No Wonder There are Fewer TV Sports Viewers. Networks Have Driven Them Away

It's Saturday, a lazy one and too freaky hot during a typical Southern July to be outside doing much of anything.  

So what does one do? Watch sports on TV, of course.

Or do you?

I'm a cord-cutter. I don't have cable or satellite TV anymore and likely won't any time soon. Unfortunately, watching any sports requires you these days to at least have a service like Sling TV for a la carte network choosings, such as ESPN.  I've had that for a few years now.

But that's more effort than I'd like to make.  I like turning on the TV and there are sports.  Especially on a Saturday afternoon.  When I grew up, I could watch NASCAR, maybe an IndyCar race, a major league baseball game, or two, and other major sports pretty easily.  It's Saturday and that's what you'd do.

Today, that's not true.  I turned on the television today because for as long as I remember, Breakfast at Wimbledon, the championship matches for tennis biggest event, is on early in the morning on NBC.  Not now.

ESPN took over Breakfast at Wimbledon and they are forcing you to pay to watch it.  Or see it hours after you knew Venus Williams lost and how she lost, when they finally show it on ABC.

And major broadcasters and sports leagues are wondering why fewer people are watching sports on TV, especially the coveted younger viewer.  A magazine study found that the average TV sports viewer is getting older and older.  Baseball, which has done everything and nothing to make sure they've marginalized everyone but conservatives and/or white guy fans, has seen the average age of their TV watching fans go from 52 to 57 years old over the last decade or so.  The NFL - their average viewer is 50 (my age) and their number of viewers has dropped eight percent over the past year.

Pick a sport and the trend is the same.

Here is where I impart my wisdom.

I point to networks' insistence that you pay to watch sports on TV.  We ain't doing it.

People have tired of the high cost of cable and satellite TV and are turning away more and more.  But the networks are hell bent on making you watch sports on some niche network.  If you don't buy a ticket to attend, they think you are going to be a ticket to watch from your living room couch.  Well, we aren't doing it.

Still, on a Saturday afternoon when you used to be able to count on being able to watch some baseball or something, you get some B-level, X-game type sport on TV, if any sports at all.  There was NO baseball on network TV today.  Nada.  Nothing.  And won't be any on tomorrow.  Or the rest of the week.

So if fewer people are paying for cable or satellite, and millennials aren't sitting around dialing up Fox Sports South to watch a horrible Braves team, who is being cultivated as a fan?  Your audience will be the same conservative white guy types who are still thinking the good old days of the 1950s when lily white, not diverse and very closed to pretty much everybody else, is just around the corner. News to them: ain't gonna happen.  That's not America anymore and will never be.  We've evolved, thank goodness.

So your TV audience is not only getting smaller and older, and you're gaining no new audience members since you've pretty much locked out the people who would have grown up thinking about watching baseball that was easy to watch back in the 70s and 80s.  They have to pay for it.  Today's 24-year-old who didn't grow up with Monday Night Baseball at his fingertips for free, where he could have easily just said, "eh, I'll watch since its on," or could count on it being on, could care less if the Braves are on channel three-hundred-whatever.  

Networks stopped cultivating sports audiences and now they expect them to want to pay for a product that they haven't created a lifestyle for wanting to watch.   What idiot thinks that is going to change? It makes no sense.  Creating a bunch of millennial-focused shows where loud-mouths opine in some supposedly hip way about pretty much nothing newsworthy is not going to change that.  Believe me.

When the networks start programming sports on free TV REGULARLY, creating a lifestyle, a habit, for sports fans, more and more will watch again and the nearly 60 year old football fan will begin to start looking more like the athletes who are usually less than half that age.  There is a place for pay-TV sports.  BUT its not the be-all, end-all.  Today's sports fan is proving that.

Tonight, I was hoping for baseball on Fox.  Didn't happen.  But Premier Boxing was on, so I watched a couple of matches.  But by 10 p.m., the announcers said those lame matches were the undercard for whatever the main event was.  But the only way I could see it -- turn onto their affiliated cable channel Fox Sports 1, which, of course, I don't have.  End of my sports night, and all I got was a bad appetizer.

And they want me to watch sports on TV???

