Last week, MLive.com, which covers ten cities in Michigan, laid off another 29 employees, which was hardly surprising. On Monday, Alabama beat Clemson to claim college football’s national title. These might seem completely unrelated, but I see a pattern here – and a warning for college football, if it’s smart enough to listen.
In 1835, local citizens who cared about Ann Arbor started a newspaper. It survived a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, radio and TV. It was still going strong well into the nineties, producing a robust 20-percent annual profit.
Did they invest the windfall back into the product, or the future? Did they take advantage of their unparalleled access to high school and college students, by getting them hooked on the newspaper habit with free samples the way Camel cigarettes and Budweiser would have killed to do, if they were allowed? Did they notice how Apple got its products into schools at great discounts, years ago, to get students into the habit?
No, The Ann Arbor News and its parent company cut reporters and travel budgets, and sucked out the profits for the owners and executives, while they scoffed at the Internet. In 1998 – 1998 – The Ann Arbor News employees still didn’t have email, and were given exactly one computer with Internet access. Your home probably had more.
When one of the corporate executives visited the chain’s paper in Kalamazoo, he saw a friend of mine doing research on their only Internet computer. The executive joked, “Ooh, you’re looking at porn!” He compared the Internet to the CB radio craze in the seventies, then pointed to the computer. “Exactly the same thing. The Internet’s a fad.”
The executive retired with a golden parachute, leaving my friends and their readers to suffer the consequences of his ignorance, arrogance and greed.
The chain assigned publishers and editors to The Ann Arbor News who weren’t from Ann Arbor, didn’t like Ann Arbor, and didn’t move to Ann Arbor, either. The paper they produced reflected that. They didn’t care as much about their employees, their readers, or their product as they did about their profits. They never seemed to grasp that those things are all connected.
They folded The Ann Arbor News in 2009, after 174 years. They brought the name back a few years later, with a fraction of the staff, and a smidgen of the quality. I know plenty of good, smart, hard-working people at MLive.com, but they’re not the ones running it.
So what’s this have to do with Monday’s college football game? Last year, college football set up the first four-team playoff in the sport’s 146-year history. The games were great, the ratings spectacular, the profits enormous.
This year, they held the two semi-final games on New Year’s Eve – and the ratings plummeted by 40-percent. Okay, the games were blow-outs, so they blamed that. But on Monday night, Alabama beat Clemson in a 45-40 thriller – and the ratings still dropped 23-percent. Now what do you blame?
I can answer that. They used to play the best bowl games on New Year’s Day, from noon to night, when everyone could watch. This year they started the title game at 8:30 p.m., on Monday, January 11th, a school night. The game ended after midnight. How many kids saw the game end?
You can trade tradition for novelty exactly once – and you can never swap them back, because tradition disappears as soon as you swap it. Just ask Major League Baseball, which started interleague play in 1997 to great fanfare, and now nobody seems to care. It’s been done.
College football is also losing future fans by playing their regular season games at noon, or 3:30, or at night – or on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. The networks don’t move around your favorite shows like that, for a reason: they’d lose their audience. Guess what’s happening to college football? Habits take a lifetime to form, and a weekend to break. I see thousands of fans breaking the college football habit every week, same way they broke the newspaper habit.
Ten years from now, the people running college football will be shocked – shocked! — to discover its audience is dying off, younger people are not replacing them, and attendance and ratings are falling. They will blame it on cell phones or the Internet or “kids today!” or just about anything but themselves – just like the former newspaper executives do now.
But when that happens, please don’t tell me it was inevitable, or unavoidable. The Ann Arbor Observer, a great monthly magazine, faced the same problems The Ann Arbor News did, but made the opposite decisions, including sticking mainly to its print version, and most important, actually caring about its employees, its readers, and its mission. The Observer continues to climb back from the low-point of the recession, and just gave out employee bonuses again at the end of the year.
On the electronic side, The Ann Arbor Chronicle did a great job, mainly by providing first-rate reporting and analysis of local government. The founders, Mary Morgan and Dave Askins, made money, too, but stopped publishing after six years simply because they decided it was time to do something else. Both publications have shown that it can be done, but only when someone is serious about doing it right.
So, when college football willfully creates the same problems newspapers have today, remember what the great Molly Ivins said about the demise of newspapers: “I don’t so much mind that newspapers are dying — it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.”
And that’s exactly how I feel about the people ruining college football.
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Great writeup John, one other major factor that I think will have a huge impact on the continued interest in the game is head trauma due to repetitive blows (not single major incidents). If I had young kids now I would have a very hard time encouraging them to develop an interest in the game, for fear that they may want to play it. While I did get my kids involved in higher risk sports, the unavoidable repetitive minor blows to the head that many football players experience is currently unavoidable, and has cumulative life long health and mental implications that will make it hard or any parent to encourage interest or participation in the game.
