Month: May 2001

COUNCIL MEETING ADJOURNS THEN RESTARTS

Post author By Chris Przybyszewski
Post date May 2, 2001

Spectators at Tuesday afternoon’s City Council meeting were miffed when Chairman E.C. Jones unexpectedly adjourned the meeting. At about 3:45, after he had called the roll and realized that the there were not enough members present for a quorum, Jones shocked all present by announcing that there would be no meeting.

Just as Jones made this announcement, the absent council members began pouring in from outside of council chambers. Councilman Brent Taylor told the Flyer that one of the reasons that the members were late in arriving was that the executive session, a meeting which Jones chairs, had run late.

In attendance at the full council meeting Tuesday were about 100 supporters of NBA Now, the group pushing for Memphis to have a National Basketball Association team. Though the council was not scheduled to hear any resolutions related to the basketball effort, the NBA supporters were on hand to show the council that they were in favor of getting a team. As these NBA supporters began grumbling about the adjourned meeting, Councilmember Barbara Swearengen Holt announced that City Council Attorney Allan Wade had been contacted to determine if the session could legally reconvene after it had been officially adjourned.

At about 4:15 Wade appeared in the council chambers and announced that what Jones had done, in effect, was to recess the meeting, not adjourn it. It was Wade’s determination that the meeting could legally begin. After Councilman Joe Brown made an apology “to the people of Memphis” for Jones’ actions, the meeting was reconvened.

News The Fly-By

VERBATIM

Post author By Chris Przybyszewski
Post date May 1, 2001

“If you talk to a lot of people, a lot of people are scared of going downtown to games. They talk about the NBA being downtown, it s kind of scary.”

— newcomer Robbie Nichols, the general manager of the Mid-South Xpress football team (see story above).

Sports Sports Feature

Q & A WITH XPLORERS’ GM ROBBIE NICHOLS

Post author By Chris Przybyszewski
Post date May 1, 2001

The DeSoto County Civic Center hosts the Mid-South Memphis Xplorers, an expansion team in the Arena Football2 league. The team has 18 players, many of whom played for local colleges and high schools. The Flyer talked recently with the Xplorers general manager, Robbie Nichols.

Tell me about your season so far.

NICHOLS: It’s been tough. It’s been tough starting 0-3 [now 0-4 after last weekend’s loss]. It’s been tough with the AF2 and the schedule they gave us with Tennessee first and then Quad City, the two championship teams. Last week was a really good game. We just lost in the last play of the game. We thought it was pretty good.

How was attendance for the first game?

NICHOLS: We did ok. We had a late start on everything. I took over three weeks before the home opener, so it was kind of busy. We didn’t have a whole lot done. But things have come around pretty good. We had an okay attendance for the first game and we have been busy selling to a lot of groups and we want people to come out and see the product and see what they think about it.

How has the DeSoto County Civic Center been working out for your?

NICHOLS: It’s great. It’s a great building to play in. People that have never been to the Civic Center, we ask them to come and check it out because it’s a gorgeous facility.

Is it the Memphis Xplorers or the Mid-South Xplorers or both?

NICHOLS: It’s a little combination of both. We’re officially, I guess, the Memphis Xplorers. But we sort of added Mid-South in there. So Memphis Mid-South Xplorers or Mid-South Memphis Xplorers, however you want to put it. We want to be Memphis’ team but we want to be the Mid-South’s team too. We don’t want to leave anyone out.

Tell me about the Arena2 league. A lot of people know about the Arena league but people wonder about the Arena2 league and where it fits in.

NICHOLS: They [the league] are saying that [AF2 is] for purposes of buildings of 10,000 [attendance] and smaller. That’s the market they try to get to. A lot of teams do extremely well with attendance. There are a few weak sisters like all leagues. As a league it’s growing and it’s supposed to be expanding. The NFL has an option, I guess, to pick up 49 percent of the league which a lot of people think they will do and get involved in this. A lot of players from here are going on and signing NFL contracts.

