somebody I really learned something from. But for the most part, executives are run-of-the-mill business school graduates who happened to get a leg up on everyone else in life. It's not that they're dumb; they're just not geniuses.

I thought it got better after the 2020 elections. You would frequently see what I would call Grandma Mary accounts. Little old lady from small town USA who loves her grandkids, her god, her country, and of course, her President. And it just so happens she has over 40k followers. Beginning that January, I thought Twitter made a concerted effort to start going after those fake accounts because, by April of 2021, they were mostly gone, as far as I could tell. But I'm not sure if Twitter didn't essentially sign its death certificate when it did that because I'm not naïve enough to think that there aren't a lot of influential people out there who wanted those accounts floating around regardless of whether they're real or not. I believe the current person in charge was one of them, despite his claims of being a warrior for free speech. I don't think Musk wants Twitter to fail. I think he has a very specific and narrow-minded vision of what Twitter should be, and if it can't be that, then the hell with it. Anyone with that much money still getting up to go to work and be a boss is sick in the head. They're not doing it to make a living; they’re doing it for the love of the game. They enjoy bossing people around and having minions suck up to them.

He paid $44 billion for a company that’s worth somewhere between $8 and $12 billion. It’s only worth that amount because Twitter only generates about $5 billion in annual revenue, but it went $12 billion in the hole the second Musk signed off on the papers. Make no mistake, this will be taught as a case study in business school. The hubris of thinking you know everything about a business you clearly know nothing about, combined with grossly overpaying for said business is a combination rarely seen to this extent. I’m not shy about pointing to Tony Kahn’s shortcomings as the owner of AEW. But by comparison, he’s like Bill Gates at Microsoft compared to how Musk has operated Twitter. He may make mistakes, but he doesn’t say, why do we have so many wrestlers for? Why can’t two of them wrestle every match? And why do we have these cameras for? They’re way too expensive. Let’s put the matches on AM radio instead. Point is there’s at least a basic understanding of what the product is and should look like. There’s none with Musk running Twitter. It can’t be understated how clearly bad he is at this. I genuinely feel bad for the people working there, because it really did seem like a nice place to work. And to watch a dream job like that overnight turn into an absolute nightmare all because some rich ahole wanted to make a point. That sucks.

I work in web analytics, and everything my company does is tested to the nth degree. Even a simple ad placement change is tested out for weeks, if not months. Not just my company but any place I've ever worked for. You don't just roll something out because you think it's a good idea, let alone decide to completely change your company's business model overnight without bothering to figure out if it's even viable. And I'm sure Twitter operated under the same principle. I even thought about applying for jobs there because it seemed like a nice place to work, and boy, am I glad I didn't because what I've seen is about the holiest of holy, you know what, in terms of how things are being run. I'm at a loss for words over the gross incompetence that is on display right now. It's like watching a regular Joe come off the street, get into a NASCAR, and tell the driver who just got out of the car, "watch and learn, buddy," as he tears out of pit row while the car is out of gear. He thinks he's about to set a track record, and everyone else who knows anything about how this stuff works is praying he can make it through a lap without wrecking the car. The fake verified accounts on Twitter are just funny to me. A fake Adam Schefter account already got me on one story. There's not much I can do aside from laughing about it before deleting the tweet. But from Twitter's perspective, I'm watching the very foundation of the site being whittled away by a guy with a sledgehammer asking, "what's this beam for" and hammering at it before you can even open your mouth. The rationale being if the building doesn't fall down immediately, it proves we didn't need it. And if the building does fall down, it's your fault for not answering him fast enough.

That's probably the biggest shocker, but by the same token, has Dan Snyder put a dime into that stadium? It was a meh venue when it opened, but it's getting Oakland Coliseum bad in terms of condition. I've seen pictures of plumbing leaks during games, party decks sitting empty, issues with draining the field, tarps and empty space in the upper deck where seats used to be. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather play at RFK Stadium as it exists now than play at FedEx Field.

