FYI....Just had this email exchange with G. Vinson. Some new comments not in the earlier form letter
Date: Fri Sep 7 21:22:17 2007
From:
sacrat1@excite.com <sacrat1@excite.com>
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To: <gavinson@keyetv.com>
Cc: <arsmith@keyetv.com>
Subject: RE: Tennessee football advertisers
Mr Vinson,
I know that you understand that when KEYE started with the Texans, they were an expansion team and were not expected to be a consistent winner for years.
A little history lesson for you : check out the 1st five years of this expansion team a few years back THE DALLAS COWBOYS
http://www.geocities.com/~jrbeasley/dallas/start.html
1st year: 0-11-1
2nd year: 4-9-1
3rd year: 5-8-1
4th year: 4-10
5th year: 5-8-1
If you had been Program Director back then, you'd have called out the Cowboys as losers and switched to whatever team had your favorite player. Bailing out right when they were ready to be winners for years to come.
You're making that mistake now.
If you can't acknowledge that the Texans are ready to turn the same kind of corner, you're just not knowledgeable or it just doesn't fit your plan.
You have no sense of sports history....you obviously don't know what its like to be the fan of a TEAM...you're just siding with your other celebrity obsessed casual fans over REAL football fans who have been loyal to the Texans AND KEYE through the lean times.
You mentioned how poorly you thought the Texans were being run, but you didn't mention how well you thought the Titans were being managed (other than drafting your celebrity player, over the objection of both the coach and offensive coordinator). It's pretty much consensus that they had one of the worst offseasons of any franchise. I guess you don't care about that....doesn't fit your plan.
As for your numbers, you continue to throw them out without context, You compare Texan games that were going head-to-head with a Cowboys telecast with Titan games that had no Cowboy competition. Of course more football fans would tune in if there were no Cowboys game on. You're not comparing apples to apples, but you, of course never mention this. In addition, there was a fascination of Vince starting his pro career and the Titans got on a roll. He was a shiny new toy that everyone wanted to check out. The newness is gone. You act as if one season is exactly the same as the last. That's either naive or disingenuous.
And you still have not acknowledged the earlier statement made in the American Statesman "We'll start with the Texans and see where things go". I can see why you avoid it, because it turned out to be untrue (Lie). I see the Titans won't be competing against a Cowboy game in week one on KEYE....hmmmmm...could this have anything to do with the change of heart??
Bottom line is you have Texan fans hostage. You run programmingn on our CBS affiliate. We could spend the money and go through the inconvenience of ordering DirectTV Sunday Ticket, but Vince could blow out his knee or a million other things could happen when basing this stuff on one player, and you maybe start showing Texan games again and thats $300 blown money.
Anywhere else in the country, DirectTV Sunday Ticket is meant for fans of teams/players who ARE NOT PLAYING FOR THE LOCAL TEAM. Like Tennessee.
You are turning everything on its head backwards of the way it should be. Congratulations for sticking it to the fans who've stuck with KEYE and the Texans through the rough times.
--- On Fri 09/07, Vinson, Gary A <
gavinson@keyetv.com > wrote:
From: Vinson, Gary A [mailto:
gavinson@keyetv.com]
To:
sacrat1@excite.com
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 16:44:26 -0400
Subject: RE: Tennessee football advertisers
Sacrat1, thanks for writing to KEYE.
First and foremost, its the local football fans in Austin who choose what games are aired on KEYE. We monitor the level of sports viewing every Sunday on KEYE and plan our schedules accordingly. Perhaps a little background on the Texans and KEYE would be helpful.
In the Texans first season we aired 4 preseason and 14 regular season games by the Texans. That was every game available to us. In their second season we aired 4 preseason and 14 regular season as well. In the third season there were only 3 preseason games available, and we followed that with 14 regular season games. In their fourth season, we aired 4 preseason games, but only had access to 10 regular season games (and aired all of them). The other games were available on other networks.
In the fifth season, we aired the only 2 preseason games available to us, and in mid-season began to show some of the Titans games as well as the Texans. In the end, we aired 9 Texans games and 9 Titans games. Also during those five years we aired their pre-game specials, covered their training camps, and reported on them in KEYE Sports. It would be difficult to make the case that KEYE didn't give it up for the Texans, in fact, it would only be possible to make that case if you just simply ignored the facts..
The last All-Texans-All-The-Time game we showed was in Oct of last year, and in that game just 15,000 households tuned in (in a city of 602,340 households). The very next week we aired a Titans game and 54,0000 households tuned in. (A 260% increase in the number of fan's households that tuned in of their own free will) There were several games when 70,000+ fans tuned in. These results repeated throughout the remainder of the year.
I know for a fact that the Houston Texans franchise is very aware of this and are not too happy that a local college football hero playing for a team in another state attracts more viewers than their own team which is just 150 miles up the road. This result is after almost five years of KEYE airing every single Texans game we could get our hands on. It may be a sad fact for some, but its a fact none-the-less.
What I find interesting is the number of fans who want to then turn to the TV station and blindly blame them for the poor fan support of the Texans in Austin. It seems its all about everything (anything) BUT the poor performance of the Texans over the past five years (and the subsequent loss of fan interest).
We at KEYE (very obviously) would love for the Texans to have a great year and regain some of their fan base. Perhaps this is their year to do just exactly that. We can only hope that they field a strong team (looks good so far) and that football fans are attracted to it - that is how ball clubs are built.
Again, thanks for writing in, please feel free to contact us at any time.
Gary Vinson
Programming / Research Director
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
sacrat1@excite.com [mailto:sacrat1@excite.com]
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 3:25 PM
To: Vinson, Gary A
Cc: Smith, Allison R
Subject: Tennessee football advertisers
Importance: High
I'm going to make sure to DVR the Titan game so that after I return home from watching my local Texas NFL team, I'll compile a list of all of the local businesses supporting Tennessee football in Austin so that myself, my family, and my friends can inform these particular businesses that they should actively support the local Texas NFL teams and that we will spread the word that their businesses shouldn't be frequented.
My small contribution to bringing local NFL football back to Austin.
Go Texans!
