|
| 30 Apr 2006 11:42:08 pm |
 SOURCES AREN'T WHAT WE WANT, WE WANT ANSWERS |
|
|
There are times when I think of the hobby as official Washington. No one wants to go on the record, rumors persist everywhere and corruption is tolerated by “what really can we do about it?” Everyone hides behind a lawyer from agents to the CEO and SPIN is the order of the day.
As a reporter I hate to have to use “sources.” Some people think it’s cool. Those on the reporting side who think it is cool suffer from a lack of real integrity or knowledge of how the process works. It isn’t cool to use “sources” just so you can say “I have a source.” We want people to go “on the record.”
I have to laugh when someone tells me “sure I can tell you about it but it has to be off the record.” Then DON’T tell me about it. If you say it’s “off the record” that means I CANNOT use it! I don’t want to know what I can’t use because I may forget and slip and use it anyway, which in the end will come back to bite me. I’m not going there.
Like official Washington the hobby is a snake pit. For those who want to play the game you have to understand Washington rules. So here they are (with a little variance for transitional purposes from agency to agency).
On the record: I said it you can use it anywhere, it is fair game, even if I made a mistake and it slipped out.
Off the record: It means I’m telling you something you cannot use, you can’t refer to and I better not see it show up anywhere anytime unless I tell you otherwise.
On Background: Usually means you can quote the person directly as an administration official or in the hobby’s case an official at a card manufacturer who didn’t want their name used. They want the information to get out but they don’t want to do it officially.
On deep background: Usually means a source within the administration close to the situation who really doesn’t want their name used because it might get back to someone in the administration and cost them their job.
On deep, deep background: A source you trust who is in the know and who really is trying to give you the story but would lose their job certainly if they were found out.
These are the basic rules. You can see where international intrigue plays a part in official Washington and how these rules for reporters play into the game, and of course why they are necessary.
Unfortunately too many in the hobby/industry feel this industry is the same way. It’s not. There is no danger of some brand manager at Upper Deck outing a CIA agent. There won’t be a nuclear holocaust if a marketing guy at Topps answers questions about redemption cards. There is absolutely no way national security is jeopardized by the vice-president of Playoff answering questions about the company losing a license to make certain types of trading cards. It isn’t happening folks!
Now the above names and situations are not in anyway relating to anything which has happened in the recent past. I don’t want to give the brand managers at Upper Deck the impression they did something wrong and the same goes for the other scenarios. However, there are times in this hobby where it has happened and more recently than in times previous.
Look, this isn’t brain surgery. It is the trading card industry. This isn’t international intrigue. It is a hobby with lots of money being bandied about. And it isn’t life threatening but there is corruption, or shall we say just plain old slime. I’ll get into that in the next editorial. |
|
| |
Category : General
| Posted By : kckings |  Comments[0] |  Trackbacks [6196] |
|
|
| 24 Apr 2006 10:09:14 pm |
| LICENSING IS OUT OF CONTROL & NOTHING IS BROKEN, BROKN, BRCK |
|
|
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I probably don't have all the facts. Actually, I don't have all the facts, no probably about it. But in this case, I don’t think I really need them because the issue itself is much broader. It has to do with licensing.
If you are a fan of fantasy sports, I mean the kind of fantasy sports which is unlike your local Fantasy Football League; you will be interested to learn about what is happening to What If Sports.com. What If Sports or WIF is going to change drastically, immediately. The reason is licensing.
The web site offers fans the ability to take any player who played from 1985 to the current day and to put those players on a team, with a salary cap, and to play a fun and educational, albeit it often frustrating 162 game season. Statistics are adjusted, waiver wires, AAA players and even specialty leagues are all part of it. The cost is about $7 per team and you can play an exhibition season for free.
The site is so popular Fox Sports recently purchased it. It is extremely fun and for me personally it’s an escape which we often need in this busy world. The whole thing is licensed but there is a rub.
