Mediaboss Marketing

By POLITICO MAGAZINE

06/17/2022 09:00 AM EDT

Updated 06/19/2022 08:05 AM EDT

Illustration by Jordan Kay

It was 1892, and James G Blaine Sr. was about to charge into the greatest political battle of his life just not the battle he expected. Blaine was challenging President Benjamin Harrison for the Republican nomination, but his true opponent that election year would be an aspiring actress named Mary Nevins Blaine.

At the age of 19, after an 18-day courtship, she eloped with James 17-year-old son, Jamie, who he described as the the most helpless, least responsible of his children. When things inevitably turned sour, she sought a divorce which threw her, her family and Blaines political campaign into the epicenter of the turn-of-the-century culture wars.

In this excerpt from her book, The Divorce Colony: How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier, April White tells an historic tale that sounds straight out of the social media era complete with private investigators, press frenzies, political strivers and PR battles that pitted a resourceful young woman against a seasoned elder statesman.

[He has a] Ph. D. degree from Achesons College of Cowardly Communist Containment and is a weakling, a waster, and a small-calibered Truman.

Can you guess who said this about Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.*

Kimberly Scott opened Chronic City in Detroit. But just six months later, she locked the doors to her business for good. | Sylvia Jarrus for POLITICO

Detroits Weed Woes In February 2021, Kimberly Scott finally achieved her dream of opening a medical marijuana business in Detroit. She saw it as much more than just a place to buy weed it was also a blow against the decades-long War on Drugs that treated cannabis as a menacing scourge and disproportionately targeted Black people like her.

But weeks passed and then months and the license promised by the city never came. Struggling to compete with recreational weed businesses near Detroit, Scott locked the doors to her business for good, just six months after she opened them.

In this deep-dive report, POLITICO Cannabis Editor Paul Demko examines the judicial battles that have stopped Detroit from launching a recreational market that gives preferential treatment to long-time residents or people living in areas disproportionately targeted by criminal enforcement. The result, he writes, is a still-born market where everyone is failing.

Politico illustration / AP Photo / iStock

The General and the FBI Its a classic Beltway scandal: Retired Marine General John Allen resigned as president of the Brookings Institute this week over accusations that he lobbied for the government of Qatar.

Despite Allens 2019 announcement that Brookings would phase out money from non-democracies Qatar was one of its largest donors it turns out that his entire run atop the capitals leading liberal think-tank was shadowed by a trip he took to the emirate just months before ascending to the presidency. Michael Schaffer reports in this weeks Capital City column.

Fifty years after a group of well-dressed burglars were arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate, there's still a lot we don't know. Heres how to seem up to speed on all the wild circumstances surrounding the break-in. (From magazine contributor Garrett Graff)

- Sorry, Nixon defenders. Nixon probably didn't know anything about the DNC burglary in advance. BUT he's on tape repeatedly ordering another break-in, the year before, when he wanted to firebomb and burglarize the Brookings Institution.

- I mean, yeah, retaping the door at the Watergate might have been a mistake by James McCord, but maybe it was part of a CIA operation to sabotage the burglary.

- You can always whisper, conspiratorially, Don't tell me it was just a bugging operation. Since he died last year, though, we'll never know why burglar Eugenio Martinez had a key to Ida Wells' desk at the DNC.

- You, like the rest of D.C., are glad to see Martha Mitchell finally getting her due. Maybe if America had listened when she said Nixon's goons kidnapped and drugged her after the burglary, his presidency would have unraveled faster.

Illustration by Tyler Comrie

Experimenting on Elites Railing against the elites has become a popular sport on both the left and the right. The two sides might see politics in radically different ways, but they share a common presumption: To understand whats gone wrong with American democracy, you have to understand how elites think.

But how, exactly, can we get inside the heads of Americas political elite? Thats what POLITICOs Ian Ward asked political scientists Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Renshon, authors of a new paper on the use of elite experiments or randomized studies using elite subjects to study the decision-making processes of political leaders. How do elites weigh their options? What do they get wrong? And how on earth do we fix it?

