Why fencing is not on television. No one is willing to support it, especially fencers themselves. I am doing this post in response to Mr. Ma question and requests at the JOs’. I realize that I didn’t give him all the information that he would need so hopefully this post will help.
Now one of the things that most people don’t realize about television is that it is a business (no really it is). A big one at that. First of all, every local television station is privately owned. They are not owned by the city or the federal government; you need to go overseas for that. They are not owned by someone in Hollywood. They are owned and run by someone in your community (most of the time). They are owned privately by someone trying to make a living. Now in order to have the license for the television station they had to buy it and have the expenses to keep the air time like every other business, whether it is a new car or a jar of peanut butter. Yes, I know that that is very simplified, just be patient and try to follow.
So once they own the airtime they in turn take that air time and sell the time slots it in order to make a profit. For example, let’s pretend that the 30 minutes at 7pm on Wednesday, it cost a figurative $100 to air a show, then they would have to sell commercials and generate at least $100 for the airtime to break even. If you were to figure 10 commercials during that 30 show then each would have to sell for at least $10 to break even. Remember they are going to want to sell for more because they are looking to make a profit.
Now each one of the major networks have shows that are already made “canned” that the local television owner can “purchase” and air in their local network. These are all the shows that we are familiar with, Survivor, CSI, Monday Night Football, Who wants to be a Millionaire ect. The network will charge an amount to the television station to air the show locally. Now if there is a local event going on that the television station knows would be more popular and sells more commercials (avails) then they may not air the network show regularly scheduled. If you lived in the south and knew the popularity of local football you would understand this concept. The local television station will then charge a premium to air a commercial during the show. The biggest example of this is the famed Super Bowl commercial of the 90’s that would sell for a million dollars. Talk about a profit. I don’t want to think what the network charged the local television stations to air the game.
So the biggest thing that people do not understand that when you see something on TV, whether it is the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Bass Master classic or the Strong Man Competition is that someone bought that airtime. Yes, if you watch the shows more closely you will be able to see the potential sponsor who bought the airtime because they will usually have about 9-15 commercials on the television show that you are watching. A lot of the time it is purchased by someone that is trying to sell a product to the target audience that watches the show or participates in that activity, just watch the X-Games.
Have you ever wondered why show shows that you like to watch are only on for one season and then get cancelled? It is because the networks couldn’t sell it to the local television stations because they couldn’t sell commercial time (call avails) it to the local businesses. Yes, Friends was a very profitable show for a long time.
Now back to why fencing is not on television? Who is going to pay for the airtime? The USFA, I don’t think so. The equipment vendors, they are two busy trying to outdo one another and take a piece of the equipment pie to try and grow the size of the pie. They would need to come together to make that happen (good luck). I personally have a vendor who lives in our city that wouldn’t advertise in our fencing show that aired in a city of 1.6 million viewers (go figure). The only equipment vendor that had this type of vision was Leon Paul back in the days of the PFL (circa 1998). When I stayed at Barry’s home the Christmas before the first PFL event he said that the reason that they were going take the risk is because it was the first plan that he ever heard that was going to grow the size of the fencing pie significantly in the USA (we have the greatest potential of growth for fencing in the world). The PFL was only one component of a larger business model that he saw in the prospectus.
So, once again I ask you who is going to buy the airtime? I have been at the top of the mountain with this question and got an insiders look into television when we had the PFL on ABC channel 10 in the Albany television market. You also need to understand that each television market is ranked for best to worst, just like fencers on the point list. We had gotten a time slot after the Master Golf tournaments and before wide world of sports. It was very pricey. I had a connection with the television station and my wife at the time worked for them as well and could let me know what the avails (commercials) for the time slots sold for. We arranged that half of the time slots would be the inventory for the television station sales force and the other half would be sold by our internal sales force (me and handful of others). The cost of that 30 minutes on Saturday was about $8,000 per show. That hurts all over again just typing it.
So those of you that were around at the time remember the USFA decree about the PFL and fencing in USFA events. This post is not a rant on the USFA so I will end that part here.
So what is the other, less expensive alternative? CABLE!!! Yes, cable airtime is a LOT cheaper than network airtime. People used to believe that there was not anything worth watching on cable and then WWF wrestling and NASCAR happened (both which had their births in Charlotte I might add) and that myth was debunked. Now depending on the show and the time slot you could pay more on a cable station than on a network show. We did two experiments with cable shows in the Charlotte market and the cost difference is $1500 for a show to be produced and aired vs. $25,000 that we encountered with the PFL (roughly). That is just airtime, errors and omission insurance and post production. This does not include all the tournament equipment, venue, refs ect…..
So once again who is going to put up the $1500 per show to air fencing on television? We did for a while to expose people to the sport of fencing in order to start filling all the schools that we had here in the area. It worked but now we have the students in the schools and the cost no longer justified. I am sure that the equipment vendors would like us to keep airing the show and make more fencers so that they could sell more equipment. I am sure that the USFA would like us to do it so that more people would join the USFA. I am sure the two local divisions would like us keep spending the money to make more fencers. However, none of these entities are willing to help out, hell some of them have actually worked against us (you figure it out yourself).
This is not a rant about the USFA, vendors or local divisions. It is a rant about why fencing is not on television. We were at the JO’s in Denver and by the finals of each event there were about 20-40 people watching the final eight fence to get a champion. Now there were at least 150 people in about every event. Where were they at the end of the day? Not supporting and cheering for the champions of the day. They were to concerned at watching something else instead of the fencing. If the fencers aren’t willing to make the investment to watch the fencing how do we expect the general public to pay and watch it with their advertising dollars? Yes, the problem with having fencing on television is not that it isn’t possible, it just is not currently a fiscal reality for anyone involved in fencing. I have been told that all the would need to happen is for someone put up a large amount of prize money and then everything would start working and everyone would live happily ever after. I don’t think so, ask the guys who were running the Duel in the Desert.
It would take a few years for anyone to see an impact if fencing was on television and even with the exposure there are not enough places to fence even if it was aired nationally for people to get into the sport. Hell, the USFA only advertises locations to fence at the join as a club. If they were interested in promoting the sport of fencing then every place that offered a fencing class would be on their website, right? Making the investment for us made sense. We were opening multiple schools in one large metropolitan city. We had to do it on our own.
If you would like any additional information about fencing on television PM me and I will try to help out as much as possible.
03-01-2007 09:41 AM