Good day all. Sports Illustrated is a famous publication. It was first published in 1954 and is best known for the annual Swimsuit edition. Last week, it announced that it was laying off the entire staff and it looks like it’s going to be shutting down.
Things haven’t been going well for SI for the last 5 or so years. The Swimsuit edition, probably the best selling edition each year, started using models that, I’m sorry to say, were flat out turnoffs for the target audience. Last week, SI’s holding company The Arena Group, announced it was laying off pretty much everyone and had missed a licensing payment. Here are the details from the New York Post:
The future of iconic magazine Sports Illustrated looked dire Friday after the publisher announced mass layoffs.
Oh I wouldn’t say dire so much as stick the fork in, they’re done.
The Arena Group — which had been roiled by reports that the fabled magazine published AI-generated content — admitted to failing to make a $3.75 million quarterly licensing payment to Authentic Brands Group due this week.
That is a major issue. First, that the Arena Group didn’t have the money to pay the quarterly fee basically means they are out of cash. They are broke. Flat busted. Then there are the reports that they’ve been using Artificial Intelligence to write stories. (I’m sure that made the actual writers real happy)
As a result, the publicly-traded Arena announced Thursday it would make a “significant reduction” in its workforce of more than 100 journalists.
From what I’ve heard, that “Significant reduction” is basically everyone.
SI’s unionized workers received a memo Friday telling them “some employees will be terminated immediately, and paid in lieu of the 60-day applicable notice period under the [union contract].”
“Employees with a last working day of today will be contacted by the People team soon. Other employees will be expected to work through the end of the notice period, and will receive additional information shortly,” according to the memo obtained by The Post.
Sports Illustrated has been having problems for a while now, just as most of the “Main Stream Media” has. They have gone from being published weekly to every two weeks and recently once a month. One of the reasons the magazine was published weekly was to cover the week’s sporting news. Going to once a month and you have, depending on the sport, ignored a good chunk of the season. Sports junkies are and did start looking elsewhere for up to date news and more importantly, images.
An Arena spokesman added that the company is in talks with Authentic Brands about regaining the license.
“Even though the publishing license has been revoked we will continue to produce Sports Illustrated until this is resolved,” the rep said.
“We hope to be the company to take SI forward but if not, we are confident that someone will. If it is another business, we will support the transition so the legacy of Sports Illustrated doesn’t suffer.
Apparently, the Arena Group has the Swimsuit Edition all set to go, but without the licensing agreement, they can’t publish anything. The actual owner of the name, Authentic Brands, is not interested in publishing the magazine. They are interested in keeping the brand going, (Because, licensing fees), but it doesn’t look like the Arena Group is going to be the company to keep it going.
Now, as to why all this happened? Very simply, Sports Illustrated’s management went all in on the “Woke/DEI” agenda. This was doubly so with the annual Swimsuit edition. The main target of the annual Swimsuit edition is men. Real men, not soyboi man bun wearing wimps that apologize constantly for having an XY chromosome. This led to models who were overweight, seriously disfigured or were actually mentally ill men pretending to be women.
Then there was the use of AI to write stories. What made this even worse was the creation of fake journalists with AI generated images on the staff page. While using Artificial Intelligence has it’s place, using it to manufacture articles can’t have made the real writers all that happy when that story broke.
I don’t know if Sports Illustrated will return or just move over to the ash heap of history. I was never a subscriber, although I did get the Swim Suit edition. For the articles of course. However, when they started with the Woke agenda. I stopped buying it. The morons who made all these decisions may have so badly damaged the brand that it will never come back. So sad.
Thatisall
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