39 percent of voters dont know which political party Matthew McConaughey favors. Twenty-seven percent believe hes a Democrat, while 18 percent think hes a Republican and 16 percent have him pegged as an independent.

Every week, The Weekend inserts a question in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll and see what the crosstabs yield. Got any suggestions? Email us at [emailprotected].

When D.C. Paid Reparations to Enslavers In April 1862, three years before the emancipation of the last enslaved people in Texas now celebrated on Juneteenth, Congress passed a law to free all enslaved Black people in Washington D.C. Barely a year after the start of the Civil War, President Lincoln intended to set an antislavery example in the nations capital.

The emancipation effort even included reparations just not for formerly enslaved Black people. In D.C.'s emancipation, enslavers were paid significant compensation for their lost property, writes Kris Manjapra in this weeks History Dept. The freed Black people not only received no reparations but also experienced ongoing governmental neglect and exclusions, [ensuring] ... the disadvantages of slavery would continue to be passed down, not ended, after slaverys end.

Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

Floral arrangements sent to Richard Nixon after his resignation on August 8, 1974, following the Watergate scandal. The bouquets sat in a storage room in Nixons Western White House, San Clemente, California, two days after his announcement of his departure.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first, he said during a televised address announcing his resignation.

Despite his 24 percent approval rate at the time, media reactions to the speech were generally favorable: Dignity was emphasized, wrote journalist Fred Emery.

**Who Dissed? answer: Stevenson was pummeled with these quotes from then-vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon before he was pummeled again by Dwight Eisenhower in the election. Achesons College was a reference to Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State under President Truman who had been targeted as a Communist by Joseph McCarthy. Stevenson had choice words for Nixon, too, saying he was the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree and then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of POLITICO Weekend misspelled Ida Wells' name.

View post:
The divorcee vs. the diplomat- POLITICO - POLITICO

This piece first appeared in the New York Jewish Week and was distributed by JTA.

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke to a conference of Jewish conservatives in New York on June 12, he leaned heavily into the themes that have put him on the short list of likely 2024 Republican presidential contenders: His targets included transgender rights, Critical Race Theory and, above all, wokeness, which he called a cancer that will ultimately destroy the U.S. if unchecked.

That speech earned him hearty applausefrom the 700 people who attendedthe Jewish Leadership Conference, hosted by the Tikvah Fund. Where similar gatherings of right-of-center Jews have tended to focus on defending Israel and public funding for private schooling, the Tikvah conference schedule leaned heavily into the culture wars.

Throughout the daylong event held at Chelsea Piers, multiple speakers said that wokeness threatens to destroy the very foundations that Judaism and America have been built upon.

Speakers offered various definitions of wokeness, although the consensus was that it is a far-left ideology that promotesgay and transgender rights, teaches about race in ways that undermine patriotism, and seeks the cancellation of those with opposing ideas.

In a panel entitled How To Fight Back Against Wokeness, New York Post columnist John Podhoretz ridiculed a teacher who listed their pronouns in an email, which caused the room to erupt in laughter.

Youre getting an email where your kids teacher has pronouns that dont even make internal sense, Podhoretz said. Phil Smith, He/They. What does that mean? She/They. They and Them. It doesnt make any sense.

In a panel discussing wokeness, @nypost columnist @jpodhoretz gets confused about pronouns. pic.twitter.com/OaBJuj2xPT

Jacob Henry (@jhenrynews) June 12, 2022

On the same panel, former New York Times editor Bari Weiss wholeft her high-profileposition due to what she called bullying and an illiberal environment and now runs a newsletter dedicated, in part, to exposing how progressives have stifled free speech said that woke ideology is an attempt to undermine what it means to live in America.

What it stipulates is that we are not ourselves, Weiss said. We are not to judge people based on their merit and character, but on the lane that we are born into their racial lane, their sexual orientation lane, the lane of their gender and zip code. Once youre in that lane, youre not allowed to leave it.

She called cancel culture the justice system of this un-American revolution and that due process and equality are now up for grabs.

If you dont go along with it, youre a bigot, Weiss said. It tries to uproot the very foundations that have made this country so exceptional.

Certainly, Israel was on the days agenda.