Clinton Win 25 Years Ago Results in Handel-Ossoff Campaign Mess

By ADD SEYMOUR JR. 

It’s ironic that it was 25 years ago this year that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton came out of nowhere and trounced Republican favorite George Bush to win the presidency.

It’s a race that Republicans never got over and it inspired a new kind of Republican Party.  It also ushered in a very troubling kind of American campaign system.

The result – no, not just Donald Trump - but the $50 million Jon Ossoff-Karen Handle battle for the 6^th Congressional District seat that covers the northern suburbs of metro Atlanta.

In what has been one of the country’s most painful, obnoxious and irritating Congressional races ever, it has been of prime importance to both major parties.  For Republicans, every seat in Congress keeps them in power and buoys the stink-filled Trump presidency.  For Democrats, any way to chip away at Trump and Republicans in power helps them in the long term.

But the lessons of the past 25 years have shown themselves in this local national election. 

Republicans decided not long after the saxophone-playing Clinton took the White House, Republicans realized they had to change.  Not only them, but how they related to the voting populace.  Clinton, a native Southerner, out-Southerned the Republican Party, and that became the final straw in what politics had been for the previous 20 to 25 years.

The wonk-ish way of talking to voters was over.  The idea that the other side had a version of being right was abhorrent. Who is right and is wrong is most important.  Not working together.  Us and them.  The lines had to be drawn and they had to be deep.

Talking points gave way to simplistic messages that fed emotional voting decisions, not rational ones. Labeling the other side with names such as “liberals,” “big government,” “tax and spend,” and using them at every point possible became the mantra.  No matter who the Democrat was.  That’s who they were.

At the same time, Democrats remained stuck in the mud. Maybe it was the Clinton presidency.  Maybe it was the fact that the nation was deeply enthralled in an economy that was chugging upward as information technology, cell phones and the Internet took over.   But the messaging was the same.  The talking points were the same. The campaign style was the same.  The Democratic Party was Al Gore, while the Republican Party was building something stronger with soldiers like Newt Gingrich.

The Gore-ish style has been a loser.  The Southern Strategy, Part Deux, simply made all of the nation’s changing style one in which it became immoral, costly, unsafe and un-Christian.  

Campaigning changed with it.  Look at the Handel-Ossoff campaign.

Ossoff started off with commercials that didn’t mention Republicans.  It was about fixing overspending by both parties and keeping the nation safe by tapping into his national security experience.

His plan: be the man in the middle that most Americans, those in the middle who have tired of the politics of fear and hate, that will fix the ills of both parties while doing what Republicans say they are best at – keeping us safe and saving us money.

Problem one is he sounded a bit wonkish.  Problem two is he didn’t currently live in the 6^th District, even though that’s not a requirement and he did in fact grow up in the District. Problem three, Ossoff overstated his national security experience, though it wasn’t that big of deal.

But it was fuel to the Republican fire.  Handel, buoyed by money from outside the District (so was Ossoff but far from as much money as Handel got from Republican coffers), leaped on Problems two and three.  And never let it go.  Handel could have been a piece of bacon, a banana, an oak tree, or a can of soda.  At best, she has been a loyal Georgia Republican.  Mainly, she has climbed the Georgia Republican tree, accomplishing nothing more than name recognition.  One of her ads touted one of the issues that she championed was voter fraud.  Problem is, voter fraud has never been a problem in Georgia.  That was a national strategy to push Voter I.D. laws that made it tougher for mostly Democratic voters to participate in this American process.

Anyway, she and her national money leaped on Ossoff’s problems two and three and hammered them endlessly.  Endlessly.  Television ads rarely touted Handel. They called Ossoff a liar who is a liberal, would raise taxes, would only vote for Democrats and didn’t have “our values.”  Nancy Pelosi in California was his closest ally, according to these ads, as was a complete lack of knowledge in keeping America safe.

No facts.  No truth.  Nothing even cited. Didn’t matter.  It was all about getting the same Republican base angry at the immoral Democratic Party who wants to take away the guns of Americans, raise their taxes and push the nation into the brink of a cataclysmic bankruptcy.

Meaning, the politics of fear.  The emotions coming from someone taking away from REAL Americans who work hard while the other side wants welfare, health care and everything else for nothing. 