Evidently the licensing folks are wanting more and while few details are available the site announced 75-percent of all players listed on the site will remain, adjustments will have to be made to current players and some retired former recent major leaguers. This means someone wanted more money than they were getting. This probably involves the Major League Baseball Players Association which governs players’ rights and likenesses.
Strat-O-Matic ran into this problem a few years ago (the NFL and the NFLPA in the early 1990’s) and had to print player cards with stats but without the player’s names. The option was to negotiate with players individually and that meant the company would not survive. It would have to close its doors after for years providing fun, educational times to millions of fans. The same fans who support those players in every way possible including their dollars.
Now a site such as WIF Sports.com is forcing to change its format due to this same type of issue, again, although details are not being released. The site announcement and thread are on www.whatifsports.com if you care to follow more closely.
The broader matter of the entire mess is this; licensing has gotten out of hand. Way out of hand. I soon suspect if a child wants to make a game using major league player’s names and play it with his friends at school the licensors will send them a letter saying “cease and desist” until you sign a licensing agreement and pay royalties.
The same thing has happened in the trading card business. The business has been shrinking for several years. It is really because people who have a pay grade above distributor and certainly above hobby store owner have “NO CLUE” (read it right NO CLUE) as to what is going on, or how to make this a better business.
It starts at the top. The guys who license the manufacturers to make trading cards. I was recently told by one executive the manufacturers aren’t making enough money to survive if the current (2005) trend of jersey cards, autographs and the like were to continue. SO the baseball powers cut a manufacturer after even Fleer had gone under.
Here is a better idea; CUT THE ROYALTIES. Make it so the manufacturers aren’t paying $8 million to the baseball licensors and then requiring them to cut brands and to make more very cheap kid oriented brands. How about taking a lot less for the licensing fees for a couple years? It is not as if the players, whose salaries on the base are over $1 million, will miss the money. Cut the fees, give the manufacturers a break so they can make some money and pass on the discounts to the hobby stores who are the first in line to die.
How about a one year moratorium on fees? Ouch would that hurt? We doubt it. Oh someone might lose their job, but then again a little revolution is a good thing now and then, don’t you think?
Here is a disastrous scenario for you; Cut the number of brands from 80 to 40, make the company’s each pay say $8 million in royalties guaranteed, and how about we toss in they have to make about 25-percent of those 40 brands “kid oriented” maybe like $1.39 or dare I say .99 cent packs of trading cards.
Common sense says if you cut the brand number and then make a quarter of those brands low, low end whereas the company has very little margin and add the fact the business is shrinking not growing --- wow it doesn’t take a Harvard Graduate to figure everyone is going to make less money not more. Yet there it is, in a round about rounded out nutshell.
Are my numbers totally dead on accurate? No, but they are close. I may even get a call from some executive asking me where I got the numbers or, your numbers aren’t correct. I’ll ask as I have for years where are they wrong and will be told “we can’t tell you that.” It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway and the bottom line is as I said before;
“LICENSING IS OUT OF CONTROL!” |
|
| |
Category : General
| Posted By : kckings | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [19695] |
|
|
| 17 Apr 2006 09:09:53 pm |
| BARRY BONDS WILL CALL IT QUITS SOON |
|
|
Last year at this time I said Barry Bonds would call it quits. I was wrong, or was I? He may still and for about the same reasons I said last year. More than a year ago my feeling was Bonds would not want to put his family through what Hank Aaron went through in pursuit of the Babe. The dangers, the threats and the name calling. Bonds, in his ESPN show, said this has happened and showed examples of emails, or hate emails.
Bonds may be done but more for the reasons of injury. Players take steroids to bulk up and to keep the nagging injuries down. The latter is the good thing about steroids. They do help you recover from injury faster. This is a known fact.
However in building up your body with steroid use, the opposite happens when you go off them. The body breaks down quickly. Bonds today is struggling. Age? No, well not all of it. He is struggling because he hasn’t used steroids in a year. Let’s look at what steroids do for sluggers.