Why not an Arena team here in Memphis? What happened to the Pharaohs that will necessarily mean that Arena2 will succeed in a different arena?

NICHOLS: I’m new to the area. I can’t really say what the problems with the Pharaohs were. I have heard rumors so I have second-hand information that the owner didn’t want to put a lot of money into it. The first year I guess they did and they had a great attendance. The second year they went 0-16 I believe and had a tough season. Don Frease is our color [commentary] guy who coached the Pharaohs. Bud Schroeppel, who did the play-by-play for them, is doing our play-by-play for our games. So we have brought over some of their people and they think it can work. If the first game here was any indication, it was exciting and I think that people enjoyed it.

Why not the Pyramid? Is it just too big for AF2?

NICHOLS: I think it’s a combination about being too big [and] our franchise is owned by Horn Chen who owns our company and also owns the RiverKings. We’re all just one company. It would be kind of silly … you know we run both teams out of the same office. The people that bring you Xplorers football are the exact same people that bring your RiverKings hockey.

What I am trying to get at, I think, is the tension of what are the Memphis teams and which are not. There are some people who are not interested in coming out to the DeSoto County Civic Center versus going downtown to a Redbirds game or a Tigers game or something like that. And a lot of people are wondering why not the DeSoto County Xplorers or why not just the Mid-South Xplorers?

NICHOLS: I think that since we are so close to Memphis. I don’t know how many miles it is to the state line, but we are so close to Memphis and Memphis being the big city, I think that is why the tag [is Memphis]. They really were the Memphis RiverKings before so you don’t want to change your name when you move a few miles. I guess we don’t see it as a big thing. That’s sort of where we are. I tell people I live in Memphis.

About going downtown to games, if you talk to a lot of people, a lot of people are scared of going downtown to games. They talk about the NBA being downtown, it’s kind of scary. I think there are two different ideas of downtown.

There are two different perceptions of this area as well. One is that it’s a great place to come and the other is that it’s in the middle of nowhere and not worth the drive. How are you guys handling that issue?

NICHOLS: I haven’t seen a whole lot of problems. It’s easy to come to. For all intents and purposes, we’re right on the highway. Once you cut off on Church, we’re a minute away. I think that’s a tough tag, people saying we are so far out there. In a lot of cases we are easier to get in than a lot of buildings downtown.

You mentioned the NBA, how do you think that will affect the Xplorers?

NICHOLS: Yeah. There is no chance that the NBA will come to Memphis. This hype and stuff going around about the NBA coming to Memphis, I have been doing some research on different areas. The NBA does their homework too well. I can’t see the NBA coming to Memphis. I don’t know how many families can afford $8,000 worth of season tickets, you know $2,000 a ticket times four. There may be corporate dollars to sale the boxes but I don’t know who is going to attend the games.

So you don’t think the NBA will be a factor.

NICHOLS: We’re not worried about the NBA coming.

Let’s shift gears a little bit. What kind of players make up an AF2 team?

NICHOLS: A lot of these guys are players who have in the back of their minds that they want to play in the NFL. They still want to play pro ball. This is a chance to play at home. Some guys have real jobs and this is sort of a side job for them and they have a small gleam of hope in their eye that they can have a good season here and go on play pro ball somewhere. A few of them have been playing really well and will get a chance to.

They have to be committed to playing and that’s what you want, guys with a slim chance of playing in the NFL. There are some guys sacrificing, taking Fridays off work in some cases, so they can go out and work hard. I watch the practices, they work hard through the practices. If you think it’s a Rec. league or a part-time gig, you’re not going to stay around here.

What’s the difference between AF1 and AF2 as far as the players are concerned?

NICHOLS: A little bit of it is the salary cap. Players are allowed to get more money in that league. A lot of players, they say in Arena2 can play in Arena1 and vice versa. It has more to do with the building size and there is a little bit more money up there to pay the players.

So far, how have your season ticket sales been?