I hope technology solves this problem ( U of M is working on it see http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2014/07/helmet_sensors_that_detect_con.html), but if it does not, no matter what the teams or those that manage the various leagues and conferences do, football will lose the luster it currently enjoys and audiences will likely drop dramatically.
Message (Required)How much blame should fall on the shoulders of the fan ? We continue to pay the “seat fee ” plus the actual ticket price plus $4.50 for a bottle of water and no one complains ! Where is our accountability in this concern ?
College football has become so addicted to TV money that it has forgotten the student athletes, the students and the fans in the stands. This is a recipe for failure.
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Amen John. Didn’t Bo say something like football should be played at 1:00 on Saturday?
Thank you from all of us who miss the Ann Arbor News and the January 1st bowl games. In both cases the powers that be ignored tradition (which reminds me of a recent athletic director). Keep sending out your messages Message (Required)
Dear John:
All enterprises begin to fail when they lose sight of the needs of their customer. College football is fun to be sure, but it is not a necessity. When I first started going to Michigan football games in the early 1950’s, the stadium was usually about 60% filled yet we had stars like Ron Kramer and Terry Barr. The games were great fun to attend. If college football declines, the games will still be played and for those that like college football it will still be fun.
But the decline and death of a local newspaper is tragic in every respect. Without the local newspaper an important part of our governmental checks and balances is eliminated. There is nothing more scary to an elected politician than an investigative reporter showing up to ask a few questions.
My point being is that society can live comfortably with college football going into decline. But without the local newspaper we are blind to what is happening in our community and in our government. Local printed newspapers are, in fact, thriving across the United States, and should be thriving in Ann Arbor as you pointed out. I currently live in northern New Mexico. The little town of Espanola, NM is served by the Rio Grande Sun which is published twice weekly. Espanola is located in Rio Arriba County, a county known for its corruption and also for having the highest death by drug over dose in the U.S. It is worth taking a look at the Sun which is working constantly to hold elected officials accountable among other things. The Sun represents the best in printed journalism. Every local community needs and deserves a Rio Grande Sun especially a city like Ann Arbor.
Thanks for another excellent article.
John,
Michigan has the opportunity to return college football to relevance. Whether or not they do it, is entirely up to them. When Woody Hayes met with his team for the first time, this is what he said. “Anyone who is not here to get an education, can leave the room right now.” Start recruiting players who are in college to get an education, not a pro contract. Don’t tell me it won’t work until you have done it, not just for a season, but for a lifetime.
bomberjohn5
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John, great read! So true, so true! As Bo always said, football was to be played at 1:00 on Saturday. Don and Bo refused to schedule a night game. I know Don would be furious about the ticket prices too. The younger, future fans, are being priced out of the game.Message (Required)
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Good job, John. From a former Detroit News employee, it’s sad, the newspaper business that is.
And football? As long as they keep making money things will remain the same. We all remember the good old days. And memories is all we have.
Solid piece, John. What you describe is hardly surprising. How about that Rutgers addition to the Big 10? You know that the Big 10 conference basketball tournament is going to NY City and then to Washington DC after this year’s event in Indy. So much for making the tournament accessible to the conference fan base.
How about the migration of UM’s athletic facilities further away from campus? We’re going to raze revered Ferry Field and send Track & Field south on State St to where Tennis and Soccer now play. Yeah… it’s progress. And yeah, the facilities are beautiful and better equipped than what we have now. But I’m not sure it’s “better.”
Intercollegiate athletics is supposed to be, first and foremost, for the students. Right? Right…? (hello? anyone there?)
Makes me sad…
John,
Congratulations on an outstanding 2015, Endzone et al….plus a healthy baby boy!! But you still manage to measure up in the New Year with a thoughtful article like this one. Sounds like the “College Football powers that be” are developing an increasingly severe case of “Brandonitis”…..and we all know what happen to him! Maybe there’s an extended therapy gig for you with these guys?
In the meantime, thanks for all the thought provoking entertainment over the years! My mental reminder to feed the blog just popped into my head (it is January), so consider me re-upped for another year! I’m assuming at some point you’ll offer an automatic renewal! All the best in 2016! JDB
I have to believe that the CFP will be returned to New Year’s Day next year; in theory, they should be the last two bowls of the day. The championship game is another story. It always seems funny that it happens so long after the other bowl games; you’re literally on the verge of forgetting about college football when that game finally happens. But can the genie be put back in the bottle? Knowing the power of American tv money, I’d guess not…