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Notes -
https://nypost.com/2024/01/19/sports/sports-illustrateds-entire-staff-told-they-are-getting-laid-off/
Sports Illustrated is no more.
Now go woke, go broke is a simple and shadenfraude explanation, but I don't think it tells the full story. And with recent full wokeness on the swimsuit edition - well I doubt that it endeared the core audience more. And this year is already full with disney flops and victoria's secret epiphany that people like hot women.
Media in US is in trouble. While I hold the opinion that wokeness hastened their demise, probably it was inevitable. And the US journalistic class has a monoculture problem. There was obviously no one that knew how to run a media property targeted towards red bloodied males. To write films in Disney that are alluring to non CRT degree holding single women.
We are in a money is tight period - and the people that hold the reigns of the biggest media conglomerates have no idea how to sell to huge part of the audience.
Presumably like all other legacy print media they've been fucked by default since the internet was invented. What was even their main value proposition, color photos?
Regarding the Swimsuit Issue specifically, presumably guys used to buy it to jack off to and they don't do that anymore.
That was the business. Oops!
Maybe they thought they could still wring some value out of a lingering perception of their brand among the lame and out-of-touch as having the legacy power to unilaterally proclaim what is sexually desirable, and tried to trade off of that. A formerly empowered authority trying to sell people "YAASSS!" certificates on the old letterhead. I think Playboy and Victoria's Secret both tried something similar. Clearly didn't work.
Instagram and tiktok are free softcore porn for masses. No need to pay for it in magazine form.
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They were a weekly magazine in a world where most of their audience got sports scores the day after the event decades before the internet. I think their core audience was similar to 30 for 30s, they published longer form stories about sports. Their value wasn't news delivery they were far to slow for that, even before the internet broke the rest of legacy media.
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