The age of Jewish liberalism is ending, Tikvah Fund CEO Eric Cohen said in his opening remarks. He added that conservatism is good for the Jews, as it fights for religious freedom, school choice and an independent Jewish state.

Still that fight including efforts to combatcampus campaigns to boycott Israelalso appeared to be waged under the banner of anti-wokeness.

In a discussion titled What is Conservatism? Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony came perhaps the closest to explaining why conservatives think wokeness threatens support for Israel, fosters antisemitism and threatens Jewish well-being in general.

He said that there is a ferocious competition in what values will succeed classic liberalism in the West. He warned that woke ideology is the most successful at the moment and thats not a good thing. It is extremely hostile to God and scripture, Hazony said. To tradition of any kind, to Christianity and to Judaism, and to the independent nation state of Israel.

In a speech titled Israel, America and the Middle East, former Israeli Ambassador to the United StatesRon Dermerspoke out against the few dozen protestors who picketed DeSantiss appearance at the conference, mostly over legislation he has pushed to limit classroom discussions of LGBTQ issues. Dermer said the protesters were angry about a position [DeSantis] has on whether or not you should teach transgenderism to 8-year-olds.

For the protesters, however, what the conference speakers derided as wokeness was the struggle for social justice and human dignity. Sophie Ellman-Golan, communications director for Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, a left-wing group, told the New York Jewish Week that language coming from a Jewish conference ridiculing the LGBTQ community is surreal.

Desantis addressed his Dont Say Gay bill saying that kids in school shouldnt have woke gender ideology jammed into their curriculum. pic.twitter.com/39rBSLarDC

Jacob Henry (@jhenrynews) June 12, 2022

Nazis went on the attack specifically against queer and trans people, Ellman-Golan said. Its disgusting to see Jews go along with this.

This type of language is a specific effort to make it impossible for trans and queer people to exist, she added.

Tikvah Fund Chairman Elliot Abrams, a former foreign policy official under Presidents Trump and George W. Bush, told the New York Jewish Week that he would not discuss politics when asked to respond to criticism that DeSantiss rhetoric threatens LGBTQ people.

However, one attendee, Ruth Freeman, who flew in from Chicago, said DeSantiss speech felt political.

I felt like he was campaigning, Freeman told the New York Jewish Week. It was a little bit of a laundry list of everything hes done in Florida.

Although the majority of those in attendance appeared to be age 50 and older, the conference seemed to focus on cultivating conservative values for a younger generation. The Tikvah Fund, whoseboard of directors includes a number of prominent Jewish conservative philanthropists and former Republican officials, runs summer fellowships for high school and college students, an Israel-based program for yeshiva students and public policy seminars for accomplished professionals.

Cohen noted in his opening remarks that nearly 100 student leaders and young professionals were in attendance, calling them the heart and soul of the Tikvah project.

These young people are models of Jewish promise and Jewish courage, especially in the great battles that are now underway in our colleges and universities, he said.

In an email sent out to attendees after the conference, he wrote that educating the rising generation of Jewish leaders is Tikvahs core purpose.

In his roughly 30-minute speech, DeSantis called out teachers who allowed their kids to change their gender pronouns, spoke out against Critical Race Theory and how it is distorting history and joked that he couldnt accept the idea that a man can get pregnant.

Desantis speaks out against Critical Race Theory.

We are not going to teach our kids to hate our country, he said. pic.twitter.com/a8wLVIvVBs

Jacob Henry (@jhenrynews) June 12, 2022

In another speech that also felt like the start of a presidential campaign, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed a wide range of topics, from building relationships with Arab countries to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party.

When Pompeo spoke, he was being political, but more nuanced, Freeman said.

View original post here:
'Wokeness' is Enemy No. 1 at conservative Jewish Leadership Conference - The Jewish News of Northern California

After the volatile arguments about restrictions and mandates that dominated the pandemic, Kentucky Republicans were always going to make the 2023 gubernatorial race one big messy and emotional tirade against Gov. Andy Beshear.

