From "As Sports Illustrated sputters, its owners throw a party for 'the brand'" (WaPo).
Authentic owns Sports Illustrated and has fired nearly the entire staff, but it held a big "Sports Illustrated" party. The CEO, Jamie Salter, had this to say to the 80 remaining staffers:
“When your magazine comes to your door, everything that’s in there, you and I already know about.... What I’m saying to these guys, you got to change the strategy a little bit. It’s got to be more about the highlights. ... Show us that Super Bowl catch. Like, how did he catch that ball? Like, the glue on his hands. ... Talk about that story. Talk about the real moments that I want to hold on to forever..... These guys should have a Super Bowl edition after the Super Bowl ... because I want to know about Kanye West getting kicked out [of a party]. I want to know about Kim Kardashian. ... Take a page out of entertainment. Why does my wife watch ‘Entertainment Tonight’? She wants to see all the stuff that’s happening. ... I can tell you I’m inside. I’m on the owners’ floors. I’m in the boxes where it’s all happening. It was unbelievable, but I saw it. You didn’t get to see it, so you don’t really know. You only know what you saw on social media. But I saw it all.”
I’m in the boxes where it’s all happening... ugh.
Top-rated comment over there: "What did I just read? These finance guys are a scourge, empty suits spouting made up nonsense, all to get access to cultural clout they had neither the talent nor the imagination to earn on their own."
Posts
29 comments:
I never dreamed of seeing "intellectual property" and Shaquille O'Neal in the same sentence.
None of this stuff interests me in the slightest, but if these people can make a buck off of it, what's it to me?
Know your audience is the rule for commercially successful writers, speakers, musicians.
If you pay any attention to the current culture, then you sense that Authentic understands its audience.
Of course we’re supposed to make fun of the private equity guys…private equity is finny nowadays. I sit at breakfast at The Newbury and half the room has someone saying they’re ‘in’ private equity, or their kid is. The woman with the tatts on her neck says she’s in private equity…anyways, SI was dead. Dead brands are resurrected all the time. Resurrecting once iconic brands murdered by woke seems a good strategy. It’s not like Disney is covering sports on their sports channels. Golf Channel just regurgitates what the PGA lawyers and strategists tell them to say…
Does HBS still write case studies? Death by woke would make a valuable lesson. As would buying iconic brands and getting them to do what they used to do…
With a name like authentic it has to be phony.
Authentic-ly Orwellian.
You want quality sports reporting? Find a bunch of good bloggers for your team/sport. It will take some effort to find the good ones. But once you find them, you'll find that the quality of their work will blow the legacy media out of the water.
And the contempt you feel for the MSM? That should extend to sports reporting, too.
Remember when somebody bought Playboy and tried to make it woke? That team of freaks they were using to promote the new thing…like the cast of Futurama or randos from a coffee bar on Mos Eisley
"The CEO, Jamie Salter, had this to say to the 80 remaining staffer..."
Cut to the chase. Learn to code.
Rocco's right. For instance, Don Cherry's hockey podcast is so much better than anything you ever read in Sports Illustrated. Sportsnet fired him for defending wearing poppies on Armistice Day, for Heaven's sake.
Remember when somebody bought Playboy and tried to make it woke? That team of freaks they were using to promote the new thing…like the cast of Futurama or randos from a coffee bar on Mos Eisley
Didn't know about that story. I thought whoever bought the rights to Playboy was simply making bank from bunny-logo beer coozies in the dollar stores. I couldn't imagine anyone trying to reinvent Playboy in the age of the internet when there's so much better porn available and it's free.
This is merely the latest in a long line of investor buyouts. Sometimes they make a lot of money and sometimes the investors are fools who lose everything. The value of any celebrity fades over time and without regular reintroductions to the mass market. If the living people want the cash now, who is to judge?
Anyone want a Fatty Arbuckle T-Shirt? Mug? Tattoo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Arbuckle
Meade writes, "Authentic-ly Orwellian."
Authentic is a common English word and pretty old; its etymology goes back to Archaic Greek if not earlier. Samuel Johnson included it in his dictionary. Shakespeare could have used it, though I can't think of an example right off the bat. Who did that corporation buy it from? The ghost of Homer? Did someone legally change his name to Larry Authentic and then sold his "brand rights"?