Ossoff is like other Democrats – swing back a little (his ads talked about her accomplishing little in each political office she’s had and even using a taxpayer financed Lexus for herself), but hardly with the verve of the new Republican Party.  

Ossoff’s ad spending paled in comparison to Handel’s.  A commercial break in Georgia would be an ad of older people calling Ossoff a liar and liberal without even trying to use facts to back that talk up. And then before a commercial break ended, the same ad again.  Over and over and over again.  Ossoff’s ads were numerous, but far less so. Look it up.

So the lessons of the past 25 years have had their impact.  It’s the campaign strategy based on messaging and emotions versus the campaign of a little of that, but more of the wonkish talk that meant George Bush and not Al Gore.

It’s a sad state of American politics. The Republican Party and their campaigning on fear and untruths and getting people to vote “against” and not “for,” is torpedoing our Republic. It is stoking the fire of a divided America. The us against them dividing line they have drawn is killing this great nation.

Democrats aren’t much better as they are slow to move and slow to represent.  And slow to represent some of the issues that are credible Republican concerns. 

Our country’s major political parties are failing Americans.  Because of it, America is failing.

It’s a damn shame. 

Change Your Ways to Compete or Close

If you read the letter that is posted here, you will see that Stillman College, a historically black college in Alabama, is in a dire situation.  This letter tells alumni and supporters that if they don't get immediate help paying back a $39 million loan to the government, Stillman may have to close their own doors.

I have a number of thoughts on this, some probably not popular.  But I am a realist and it's time to face facts.

I think there are too many HBCUs in this nation.

Before you get into your emotional, knee jerk feelings, lets look at why I say this.

HBCUs have served a great need in this nation for students who were not always able to attend predominantly white institutions and for students who need a different kind of educational experience, or want a different kind of educational experience than what predominantly white institutions can provide.  That need is still sorely needed.

But of the roughly 107 HBCUs in this country (two of them, Bluefield State and West Virginia State, are actually predominantly white HBCUs that are 75 and 72 percent white), a growing number are struggling just to keep their doors open.

That is a huge problem.

Why is this happening?  Mainly it's funding. Schools like Stillman, which has 750 students, are private and not privy to state funding (which has been unfairly dwindling for public HBCUs in most states).  Many are still run on a funding model that is based way too much on tuition and fees.  If they raise their already private school fees, then students and their parents are more often now being forced to make economic decisions.  Big State is going to much cheaper than Private HBCU.  And the student loan situation in this country isn't what it used to be.  They are much harder to get now than they were in the 1980s or nineties.   So fewer students mean less money rolling in on tuition and fees which means the bills aren't getting paid.

At the same time, HBCUs are having to compete for students like they never have before. The decades-long selling point of being the black place of last resort, or being a place that a black student will truly be focused on, isn't playing to the millennial class as it did to Baby Boomers.  They just don't think that way, although the recent issues black men have had with police in this nation, along with the Black Lives Matter movement, has led to a slight uptick in some HBCU applications.

But, for example, when predominantly white institutions like Kennesaw State University, Florida State University, the University of Georgia, or UCLA offer some sort of African American Male Initiative program, it forces HBCUs to have to step up what they are doing as they not only have to compete with predominantly white institutions for students based on facilities, programs, etc.  They are also increasingly having to compete on a level of focus as non-HBCUs are now starting to look at trying harder to attract, retain and graduate black students -- though most still have a looong way to go with that.

But how does a school compete for students today?

Part of that dilemma has been the fault of HBCUs.  Many have spent far too long in doing what Morehouse College President John Silvanus Wilson Jr., said while he was executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs: they were playing the violin instead of playing the trumpet. Meaning they were still talking more about what ails them instead of extolling what they are great at doing.

While that is true, even truer is some have not found a specific niche to be able to extol.  Students are looking for a high quality education that allows them to compete for high paying jobs.  While many HBCUs are focused on keeping doors open, they lag further and further behind in being able to compete on a foundational basis in 2017.

