SPorting News magazine to go from bi weekly to once a month format

I remember when Baseball Weekly started. I seem to recall Sporting News almost immediately, or within a year, dropping the baseball boxes.

 

When I was about 11-12-13 years old, I remember pitching the tent in the backyard during the summer and lying in the sleeping bag, reading TSN cover to cover by flashlight. Freshman year in college, cut off every cover and taped them to the sliding doors on the closet in the dorm room. Reading Leonard Koppett, Jerome Holtzman, Joe Falls, Dick Young, etc., week after week. Rich memories.

 

I thought TSN still had boxscores into or even beyond the mid-90s, but I can't say for sure.

During my first year away at college (1993), my roommate and I loaded up on magazine subscriptions in the student union. TSN, Inside Sports, Sports Illustrated, Details. Sport might have been in there too. One of us would pick up Baseball Weekly at the bookstore. Stack of magazines at the front door. He'd read one, toss it to me, and vice versa. Good times. Who knew they'd all be irrelevant by the time we graduated?

 

SN dropped the boxes in 1992.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/24/business/the-media-business-in-sporting-news-the-box-scores-lose.html

Baseball Weekly was launched in 1991, from what I see online and what my memory says. It probably was Gannett's last truly successful product launch, too, which says a lot.

 

"Mr. Rawlings noted that owners of personal computers could get box scores "within minutes after a game is over."

Imagine that.

 

Sport magazine actually lasted until August of 2000.

 

I read TSN for the box scores when I was a kid, and the team notes with the groanworthy labels. I'd read Dick Young and think, "whatta nutter." Other than that, the columnists were pretty boring. So I'm pretty sure its readership was pretty much dying off by that point.

 

In addition to everything else mentioned, I miss the minor league coverage too, but Baseball America pretty much owns that not.

 

No editorial vision.

it needed to find a specialty niche.

but it tried to do everything - without distinction. it offered nothing you couldn't find in lots of other places.

dim leadership.

 

Oh I know, but it was irrelevant by 1996. The last few years were embarrassing to read.

 

Says the comic book fan

 

Thank you Dooley!