Becoming Somebody

I rarely get the opportunity to say that a decision I made was forward-thinking. I’m usually in a constant state of reaction, juking and jiving as the ship goes down and the water level rises all around me. But today verified something I felt strongly about four months ago, even though there was little by way of concrete facts to support those feelings. For once in my life, I got my ass off the boat BEFORE it sank, doing so on my own terms.

Just to fill people in on what I’m talking about here, the long-rumored merger between NBA Entertainment and Turner Broadcasting was finalized today. I can only imagine the tone of conversations in and around my former place of employment. Here are the nuts and bolts of the press release:

Turner Broadcasting and NBA Broaden Partnership with Digital Rights Agreement (click here for full press release)

ATLANTA AND NEW YORK, Jan. 17, 2008 — Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) today announced a ground-breaking expansion of the longest-running league/network programming partnership in professional sports, through which the companies will jointly manage a portfolio of the NBA’s digital businesses that TBS, Inc. will operate out of its Atlanta production facility. The new domestic digital rights relationship, will allow TBS, Inc. and the NBA to further enrich the fan experience through NBA assets that complement the current NBA programming airing on Turner’s TNT. The partnership will be fully effective for the 2008-09 NBA season and run through the 2015-16 season.

David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting Sales, Inc. and president of Turner Sports, and Adam Silver, NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO, will jointly manage the venture and will appoint a General Manager responsible for the oversight of the NBA digital businesses.

Before I spent my time on this current independent venture, I worked for NBA Entertainment for two years. It was fulfilling for about six months before turning into a creative gulag run with an iron fist by borderline incompetents who ignored every suggestion from their staff and operated in perpetual fear of catching fire from the 5th Avenue office of Czar Stern, a man who seemed to me little more than a grubby profit monger and meddlesome tyrant fueled by his own narcissism and a mind-boggling refusal to respect and understand his players and the people who pay to watch them.

I should point out that the soldiers in the field, those who actually did the work and carried out the company’s initiatives, were all great people who did their jobs to the best of their abilities. The problems started at the management level. Employees, again those who actually did the work day in and day out, spoke all the time about how the people in charge of television and internet content seemed clueless to the operational details of their business. It was widely questioned by employees whether or not these execs had any experience running such a massive operation at all.

“How could this be?” you ask. “High-level executives who made content decisions about news coverage, the backbone of live-sports media, had close to no experience operating a live-event model? How could such unqualified people attain these lofty positions of authority?”

They kissed the ass and shined the shoes of the Commissioner, that’s how. In my experience, that was the thing that mattered most at NBAE. It all came down to who you sucked up to the most. Manage up. Respect the hierarchy. Don’t ruffle feathers. Cave to sponsors. Don’t question your bosses, no matter how ridiculous their request or idea. That was the company line. Those things always mattered more than delivering accurate information that fans, the people who paid all our salaries, wanted to see and read.

This was no more clear to me than one night during last season’s Finals when, after the Cleveland Cavaliers were routed by the San Antonio Spurs, we at NBA.com did what we had routinely done every night during the season: We published the game’s recap that had been written and transmitted to us by The Associated Press. However, the tone of the recap was less than favorable to the Cavs and one of their young superstars. After all, they had just been destroyed by a superior team on the game’s biggest stage. There was little to say to sugarcoat their effort.

Within minutes of the recap’s publication, our phones began ringing and our editors were told by our bosses at the NBA to remove and/or alter the story The Associated Press had written because the higher-ups with the Cavs were unhappy with it and feared upsetting their young superstar. This young superstar is also one of the new faces of the league, a big-time moneymaker, and the latest figure to stake a claim to the throne left empty by Michael Jordan’s third and final retirement. He also has a lucrative endorsement deal with an apparel giant that pumps millions of dollars into the league. These are not entities the NBA wants to upset. So the order was made, and, after some internal bickering and some cursing and desk kicking from me, the story was changed, even though the EXACT SAME STORY could be seen in countless other newspapers and websites. When fans went to NBA.com and read the game recap, complete with AP accreditation, they were forced to read a watered down version of what they could see in countless other locations. As a journalist and as a fan, this shameless, unabashed effort to appease corporate interests made me sick. And I won’t mention how uncomfortable I felt having to alter the work of The Associated Press, one of the most widely read and well-respected sources in the industry. I decided to quit on my drive home, though it took a bit longer to finalize my decision.

This was not an isolated incident. People I worked with, who had been with the league longer than I had, often spoke about the way they covered Kobe Bryant missing portions of Lakers games a few years back because he was facing rape charges and had to appear in court. NBA TV and NBA.com simply said Kobe arrived late to these games “due to personal reasons.” Everyone on Earth not living under a rock knew the circumstances around Kobe’s absence. Refusing to deliver the facts did everyone — fans, employees, the greater journalism community — a grave disservice. Extend the same methodology to other ugly incidents the NBA and its players have gotten into and you begin to understand what motivated NBAE under the in-house regime. A company like that simply cannot compete with other legitimate sources of news and information.

It would be fine if NBAE simply came out and admitted to the public that it is no longer trying to compete with credible sports-information web sites, publications, and TV networks, but is instead in the business of painting a rose-colored image of a sport often immersed in one PR disaster after another — players fighting with fans, players firing off guns outside strip clubs, coaches and executives sexually harassing employees, and referees involved in gambling scandals, to name a few. If it is so concerned that the truth will spoil its image, then it should maintain control of its product and all relevant methods of its dissemination. It should stop covering games, teams, and player news altogether and focus only on corporate and community initiatives. It should be honest with itself and its fans. But by entering into the highly competitive arena of live-event and news coverage, the NBA clouds the line between information source and PR tool.

Ask Average Joe flipping channels or surfing the web what he thinks of NBA TV and NBA.com. Unless he is incredibly savvy and spends time analyzing the variances in coverage and the holes in the NBA’s presentation of facts, it is likely he will be unable to comprehend the extent to which the league controls the information made available to him. I’m not saying the other league-owned sites and networks are free of this problem. I’m just saying it’s a bigger problem for the NBA because of the way it has chosen to run the entertainment wing of its company. Spend some time comparing NBA.com with NFL.com or MLB.com and you’ll see what I mean.

The NBA-Turner merger only makes matters worse. Rather than making things clearer, it further blurs the lines of control and calls the legitimacy of all future coverage into question. If NBA TV and NBA.com are still the official media instruments of the league, to what extent will Stern and his cronies control the editorial content of those instruments? Will they meddle with Turner’s people the way they meddled with their own? If they are willing to give up some of their editorial control, why wouldn’t they hold onto their product and do it themselves, thus allowing people to keep their jobs? If they are unwilling to let Turner work freely, how will Turner, which owns CNN after all, be able to answer critics who may claim they are willing to let corporate partners influence their coverage of all events, not just those related to the NBA? These are all questions that arise as a result of this merger. Time will tell if and how they are answered, though I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I’m sure the merger makes good business sense in the short-term and will fatten certain people’s pockets with even more cash. But that loot will be weighted with the symbolic blood of people’s jobs, and with the fragile state of media ethics and corporate transparency. I’m just glad I got out before I had to deal with any of this directly.

Tags: NBA, Turner Broadcasting

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under News, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.