Here are the cities ranked by World City rating which can be seen as a good indicator of tourist desirability. KC is definitely an outlier. New York: A++ Los Angeles: A Mexico City: A Toronto: A Boston: A- San Francisco: A- Atlanta: B+ Dallas: B+ Houston: B+ Miami: B+ Vancouver: B+ Philadelphia: B Seattle: B Monterrey: B- Guadalajara: C+ Kansas City: C- Most notable cities left out by this ranking: Chicago (A), Montreal (A-), D.C. (B+) Denver (B), Austin, Calgary, Detroit, Minneapolis, San Diego, Tampa (all B-)

The RSN model was dated fifteen years ago. Now, it comes off as a relic from the days of 90s cable television. There are teams blacked out in markets that are hundreds of miles away from where they play. I've yet to hear anyone explain how that makes a lick of sense from either the consumer's or the sports league's perspective; whatever small amount of logic behind the designated market rule went out the window when people stopped buying satellite dishes. The only outlet still doing gangbusters on traditional television is the 24-hour news networks because their audience is too decrepit to learn new viewing habits. Everyone else has more or less gotten with the program, except for sports, which still operates under the same model they had 20 years ago. Don't feel bad for them. They made up these rules, and they have the power to change them. They're just unwilling to take the short-term profit hit that comes with it, so they keep kicking the can down the road.

I think that's a little bit of an oversimplification. He had a romanticized view of what the automobile could do but was a major catalyst in getting a lot of New Deal projects off the ground. He just didn't know when to quit and was bringing an uncompromising pre-WWII vision of the automobile to a city that neither wanted nor needed that vision to flourish. Was he ruthless in going about getting what he wanted? Absolutely. But I can't say all of his ideas were necessarily bad or that ruthlessness wasn't necessary to see some of those projects through. The only thing I can say for sure about Robert Moses is that, for better or worse, no other person did more to shape present-day New York than him.

The same reason Detroit and most southern cities don’t have one. Car and gas companies lobby against them with a great amount of success. I think the only reason we have trains at all in this country is because you can’t ship everything via truck.

I have no doubt Long Beach would work. You're in a city with just under half a million people and within a half-hour drive of both LA and Anaheim. That's on top of all the pre-existing entertainment-based infrastructure already there. It doesn't get much better than that in terms of location. The issue I see comes down to cost. There's a reason nobody has moved into that area. A stadium there would run well over $1 billion and easily be the most expensive MLB stadium ever built. The Angels have no problem drawing right where they are, and it would be a lot cheaper for them to stay put than to move any way you cut it. Their current ballpark isn't great, but you can work with it, and the Angels have. I don't see them moving outside the LA market because anywhere they moved to would be a downgrade. They're second in the league in attendance, playing in the second-largest media market in the country. Why mess that up? I think they're going to wait for the smoke to clear with whatever is going with the Anaheim city government before doing anything. No mater what happens, they're not in any danger of getting kicked out of their stadium tomorrow.

It's a decent find. I used it to update one of my markets where I was off by a little under 30k. The excel file they are selling for $450 looks like an excel sheet I would have created when I was in my mid-20s. It isn't bad. But if you're incapable of doing a vlookup in Excel, or have no idea that you can download 90% of this stuff from the Census Bureau for free, you end up paying for this type of stuff. $250 every three months for zip code updates!!? How often do people think zip codes are updated? A file like they have from 2016 would probably still be good enough to use for whatever analysis you need to do.

Why do you think I'm only listing the final figures? It would take anyone days if not months to reverse engineer those numbers. Good luck with Quebec for starters.

To me, it's a better measure of so-called "market size" than metro area. The only reason I have this information at all is because a lot of my 9-5 job deals with advertising. The household info is useful if we're just talking about TV ratings, but it's tough to do an apples-to-apples comparison if we're talking about anything else. The population figures I provide allow this information to be used alongside Metro and Combined Statistical Area figures. The main file I have has that metro/CSA breakdown built-in, along with some demographic and economic data. Unfortunately, I cannot give that info out, as I feel like someone would steal it and use it for their own benefit without giving me any credit. Nothing like that has happened because of this board, and I doubt the this would happen even if I did give the file out. But I no longer trust anyone with my work.

Television markets which can be seen in the map below. Some of the names are different, (Utah instead of Salt Lake City, West Michigan instead of Grand Rapids, etc.) but the mapping area is the same. This isn't the same thing as Metro Area and you'll see that Miami for example, has a smaller TV market than a metro area. This is because of West Palm Beach, which is included in the Miami metro area, but it's also it's own TV market. In some cases such as Lehigh Valley, the metro area can fall into either NYC or Philadelphia TV markets depending on which county we're looking at. The US population for the 2020 Census was listed at 331,449,281. The Canada figure was 36,991,981 for 2021. That totals to 368,441,262 which is the grand total you will get if you add up the population figures for every TV market I have listed.