But, when state Rep. Savannah Maddox from Dry Ridge officially entered the race on Monday, it became pretty clear a dominant Republican strategy is going to be straight-up crashing and burning every issue directly into fearmongering, buzzwords and opportunistic, divisive culture wars.

We remember Beshears lockdowns and mandates, Maddox says in her first campaign ad. We wonder how this could have happened in America. Its not leadership, its tyranny.

The ad accuses the governor of damaging the economy, keeping kids away from classrooms and infringing on the right to practice our Christian faith.

Theres no mention of the deadly virus that led to the shutdowns. Not one. Because, for her purpose, theres no sense in making people remember reason its just more effective to capitalize on fear, because thats the playbook.

Maddox, who sits at the far-right wing of state Republicans, groups herself into the liberty movement, one of the newest sprouts of the Tea Party tree that recently caused a few upsets of longterm Republican incumbents during the primary election in May in Northern Kentucky.

The liberty sect of the Republicans came into the limelight during the COVID shutdown, the same time when Maddox was at her most controversial. In May of 2020, Kentucky Democrats called on Republican leaders to censure Maddox after she riled up a crowd which included 3 Percenters who were angry with the governor in front of the Capitol. Democrats argued that Maddoxs actions intensified the actions of the protesters, who, on a later day, hung an effigy of Beshear from a tree. She also caught some heat after posing with a man who flashed a white supremacist hand gesture in their photo.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the other high-profile candidate on the early Republican ticket for governor, is set to bring the same sort of battle to Beshear, although in a more subtle way. In 2020, Cameron sued Beshear over COVID-19 measures and whether or not the governor overstepped his executive authority.

Andy Beshear is not uniting Kentucky, Cameron said in his first campaign ad. This governor does not reflect our values.

Cameron, a Mitch McConnell protege, comes from the school of being careful with your words and aggressive with your power plays.

Its an interesting juxtaposition, Cameron and Maddox, because it seems like the GOP is hedging its bets. The plan is to clearly paint Beshear as a power-hungry extremist, but theyre going to beta test in the primary who they want their artist to be, an unpredictable mad-dog candidate in Maddox that can inflame and distort, or a more smooth and manipulative candidate in Cameron, who has more poise and charm.

Either way, the attacks are incoming, but their information war is going to be uphill.

According to a Morning Consult poll in April, Beshear is the most popular Democratic governor in America, with 59% of registered voters in Kentucky approve of Beshears job performance while 36% disapprove.

Plus, its hard to think back on the early stages of the pandemic or the aftermath of the tornado damage in Western Kentucky, and not recall Beshears sincerity and dedication. On the economic front, theres the historic battery park investments and wildly low unemployment rate. And anyone calling a Beshear a radical liberal doesnt have their finger on the pulse of the political spectrum.

At this point, theyre just seeing what faulty narratives can stick.

Keep Louisville interesting and support LEO Weekly by subscribing to our newsletter here. In return, youll receive news with an edge and the latest on where to eat, drink and hang out in Derby City.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Go here to read the rest:
Savannah Maddox And The GOP Are Bringing Culture Wars To The Governor's Race - Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO Weekly)

TRANSGENDER cyclist Emily Bridges has become the latest person to attack the Prime Minister.

And, in doing so, may have shown him a route to winning the next General Election.

7

7

Boris Johnson said biological men should not compete against women in sporting contests.

This, of course, upset Bridges, who was born a bloke and claims to have received death threats after Boriss intervention.

If so, that is horrible and to be utterly condemned.

This weird culture war over transgenderism often gets nastily personal. It should not.

Transgender people deserve as much love, respect and freedom from discrimination as everybody else in society.

But it still does not mean that a man who transitions actually is a woman.

That is a denial of scientific fact.

Its all there in the chromosomes and the muscles and the testosterone and the bone structure. Boris, for once, was right.

And I would bet at least 90 per cent of the population agree with him about that.

This demand to have men competing against women in sport, and transitioned men in womens prisons, is driven by a very loud, very shrill, tiny minority.

And I reckon the general public dont like it one bit.

They are on the side of Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who also gets death threats for suggesting such a thing as a woman exists.

The Conservatives have been spectacularly useless in standing up for common sense in this so-called culture war.