NICHOLS: It’s just been okay. It’s obviously not where we want it to be, getting a late start on this. We think it’s going to grow throughout the season. We have an okay base of season tickets but we need more season tickets, we need more corporate dollars, we need more people coming to the games. I think that’s going to take a little time and the word to get out that the team is here. Some people don’t even know that a Arena2 football team is over here. We have to get out that the team is here and playing an exciting game.

The AF2 is going to be expanding soon to 42 teams. That’s a lot of teams. Do you think it’s going to dilute the market?

NICHOLS: I think that if it is going well in the city it’s a good thing. As long as you aren’t expanding for expansion sake. You have to make sure that when you are adding a team, maybe you should be getting rid of one of the weak sisters. If they there is a market for it, I say expand. The number of resumes and calls that came in here of players to play football for us is enormous. There is no problem filling that many teams. And there are a lot of guys looking for jobs. The player pool is fine. You just want to make sure the city is doing well before you expand.

Tell me about Horn Chen. He’s a big player in Memphis sports but not many people know about him.

NICHOLS: I think that’s the way he likes to keep it. He’s very private and he places people to run his companies for him. He’s out of Chicago and he owns both these teams. He owns many baseball teams. He owns other hockey teams. He owns part of an NHL team. He’s a big player and well respected in the sports industry. He’s put a lot of money into sports franchises here in Memphis, for the people. Hopefully we’ll repay him someday.

If a new arena is built, would there be any talk of you guys switching over?

NICHOLS: We’re happy with the Civic Center. They’re good partners. In the past I have heard a little bit about went on downtown and we were more like a tenant for them and paying their bills for them. [Here] we’re a partner with these guys. They take responsibility of getting people in here. It’s a good partnership. We’re really happy with the situation here.

What kind of TV/Radio coverage are you getting right now?

NICHOLS The Buzz :[94.1 FM] is partnered up with us right now, they’re sponsors of ours. All the road games are broadcast. That’s about it. The game of the week is on TNN.

What are the stability of the teams. You have mentioned “weak sisters” twice. If Memphis doesn’t keep up, what will happen? The Houn’ Dawgs, apparently only lasted one year.

NICHOLS: Horn’s committed to this area and to Arena Football, too. I think the least you can sign is 3 years. He’s committed for 3 years for this and he wants it to go well. He’s sinking a lot of money into it right now to try to get off the ground to go well. Hopefully it will when people come out and see the product. It’s sort of like hockey, once you see it you’re hooked. We had one game here with an ok crowd, but people were really excited. No one left early, the stayed to the final play when we lost, but it was a very exciting game.

News News Feature

THE REAL INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY?

Post author By Chris Przybyszewski
Post date May 1, 2001

“The Internet did not end up being the Information Superhighway but a country road with a lot of potholes, stop signs, detours, and you name it,” says Ole Miss journalism professor Samir Husni. “Magazines are the true information superhighway.”

A nice, pithy, contrarian thought, and about what you would expect from someone whose trademark is “Mr. Magazine” and whose office is so jammed with magazines that he can’t conduct an interview in it. As Memphis marks its 25th year, I have come to see Husni, one of the country’s most widely quoted magazine experts, to get some perspective. You have to like a professor whose research includes prowling around newsstands and who enlivens his lectures by showing slides of some of the more lurid new covers.

How, I wonder, is Memphis doing in the overall scheme of things?

“Only one out of ten magazines stays in business for 10 years,” Husni says. “But once you reach the mature age of 10 you are sort of out of harm’s way. Twenty-five years in magazine life is a long, long time.”

Is print media dying, as pundits claim (usually in print) every time a daily newspaper or magazine icon such as Life closes shop? Not even close, says Mr. ‘zine. Television didn’t kill it and the Internet probably won’t either. There are 6,000 magazines now, compared to only 2,000 in 1980. (This eye-catching number, however, includes such one-shot “specials” as The Pure Evil of Al Gore and Swank’s 200 Uncensored Sex Acts.)

“In publishing, you can’t exist in just one medium anymore,” says Husni. “Your magazine needs to send you to the Web, the Web needs to send you to TV, and TV needs to send you back to the magazine.”