Maybe a guy hits the fastball on the sweet spot of the bat 45 times a year and it goes out 45 times. He hits it just off the sweet spot and it's a warning track fly ball. Add roids and that just missing the center of the bat warning track fly ball becomes a home run. You figure maybe 15-20 times a year? Hey that adds up to 65 homers or so. Wow!
Take away the steroids and he's a 45 hr guy.
The sad thing is now you see Bonds playing after having been off steroids for a year or so. Watching his body break down just like the others (McGwire & Sosa & Alzado & name it) just like it does with all steroids guys. The body breaks down. It is my opinion Bonds took last year off to get the drugs out of his system and build up his body naturally with weights and workouts extensively. He was hoping to come back and not see his body deteriorate. Guess what? It did anyway.
Put roids in: up goes the body. Take roids out: the body falls flat and starts to disintegrate quickly, very quickly.
Look at Bonds and tell me this hasn't happened. He can't hit the cheese and the pitchers are challenging him. They know he's done. I just hope he decides he needs surgery on the elbow (nearly a dozen bone chips) before he hits 714. Leave the Babe in tact, leave Hank out in front alone. We can all forget Barry Bonds and remember the player he was in 1996 heading toward the HOF. Then, and only then.
Barry; Choose wisely. |
|
| |
Category : General
| Posted By : kckings | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [9280] |
|
|
| 14 Apr 2006 11:38:45 pm |
| INSIDE MAN IS A FILM YOU WANT TO SEE |
|
|
Take five bona fide stars, toss them into a good script, add a solid director like Spike Lee and give them a unique plot and what do you have? I think we have a winner baby! Such is “Inside Man.”
Inside Man is a “Spike Lee Joint.” I’ve always liked Spike’s work. From “Do The Right Thing” to “Malcolm X” I’ve thought Lee does some really great things looking inside people and getting it right. Good people doing bad things and spelling out why, so as it makes you want to see them succeed. What he really points out is that there are two sides to every story and while sometimes he’s subtle about it, there are times he hits you over the head…but not as hard as Steven Spielberg – which in itself is a blessing.
In this film the head of the bank robbing gang is Clive Owen. It is about a heist. Or is it? Yes and No but I won’t spoil it because this film deserves a look, a full look. There are several things you will see in this film which you will soon see on shows such as Law and Order, and any other good crime show. You will also see it in real life because as art imitates life you will see some bank robber trying to pull this one off in Chicago, Pittsburgh or Des Moines. Bet the farm on it.
It is a story about social injustice and we learn early on some of the reasons for this which relate to World War II. More is revealed later as you hope it will be. It is about greed, it is about people of all kinds trying to do the right thing and there are some really funny lines in it too.
Bravo to Spike Lee and everyone in the film although I did consider Jodie Foster’s acting a little weak in her role. I really didn’t believe her. Denzel was much of the same character he always is and what we’ve come to expect from a DW role. Christopher Plummer is well, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe doesn’t have a big role but a pretty good one. That was nice to see for those of us who aren’t huge fans of Dafoe. It’s more of a character role for him almost. Owen? Clive Owen is great. The guy can play any role and carry it off. I liked him as King Arthur and he is the perfect guy to be the head of the bank robbing team in this one.
There was another small role which I really fell in love with. She was only on screen for a few moments in almost a throwaway role but she captured more than a few hearts. Florina Petcu plays the Albanian ex-wife of a construction worker called in to translate some talk the cops are hearing coming from inside the bank She is nothing less than gorgeous and while only has a couple other films to her credit could have turned some heads in this one.
Spike Lee has a way of coming up with little known actresses (Rosie Perez who danced through the credits in Do The Right Thing) who really make you remember the little bit you saw and make you want to see more of them. Florina Petcu is in this mold.
Altogether an insightful film, an entertaining film and one I highly recommend. It won’t bring home any Oscars but it will leave you remembering some things you probably never thought of in a heist movie. Beware. Don’t try this heist at home. |
|
| |
Category : General
| Posted By : kckings | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [9996] |
|
| |
|
|
|