It was under the Conservatives that more and more children were subjected to life-changing transitional treatment at the Tavistock clinic, with the row over when young people can consent to this sort of thing going all the way to the Court of Appeal.

Its under the Conservatives that pro-trans propaganda gets fed to our kids in schools.

The Conservatives have done nothing to stop the ludicrous decolonising of university subjects and national institutions.

All because these are sensitive subjects and the Tories dont want to get themselves into trouble.

But the voters know exactly what a woman is: An adult human female, with a cervix (and often a large collection of shoes).

Transgender people deserve as much love, respect and freedom from discrimination as everybody else in society. But it still does not mean that a man who transitions actually is a woman.

They dont like children being force-fed progressive idiocies by teachers echoing the awful Stonewall campaigning organisation.

They are proud of their country.

They believe in freedom of speech and the right to offend.

Voters in the Red Wall seats are especially hot on the subject. I know because I live in one of them. And at election time, I knock on doors asking them.

Labour and the pointless Lib Dems both sign up to all the progressive culture-war b****cks.

So this is Boriss chance to put clear blue water between his party and the rest.

Roll back the measures introduced that advance the case of transgendered people while discriminating against women.

Stick up for freedom of speech. Tell the race campaigners we are proud of our country and its history, even if we made mistakes in the past.

Take a stand on these issues.

And then maybe, just maybe, some of those deserting voters will come back into the Conservative fold.

7

AND so Boris wants us to draw a line under everything and move on. With almost half of the parliamentary party against him.

I, for one, dont doubt the BBC and ITV, who hate Boris, overdid the Partygate stuff.

I dont doubt, either, a lot of the hatred towards him in his own party is because of Brexit.

But he should still have gone.

Apart from anything else, that would be about the only way the Tories can win the next election.

My suspicion is he will go sooner rather than later.

Something new will come out. It always does, with Boris.

FOR a long time Ive thought that once our Queen has gone, the monarchy will have had it.

And yet there was a magnificent turnout for Her Majs Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

7

Thats the silent majority of this country, for once turning out and letting their voices be heard.So maybe theres some life left in the institution yet.

I just wish we could maybe skip a generation and move on to Prince William.

Hes a bit earnest and not exactly packed to the brim with charisma.

But there is something quietly likeable about the bloke, and he seems to take his duties seriously.

IF I had to make a list of people I really dont want to become Prime Minister of this country, Jeremy Hunt would definitely be in my top 20.

Somewhere between Nicola Sturgeon and Harry Maguire.

7

What do I dislike about him? Well, first and foremost, his politics.

He was a devout Remainer over Brexit.

And hes a liberal. A liberal with the same arrogance as those other clapped-out old liberals, Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine.

Also, hes got one of those smiles which seems to say: Im smiling at you right now, but look away for a moment and Ill set fire to your puppy.

Hes the favourite of the Tory Remainer fringe.

Let us hope to hell he stands no chance of getting the job.

Should it ever become available.

IS the new series of Love Island being run by the old white government of South Africa? It was like apartheid.

The paired-off couples were strictly segregated by a viewer vote. Black with black, white with white.

It was like watching a scene from Alabama in the 1950s.

Maybe they should have separate areas for the black and white couples to dine in, too.

Utterly bizarre.

HERES a question for you.

If the presence of Sudan, Pakistan, Libya and China on the United Nations Human Rights Council has not persuaded you the UN is an absurd waste of time and money, what will?

How about the country that now has leadership of the UN-backed Conference On Disarmament?

Guess which one it is.

Go on.

I bet you can do it.

Yep, North Korea.

I GAVE up smoking last year without much of a problem.

Id been on almost 60 a day for the best part of 45 years, and giving up was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.

7

But I dont regret having smoked for all that time even if it did sometimes mean weird black stuff came out of my lungs every so often.

I enjoyed it.

I knew it wasnt great for my health but I thought the risk was worth it.

So Ive got mixed feelings about this plan submitted to Health Secretary Sajid Javid to raise the age at which you can smoke to 21.