Many dot-com sites have a print magazine, he adds, “and if you think the death rate in magazines is high, just look at the death rate in Web-site links.”

Yes, Life died, and so did another old lion, McCall’s. And Mad started taking advertising. But the last two years saw the birth of nearly 2,000 new titles including O (Oprah Winfrey’s magazine), Tailgate (hot trucks), and Yellow Rat Bastard (pop culture), not to mention Bark, Dig, Booty, Hustler’s Jail Babes, and Asian Lace Jungle Girl (no explanation needed or better left to your imagination).

Do we detect a trend? Yes. Everything has more sex. Even Revolver, a music magazine, has a sex issue. American Woman, which is sold in grocery stores, gives you 12 new sex positions to achieve orgasm. So the sex magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, squeezed by the offerings at the check-out lines, are getting more pornographic, but when they go that way they run head-on into the Internet.

Oddly enough, Husni says the Internet is actually helping all magazines except the sex category, not least because magazines have found a way to sell advertising and most Internet sites have not.

“A magazine will be fine as long as it has a willing audience who can afford the price of the magazine and of the advertised goods,” he says. “The biggest myth in our business is the so-called separation of church and state. Readers buy magazines just as much for the advertising.”

Somewhat comforted about the future of print journalism by my visit to Oxford, I went to the Memphis public library the next morning to have a look at the past. Squinting at the 1976 editions of The Commercial Appeal on microfilm, I was struck by some of the same things that marred the first issues of this magazine: small type, black-and-white pictures, and an overall appearance as gray as February.

The biggest difference between then and now, though, was not the headlines, the datelines, or the editorial opinions. It was the advertising. Whether gambling has replaced shopping as a pastime is an interesting question. But there is no doubt that casinos have replaced department stores as an advertising bastion.

In 1976, the front section of the Sunday Commercial Appeal was basically brought to you by Goldsmith’s, which ran 10 or more separate display ads, along with retailers such as Sears, J.C. Penney, Royal Furniture, and Haverty’s. Today, that section usually includes 10 color ads from Tunica casinos and three or four from department stores. Memphis magazine and The Memphis Flyer are big casino buys, too. Casinos are to Memphis publications what Budweiser is to pro sports and Proctor and Gamble is to soap operas.

The differences in editorial content are more subtle. For one thing, daily newspapers used to print a lot more national and international news and display it on the front page. As a reporter for UPI in Jackson, Mississippi, 20 years ago, I wrote snoozers about state legislators changing the law on truck weights. These almost always found their way into the first-off-the-press Missis-sippi edition of the CA, and now and then even made the front page. They fit the generally accepted definition of news.

For better or worse, UPI, the Mississippi early edition, and “front-page” stories about truck weights are no more.

“News is no longer political events in capitals of the world,” says Husni. “It’s things that affect your lifestyle. “

I later made a career stop at the CA’s Sunday Mid-South Magazine, which was killed in 1987. I noted with some satisfaction in February that the CA went to a smaller size which is more colorful, more magazinelike, and easier to handle.

Other trends are more troubling.

The local print media are proliferating in numbers but fighting for smaller pieces of the pie. The CA’s daily circulation is down to 173,000. The daily Memphis Press-Scimitar closed in 1983 after losing a third of its circulation in a decade, but its 90,000 subscribers were more than the combined total today of this magazine and its sister publication, The Memphis Flyer. And where there were three local television stations in 1983, there are now five, putting on a combined 12 hours a day of what is loosely billed as news. Then there’s cable, which was just getting off the ground 25 years ago.

“We don’t have readers out there, we have viewers,” says Husni. “The magazine’s job is to turn the viewer into a skimmer and, hope-fully, the skimmer will become a reader.”

As this anniversary issue shows, Memphis has been a magazine for readers, publishing scores of stories of at least 5,000 words, which is roughly 10 times the length of the average newspaper story.

Nice work if you can get it and, of course, sell it.

[This article originally appeared in Memphis magazine.]