It is patently clear that Authentic™️ rides the crest of the same socio-economic wave with gender bullshit and foreign invaders styled as "migrants". Reality by decree. It is because the President says so. Lia Thompson is a woman because he says so. That flimsily stitched sport coat from Bangladesh made from recycled bicycle tires is a Brooks Brothers because the label says so. The fact that Authentic™️ claims to own exclusive rights to a common English word is perhaps the boldest lie of all, that is until the Once and Future President begins to wield that newly forged power more adroitly than Dylan Mulvaney stirs his bubble bath, then suddenly, like a mighty roller that crashes on the shoals only to fade into a hissing wash that barely wets the beach rover's toes, words will regain their proper place in the order of things.
Those 80 remaining staffers are all actively seeking work elsewhere.
SI never developed a TV operation, and its Internet presence was minimal. It died a long time ago. The limited pool of men who have any affection for that brand name are dying off too.
I think Howard has it right. It's the 'shame' side of the idea of exceptional Capitalism. A company is established, its product is loved, it grows into a near-staple popularity, then starts to fade in its ubiquitousness. The business heads take over and decide that manufacturing is a drag - time now to monetize the name and reputation, and cash checks. And the outfits like 'Authentic™️' take over, feeding on the carcass while under-informed consumer keeps buying the product name, as cost-cutting and profit-shaving systematically drives out the quality that name was known for.
I find the process a bit depressing, really.
Anecdotal story. Helping an elderly lady with her TV remote. Turned out the AA batteries leaked and ruined the connections. She was surprised good quality batteries would do that. I looked at the package: Sunbeam. Once an iconic American maker of top quality household appliances sold off to private equity in the 90s (Remember Chainsaw Al?). Brand name then licensed out to cheap Chinese makers of Dollar Store items such as the batteries this poor woman bought with the memory of what Sunbeam used to be.
Our Library still subcribes to SI. I picked up an issue and skimmed through it. Nothing of interest.
If you subcribe to ESPN or Cable TV, there's zero reason to read it. The Empty suit is actually telling the writers the truth. SI needs to write about stuff that's interesting and cant be shown on TV or discussed on ESPN's endless (and stupid) chat shows.
Fill a market niche. Because the old reason for SI went out with cable TV and the internet. All that's left is the old boomers who read it out of habit, after they've finished Newsweek, and reader's digest.
And SI needs to ditch their liberal establishment politics. But of course, they wont do that.
SI died years ago, just as Time and Life did. In its death throes, SI became disgustingly woke. In the 1970s and 80s I eagerly awaited its arrival in the mail on Thursdays. I read it cover to cover. It had great writers like Frank Deford and Dan Jenkins. In the 90s we moved overseas, and I let my subscription lapse.
In the 2010s, I thought I'd give it another try, because I had always enjoyed reading it. What a disappointment! It was full of Junior Woodchuck writers who mostly knew how to tell you obvious lies about human nature. I quickly canceled.
Did SI outlive its usefulness? Maybe. But there is always room for a great story about human endeavor well told. SI embraced piety rather than truth...and just faded away.
Blogger Wilbur said...
I never dreamed of seeing "intellectual property" and Shaquille O'Neal in the same sentence.
Why, Wilbur? Why does Shaquille surprise you but not David Beckham? Both are athletes and bot have ben very successful in their sports. Both have been able to monetize their brands outside playing the sport. Shaq is one of the wealthiest athletes of all time with a net worth of $500mm or so. Beckham, not as successful financially at about $50mm but doing OK.
I know very little about either and care even less but on the face of it, Shaq seems like a pretty intelligent guy. He did complete a college degree, Beckham didn't. For whatever that is worth.
Or is Beckham more intelligent because he is white? It that what you are saying?
And let's not get into a discussion of black vs white IQ. I accept that the black IQ curve is below the white one. I am much less accepting of what people think it means. And in any case, we are talking about individuals not groups.
John Henry
Fun fact abotu Shaq that I had not known. We need to call him Doctor O'neill. Just like our FLOTUS, he has a doctorate of bullshit. I mean education.
John Henry
Authentic is very inauthentic.
Yet more damage from 2 decades of near zero interest rates.
There are a lot of ways to make money, licensing brands is just one.
Good for them...
Michael said...
Similarity to Bell and Howell?
"Take a page out of entertainment. Why does my wife watch ‘Entertainment Tonight’? She wants to see all the stuff that’s happening."
He's saying that Sports Illustrated should be a sports tabloid.
Enigma said...
"The value of any celebrity fades over time and without regular reintroductions to the mass market.
*************
When I read that I immediately thought of this:
https://people.com/rod-stewart-sells-rights-song-catalog-nearly-100-million-8584062
WTF?
As they are focussed on extinct magazines and athletes whose careers are over, isn't this rather the financial equivalent of jackals and hyenas?
Once they fired all the employees, there was plenty of money to finance the parties.
Post a Comment