Don't get me wrong or twist me out of context here.  There are a great number of HBCUs that are competing and in some ways outperforming predominantly white institutions. I can run off a long list of them.  But there are a number that just aren't able to in 2017.  If you can't provide basics, such as wireless internet, or up-to-date food offerings, how are you going to pour money into needed liberal arts upgrades of high technology science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs that students are asking for?

The sad answer is many cannot.

That's why you see schools with 750 students struggling to keep their doors open. Cash-strapped and bells-and-whistle-wanting students want more. You can't just be an HBCU that is just an HBCU and expect to compete for students -- and donors -- anymore.

So what has to happen?

Unless the HBCUs that are struggling find a way to solve the funding dilemma so they can focus and compete, some likely need to close.  Tuition and fees-driven funding models are not going to work anymore.  When student populations dip, so does funding. What do you do then?

Ask Stillman College.

Or Morris Brown College. Or Knoxville College. Or St. Paul College.  Or Bishop College. Or Friendship College. Or Kittrell College. Or Mary Holmes College.

The Black President Joke of Centuries Became Real

By ADD SEYMOUR JR.

For my generation - and those before mine - it had always been a joke about one day (or never) there would be a black president.  Turn the White House black.

In countless songs, from the blues to R&B to rap, in sooo many scripts of television shows or movies and in the pages of books from all kinds of authors, whether or not there could or would be a black president was either a joke or a pipe dream that few thought would REALLY happen.

Oh, there was pride when Shirley Chisholm became the first African American to be a major party candidate presidential candidate when she ran in the Democratic presidential primary in 1972.  And many middle class Americans were energized and Grandmaster Melle Mel wrote a rap that became a very popular song "Jesse" when Jesse Jackson was a candidate during the Democratic presidential primaries.

And I'm not talking about people like Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Allen Keyes and others whose candidacies were seen by most as props for a party that really didn't support them and used them for publicity and a fake effort at diversifying a ballot.

I'm talking about candidates who inspired black Americans to think, "hey, this old joke could.... naaah."

Lo and behold, it happened.

I didn't support Barack Obama's effort when as a one-term U.S. Senator from Illinois, his main claim to fame was a great speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.  I knew nothing about him and he hadn't made any dent in the national conversation prior to his run.  I supported his opponent who I was familiar with.  Hillary Clinton had been around local, state and national politics for decades, backed issues such as universal health care and seemed like a good choice to me.

But when it came time to go to the booth for the presidential primary after watching and listening to Obama's campaign, there was no way I could vote against this brother who for the first time made that old black joke, that long time line of hopeful to hopeless thinking, actually be reality.  I voted for him and have ever since.

Yes, because he's black.  But not just because he's black.  There have been plenty of others who were black.  But the presidency, the presidency of the United States, for the spot as the leader of the free world and head of the world's largest superpower, I needed more.  He proved that he was more than a great black candidate.  He earned my vote.

And the support of me and many many others worldwide before, during and after eight years of serving as president of the United States.  

Yet as I write this less than an hour before he leaves office to someone who is the polar opposite of him - white, non-graceful, undignified and truly unqualified - I have to take pause.  Our nation is polarized, mainly by forces who have used race as a dividing line and a wedge to keep themselves in power.   They've used the sadness and fear that shrouds many white Americans to turn our proud nation into red and blue states, us against them.

Those forces spent eight years doing everything, from Day One when Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said the Republican Party's priority would be to make sure the next president would not be a Democrat, to working towards making the first black president's tenure everything but a success. They fanned flames of hatred, racism and and partisianship rooted in and halves and full untruths to turn fact into fiction and completely fool a lot of hurting people.

But it could never turn Barack Obama's two terms as president into anything deemed unsuccessful by the open mind.

He proved he was more than qualified and was a great president despite the efforts to dent his work.

However a large part of his presidential tenure has to be viewed as what he did for black America. Not talking about the silly, misguided and self-serving efforts by so-called black intellectuals such as talkers and fame-seekers Cornell West, Tavis Smiley and others.

What Barack Obama did for black America was prove that no matter what we've seen for decades upon decades, centuries even, as a joke of a pipe dream, could really be a truism, even in this racially, politically charged mess that America has become.

He proved with dignity, intellect and style that the joke was part of our own evolution.

With hope, we have changed for the better.