This is a long post, but I feel like a somewhat informative one for this topic. I know there's a lot of information out there online regarding metro area population, but there isn't much regarding television market population data. The Wikipedia article on the subject provides some insights on the number of households but doesn't get into specifics on population data. Information on Canada is even more scarce. This page only considers metro data, and the map listed on the North America TV market page isn't even an accurate TV map. It's a radio map. That said, here are the population figures I was able to generate based on the 2020 US Census Data and 2021 Canadian Census Data. Both Detroit and Presque Isle TV markets cover a portion of Canada, so there will not be a one-for-one match between the Canadian/US markets and their total population figures. There was also a bit of guestimating with the location of some of the Canadian TV markets, but I feel like these figures are close enough to provide a good reference. You'll have to figure out the cities and metro areas included in each TV market as it would take me way too long to explain, but I'm happy to answer any questions in a PM if anyone has any. TV Market Population New York 22,165,217 Los Angeles 18,306,735 Chicago 9,778,928 Philadelphia 8,350,823 DFW Metroplex 8,336,777 SF Bay Area 7,925,404 Toronto 7,759,635 Houston 7,474,714 Washington, D.C. 7,325,480 Atlanta 7,205,337 Boston 6,830,407 Phoenix 5,665,051 Seattle 5,529,201 Detroit 5,486,895 Orlando 5,179,615 Minnesota 4,882,655 Montreal 4,828,187 Miami 4,729,016 Denver 4,617,859 Tampa Bay 4,289,396 Sacramento 4,199,193 Vancouver 3,910,778 Cleveland 3,855,568 Portland, OR 3,487,128 Utah 3,456,164 Charlotte 3,372,316 Research Triangle 3,303,930 San Diego 3,298,634 St. Louis 3,137,556 Baltimore 3,070,783 Indianapolis 3,044,192 Nashville 3,030,446 San Antonio 2,900,282 Pittsburgh 2,832,739 Connecticut 2,648,525 Kansas City 2,570,755 Columbus, OH 2,523,273 Cincinnati 2,439,019 Austin 2,410,984 Upstate South Carolina 2,373,572 Milwaukee 2,340,417 Las Vegas 2,321,551 West Palm Beach 2,179,280 West Michigan 2,100,346 Fresno 2,088,845 Jacksonville, FL 2,019,090 Hampton Roads 1,977,678 New Mexico 1,968,522 Oklahoma City 1,964,638 Birmingham, AL 1,947,606 Central Pennsylvania 1,917,895 Calgary 1,903,439 Memphis 1,875,786 Piedmont Triad 1,853,591 Edmonton 1,829,802 Louisville 1,784,588 Ottawa 1,770,153 New Orleans 1,759,800 Providence 1,676,579 Buffalo 1,614,147 Richmond, VA 1,608,257 Northeastern Pennsylvania 1,507,645 Florida Gulf Coast 1,488,280 Little Rock 1,462,301 Hawaii 1,455,271 Tulsa 1,433,462 Albany, NY 1,410,138 Southwest Florida 1,409,142 Knoxville 1,389,266 Manitoba 1,379,011 Rio Grande Valley 1,377,882 Dayton 1,331,527 Lexington, KY 1,305,182 Spokane 1,246,285 Tucson 1,216,549 Wichita 1,205,897 Omaha 1,194,997 Des Moines 1,182,991 Charleston, WV 1,173,075 Green Bay 1,164,584 Ozarks 1,147,229 Mid-Michigan 1,129,059 Roanoke 1,128,864 Central Texas 1,107,422 North Alabama 1,104,471 Toledo 1,094,313 El Paso 1,090,608 Tri-Cities, ON 1,089,834 Columbia, SC 1,085,781 London, ON 1,061,577 Madison, WI 1,038,409 Portland, ME 1,030,973 Southern Colorado 1,030,543 Rochester, NY 1,025,018 Ark-La-Tex 1,019,951 Chattanooga 1,013,087 Savannah 981,576 Syracuse 