There are lots of ways we injure our health lack of exercise, eating family packs of Doritos, getting p***ed and so on.

And I still think it should be down to the individual to decide what he or she intends to do, not government.

ENGLAND manager Gareth Southgate got a lot of praise from his mates in the Press for his substitutions in the game against Germany.

Why? All he did was bring on a player Jack Grealish who should have been on right from the start.

7

Im telling you right now: We will not win a tournament under that man.

And the knee-bending stuff has become utterly ridiculous.

Meanwhile, we had to endure Channel 4s awful coverage of the game.

It was woker than a newborn baby at three oclock in the morning.

The producers no longer care about what the on-screen pundits say and how useful they are to the audience just as long as its politically correct.

Go here to read the rest:
Fight the culture wars, Boris, and you could win the next General Election... - The US Sun

Like clockwork, the NBA Finals TV numbers became culture war fodder this time before they were even widely released.

Without naming names you can Google it a prominent right-wing news site published an editorial Friday trolling the NBA for horrible ratings and honking about how the wildly popular cable series Yellowstone on Paramount Network had better numbers.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers were wrong by about 3 million because it was incomplete early data. ESPN and the league warned reporters that the numbers being cited for Golden State-Boston viewership were not an accurate representation of how many people watched. And they were right.

Game 1 of the Celtics-Warriors finals averaged 11.9 million combined viewers on Thursday for ABC (11.4 million) and ESPN2 (501,000). Thats better than the opening finals games during the past two pandemic-roiled seasons but still the lowest since Game 1 of the Cavs-Spurs finals in 2007 averaged 9.21 million viewers.

Sundays Game 2 averaged 11.91 million viewers on the ABC-only broadcast. Thats the smallest Game 2 finals viewership since 8.55 million watched the San Antonio Spurs beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2007.

The peak average for this years Game 1 was 12.96 million at 10:45 p.m. for Bostons 120-108 win over the leagues TV ratings darlings. Sundays Game 2 hit 14.1 million at 9:45 p.m. for Golden States 107-88 rout to even the series.

This years Game 1 and Game 2 audience numbers include out-of-home (OOH) viewing, such as people watching at sports bars and other peoples homes. OOH wasnt baked into pre-2020 TV viewership metrics, which means those broadcasts could have had up to 10 percent more viewers than reported.

Its no secret the leagues audience numbers have declined for years, but so has the rest of television. Even the road-grading TV powerhouse that is the NFL saw some declines during the pandemic.

Not only are the leagues raw eyeball totals down, but so are the actual ratings the metric that expresses as a percentage how many households were tuned into the game. Game 1 this year had a 6.4 rating nationally, and Game 2 sat at 6.2. Those ratings topped the 2020-21 finals but are the lowest since the 2007 Spurs sweep of the Cavs (6.3 rating for Game 1 and 5.6 for Game 2, per Sports Media Watchs database).

As Ive written before, all of this probably requires a recalibration of expectations for audience totals while the TV industry sorts itself out. The viewership for games 1 and 2 was lower than most expected particularly after regular-season recovery and strong early-round playoff viewership but the league still won all the key advertiser demographics that ultimately matter.

They are excellent numbers by the diminished standards of TV today, said Jon Lewis, who has crunched ratings at Sports Media Watch since 2006.

While it might be hip in some quarters to bash the NBA and its players for public expressions against racism and inequality how many of those Twitter critics were regular NBA viewers, one has to wonder and for treading lightly around their lucrative business relationships with authoritarian China, but the reality is that sea changes in the TV industry itself are the primary culprit in eyeball declines.

Sure, some universal things always drive finals ratings: The teams and star players involved. Storylines. Tipoff times. Competition on other channels. Quality of play. Blowout versus nail-biter. Sweep versus seven games. Playing in traditional calendar slots. Full stands. All that stuff still matters, especially talent.

We have not really seen the kind of compelling basketball that would be overly attractive to someone who is busy and doesnt want to sit down and invest two hours of time when they can get the highlights after the fact, Lewis said.

On top of that, people are just not watching TV like they once did. The proliferation of TV options accounts for some of that, including the rise of streaming services. Cord-cutting already was siphoning 10s of millions of U.S. households from the pay-TV ecosystem. The pandemic accelerated that. We learned after about a month or two into the pandemic that people opted to do other things than sit in front of the television every night, and sports and major events moved out of their normal seasons saw huge declines.

There are about 80 million U.S. pay-TV subscribers today, which is roughly 14 million fewer than in pre-pandemic 2019, per information provided by the league, and the number of people using television (known as PUT in TV industry lingo) is down 26 percent versus the period for the 2019 finals.

Heres how COVID-19 and other factors affected finals viewership: Last years Bucks-Suns Game 1 averaged 8.56 million viewers, and 2020s Lakers-Heat Game 1 averaged 7.58 million.

The averages certainly are a big yikes, but theres no evidence that sharp declines were fueled by millions of fans pissed about LeBron James and others demanding equality amid police shootings and such.

Game 1 in 2019 (Raptors-Warriors) averaged 13.38 million viewers.

With the finals again in June instead of July (like last season) or September-October (2020), the NBA is back to its normal schedule. Thats led to some audience recovery. Well see if that continues or if these current numbers are something of a new normal.

Ultimately, the NBAs audience numbers exist for the networks to sell advertising and create a lineup schedule. Theyre not intended as a proxy for why people watch or dont watch and lack the rigor and intention of scientific polling.

The finals easily dominate whats on TV, and the network and brands know that. The broadcast landscape, thanks to the aforementioned consumer viewing habit changes, has evolved for everything on TV. Many younger fans dont consume games by sitting in front of a two-hour-plus linear TV broadcast, which is why you see sports leagues getting into fantasy, NFTs, gambling, video games, social media and anywhere else they think they can find and monetize fandom.

This isnt meant as a defense of the NBA and its TV audiences. The league and its billionaire owners and millionaire players can carry their own water. But the recreational bad-faith regurgitation of preliminary data in the name of ideological trolling is worth calling out. Lewis called out use of the preliminary raw data and said anyone using such numbers to make a wider political point does not know what theyre talking about and should not be viewed as an authority in any fashion.

The sports rating culture war is a tremendous waste of time for people that dont think or breathe politics 24/7, Lewis said. The reality for the NBA is if it was all culture war stuff, it would be fixable as never touching on social issues ever again.

Though some fans might be turned off by such displays, and there arent that many since the Bubble era of 2020, it was never a significant number, Lewis said.

The league has bigger problems. It needs fresh blood, he said. Elite talent tends to occur in cyclical waves in the NBA, and were seeing the tail end of the LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant era.

There is clearly Warriors fatigue. The interest in LeBron is not what it was now that hes on the Lakers, Lewis said. Those names still draw, just not like they used to. The NBA has experienced this before, such as when Michael Jordans career wound down and he retired with the Washington Wizards in 2003, he added.

In the end, the audience figures, while of interest to fans, partisans and media reporters, are ultimately the concern of those spending the huge sums around the games. The NBA is shopping for a new set of TV deals for after the 2024 season and expects to get a significant bump from the $24 billion its getting now in total from Disney (the owner of ABC and ESPN) and Turner with $75 billion the reported goal for the next round of deals.

No one knows whether the league will get that much, but it will get a substantial raise, probably much to the ire of the committed get woke, go broke and shut up and dribblecrowds that cannot seem to stick to sports.

There is a silent majority with no interest in any of this. Theyre too busy for the culture war nonsense. They might be too busy for sports, too, Lewis said.

This is the dumb tribalized world we live in. Feel free to call me a hack in the comments.

Anyway, Game 3 airs at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday, and Game 4 follows at 9 p.m. Friday. All the finals telecasts are on ABC. After taking the weekend off, the finals return Monday for a 9 p.m. Game 5 tipoff, with Game 6, if necessary, next Thursday.

If the series reaches a Game 7, and the network and league certainly want exactly that, it would be an 8 p.m. game on June 19, which is a Sunday and Fathers Day.

(Photo: Jim Davis / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Original post:
Sports on TV: NBA Finals viewership unimpressive, but culture wars arent the culprit - The Athletic