949,442 Paducah 945,004 Baton Rouge 941,282 Charleston, SC 932,670 Quebec City 919,438 Michiana 909,010 Central Illinois 907,662 Cedar Rapids 900,421 Jackson, MS 897,046 Boise 885,276 Sherbrooke 879,480 Northwest Arkansas 870,131 Bakersfield 867,221 Champlain Valley 858,785 Halifax 837,364 Tri-Cities, TN 808,960 Eastern North Carolina 792,415 Myrtle Beach 785,839 Quad Cities 784,354 Monterey Bay 774,105 Barrie 767,005 Kelowna, BC 766,208 Reno 765,555 Tri-Cities-Yakima 759,532 Lincoln 756,018 Tallahassee 752,042 East Texas 751,072 The Alleghenies 747,828 Augusta, GA 747,701 Fort Wayne 744,600 Tri-State IL-IN-KY 737,956 Central Coast 730,653 Sioux Falls 719,490 Springfield, MA 699,162 Lansing 679,315 Central Georgia 666,347 Fargo 655,953 Northern Michigan 654,914 Eugene 654,285 Montgomery, AL 647,354 Youngstown 643,120 North Central Illinois 627,883 Acadiana 625,524 Columbus, GA 618,954 Saint John 589,379 South Texas 586,912 La Crosse-Eau Claire 568,475 Anchorage 551,680 Amarillo 547,614 Newfoundland & Labrador 523,204 Chico-Redding 504,645 Cape Fear 502,827 North Mississippi 486,326 Mid-Missouri 483,741 Kingston, ON 482,482 Permian Basin 474,218 Rockford, IL 469,361 Lubbock 466,937 Ark-La-Miss 465,622 Southern Oregon 465,144 Southeast Texas 462,560 Twin Ports 457,472 Central Wisconsin 455,195 Trois-Rivières 454,059 Topeka 451,059 Greater Sudbury 450,079 West Dakota 435,569 Delmarva 418,046 East Idaho 417,895 Saskatoon 409,357 Albany, GA 409,129 Siouxland 408,811 Wabash Valley 399,977 Four State Area 399,388 Palm Springs 398,975 Western Texoma 398,639 Mississippi Gulf Coast 394,556 Erie, PA 393,401 Panama City 391,076 Yuma-El Centro 383,583 Rochester, MN 383,571 Ohio Valley 359,592 Regina 358,736 Gainesville, FL 356,006 Utica 350,788 Eastern Texoma 347,833 Bangor 345,656 Binghamton 338,666 Saguenay 319,370 Western Montana 317,831 Peterborough 316,293 Abilene 313,182 Bluefield, WV 312,977 Pine Belt 300,064 Billings 293,175 Southwest Louisiana 281,701 Laredo 281,003 Black Hills 276,755 Red Deer 274,723 Wiregrass Region 273,799 Tri-Cities, IA-IL-MO 268,801 Shenandoah Valley 267,147 Clarksburg, WV 261,877 Bowling Green 257,901 North Country, NY 251,808 Abitibi-Témiscamingue 249,831 Central Louisiana 240,635 Rimouski 237,992 Northeast Arkansas 237,154 Twin Tiers 236,675 Upper Peninsula of Michigan 215,326 Lloydminster, BC-SK 210,772 Rivière-du-Loup 209,547 Southwest Montana 207,313 Magic Valley 205,548 Western Colorado 200,708 Central Oregon 198,253 Prince George, BC 197,647 Lafayette, IN 194,691 Charlottesville 193,337 Mississippi Delta 184,767 West Tennessee 181,936 Meridian, MS 172,975 Great Falls, MT 171,758 Thunder Bay 166,299 Redwood Empire 164,206 Prince Albert, SK 160,402 Prince Edward Island 154,331 San Angelo 152,275 Parkersburg, WV 151,720 Cheyenne 149,094 St. Joseph, MO 148,904 Central Wyoming 145,246 Presque Isle 144,380 Chaleur Bay 139,928 Ottumwa-Kirksville 139,310 Mankato 135,690 Cape Breton Island 132,019 Sault Ste. Marie 127,712 Yorkton 114,464 Fairbanks 109,425 Lima, OH 102,206 Medicine Hat, AB 91,733 Victoria, TX 91,319 Zanesville, OH 86,410 Southeast Alaska 72,286 Helena 70,973 Dawson Creek, BC 66,010 Kenora, ON 66,000 Terrace, BC 60,236 Swift Current 41,712 Northwest Territories 41,070 Yukon 40,232 North Platte, NE 37,325 Glendive, MT 13,077

Forget Brady's salary. How in the hell is Jim Rome getting paid $30 million a year? Michael Strahan makes roughly half that amount, and he's on Good Morning America. Jim Rome's show got canceled this past fall for having poor ratings. I thought it was dumb when Fox gave Skip Bayless a boatload of money for a morning show that barely cracks 100k viewers. CBS' response was apparently hold my beer. We're going to treat Jim Rome like he's the modern day Howard Cosell. Put in another way. As much as I hate Tucker Carlson, his salary is $35 million. But he draws around 3 million viewers a show. I'd be shocked if Jim Rome's pulls in even 1/10th of that audience on his best day. I can only think of two explanations that makes any sense. One is that CBS meant to pay him $3 million a year, but their legal department made a mistake on his contract and added an extra zero. The other is that Jim Rome has some serious dirt on CBS executives and this is the amount of money he needs to stay quiet. If neither of those are the case, then I suspect some combination of drugs, alcohol, mental illness, or Alzheimer's played a big role in coming up with that number. At least your average person knows who Tom Brady is. I don't think any non-sports fan could pick Jim Rome out of a police lineup.

If you build it they will come they said.

None that I know. The Angels could try a survey, but I think a lot of fans would lie about how much they care about the name. The only thing you could do is compare at attendance figures, TV ratings, and merchandise sales before and after the name change. The last year the Angels used the Anaheim name; they drew 3.37 million people. In 2005 with the LA name, they drew 3.4 million. Based on that alone, I doubt you will find any evidence the name change has impacted the team's revenue flow in any way. My personal preference is for the Angels to go back to being the California Angels. To me, that's the name best representative of their fanbase. There's no simple way of saying the Angels play in an area where you have half a dozen mid-size cities bordering each other, but California comes the closest. Anaheim Angels makes it seem like they're a small market team playing in a city of 350K, and Los Angeles Angles makes it seem like they play in Los Angeles.

Its a BS explanation for not expanding. So long as a team is playing in the worst ballpark in the Majors, there's always going to be an X number of teams to go. There's always going to be a worst ballpark, so you figure out how long it's going to be before every team is 100% satisfied with their ballpark situation.

I probably disagree with about 70% of what they write, but there are definitely some gems in there, which is why I check their website almost every day, even if it’s just for 10 seconds. They also don’t come at things from a purely analytical point of view, so I feel it also helps balance out my sports news cycle. I find that a lot more valuable than Bill Simmons who I agree with over 70% of the time, but never says anything I find to be thought provoking which is why I ignore him.

I must have missed the part about Nigeria being Africa's "heart" in my African Economics class. And again when my Professor said repeatedly not to treat Africa as a country. And again in the second African Economics class I took. And again when I wrote a 35-page paper about Nigeria as part of my Senior year thesis. I did however miss the part where Steve Nash was born in South Africa. I will admit I didn't know that, so Gladwell has me there. Maybe he has me on the rest as well.

I feel like shtick is the only thing ESPN has going for it as this point. Get Up!, First Take, High Noon, Highly Questionable, Around the Horn, PTI. Those aren't six different shows. That's the same show done six different ways. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they mixed up the personalities on these shows every so often, but more and more it just seems like its the same people thrown in your face over and over again. Mike Greenberg, Stephen A. Smith, Dan Le Batard, Wilbon and Kornheiser, Jalen Rose, Mark Schlereth, Tony Reali. I'm not saying I think all of these people are bad, or even need to be replaced, but ESPN has been running all of these people out on their debate shows for a decade-plus now. At some point, you have to bring in new people even if its a downgrade, just for the sake of changing things up. What's sad is that I know they have some good people in their research department they could bring up, because I talk to some of them, and the impression I get is that the network has made it very clear they're there just to do behind the scenes stats stuff for the company. This is why I have no interest in working for ESPN. I can get paid double somewhere else to do the same type of work ESPN would be asking me to do. My articles already get called out on the site, so I'm not even losing online exposure by not being there. Being an on-air personality is the only carrot ESPN could offer me, and they won't even offer that to their own people. Meanwhile you go to the MLB Network, and you see them pushing their stat guys to put out online content through Cut4. They do podcasts, put out online videos, graphics, you name it. Not everything works out, but as they're trying new things. ESPN's attempt at doing something like this was to go out and hire Barstool. At this any personal issue I had with ESPN is water under the bridge. I just feel for anyone who went to work there thinking working under a false impression of what they getting into. Its not good when I bash ESPN on Twitter, and I get likes from ESPN employees.

I think in short what happened was the NL underestimated just how serious Bob Lurie was about selling the team to an owner that would move them out of San Francisco. For every franchise relocation that happens, there’s at least dozen others that get talked about, but never come to fruition. Most get shot down before you even start talking about a stadium. I think the NL just assumed the situation would solve itself, and that the talks between Lurie and Naimoli were more exploratory in nature than talking actual dollars and cents. When it became obvious that the situation wasn’t going to solve itself, and the team was set to move, then you see all this activity around keeping the Giants in San Francisco starting up. Why the deal got so far before being torpedoed I think can be chalked up a lot to poor communications on all sides. This is happening at the same time that the groundwork is being laid for the ‘94 strike, and you can see a lot of the same parallels of people not talking to one another being at the root of a lot of issues.