Rev News, 3/17 (none)

[The Magpie]

Nothing in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Diario Extra (Costa Rica), El Heraldo (Costa Rica), La Nacion (Costa Rica), La Prensa Libre (Costa Rica), or La Republica (Costa Rica) from what I can tell, and the Revs were supposed to have left for San Jose yesterday.

Most of the Costa Rican papers are still talking about the big domestic match-up between Liga Deportiva Alajuelense and league rivals Saprissa, LDA winning emphatically by a score of 4-1.

http://www.diarioextra.com/2003/marzo/17/images/portada1.JPG

That's what Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto (LDA's ground) looks like when full.

The Magpie

[MrSangster]

Originally posted by The Magpie
http://www.diarioextra.com/2003/marzo/17/images/portada1.JPG


Alajuelense players and fans react when the Rev's sell off their home field advantage.

:(

[Jim Dow]

Goddamn! A full stadium, players celebrating, excitement!!!!
Where are we? Mired in the last vestiges of winter and left crap out in the cold when it comes to coverage. Makes me, as a fan, feel ignored, uninformed and undervalued.

Grumbling,

JIM DOW

[SoccerHead]

In a festive shower of thanks for stacking the cards in their favor, Alajuelense players pig pile New Revolution Direct of Soccer Sunil Gulati.

Gulati is later quoted as saying,"That was the most fun I've had with my clothes on, and it only cost my boss 25K!!"

[The Magpie]

Will say this, that pitch looks in pretty good shape.

The Magpie

[RevsRule]

How many days has it been with NO word on anything? There are always countless articles about anything the Red Sux do but not one word on the Revs.

The Revs PR people really know how to create fan interest. At this rate, we may have 3500 at the home opener. Hell, I might think about becoming a Mutts fan ...... naw, I could never do that (can't stand Mathis)

[RevFan17]

There are no PR people left in the Revs office and, in an effort to reduce costs, the jobs will be given out to other people - mostly bitter Patriots empolyees who put the Revs at the bottom of the list. I wouldn't be surprised for the next press release to have the receptionist as the point of contact.

Don't expect much news from main stream press unless there's important information to get out.

[Soccer Doc]

Do you all come-by feeling like a victum naturally or do you have to work at it? (Huge Smile)

Seriously, lets look at reality.

~When Rev Mgmt 2003 posted last month we were all over ourselves with praise about how good we Rev fans have it.
~When the Revs were in Brazil we were bubbling with joy over all the press and team reports.
~Toney just had an interview with SN posted for you to hear on Rev Net.
~The Revs are in preseason and not currently doing any action outside the squad
~The squad is stable and there are no significant injuries or changes in the wind.

In short there isn't much going on and those who regularly create print and releases have little of anything to write about. Could they write something--anything--sure. Are they ? No. Will they when there is something to write about? You can bet on it.

George

[rkupp]

Originally posted by RevsRule
The Revs PR people really know how to create fan interest.
The may be afraid to come out of their "burrows" after the firestorm of criticism that came their way!

Originally posted by RevFan17
There are no PR people left in the Revs office and, in an effort to reduce costs, the jobs will be given out to other people - mostly bitter Patriots empolyees who put the Revs at the bottom of the list.
Just curious, ... what are the Patriots employees bitter about?

[Sine Pari]

Originally posted by rkupp
The may be afraid to come out of their "burrows" after the firestorm of criticism that came their way!


Just curious, ... what are the Patriots employees bitter about?

I guess winning that Super Bowl got some of em down

Or perhaps it's dealing with 900 phone calls about how the Rapids give out orange wigs on Valerrama night and why dont we do the same......;)

[RevFan17]

Originally posted by rkupp
Just curious, ... what are the Patriots employees bitter about?

Getting hired to work for a professional football team and being given the work of a soccer team to do in addition.

I'd be bitter if someone was laid off and I was given their job with little to no compensation...

[The Magpie]

"In short there isn't much going on and those who regularly create print and releases have little of anything to write about."

George, no offense intended, but I work in communications...

... there is always a story to write about.

If the mainstream press cannot cover the team, then the Revolution should look to themselves to cover the team. This is standard practice for pretty much every professional club, to the point where some clubs actually charge for such content.

The Revolution do not have the resources to accomplish this apparently. Perhaps they could have taken a chapter from the book of the Dallas Burn, who've fully supported the efforts of individuals associated with a site very much like RevsNet, to provide content and coverage of the club on a foreign training jaunt.

There are news and stories out there. They're just not getting told and that's what's frustrating.

God bless those like Tony, Mike Marshall and the like who manage to fill in the gaps, in fact, they do better than that.

The Magpie

[Jim Dow]

Magpie, I agree. Just look at the off season papers in ANY other country. There are zillions of stories. Indeed, the team itself (the Revs) and the league (MLS) are just as active in the close season as any other pro leagues. It just requires digging, imagination and editorial interest.

JIM DOW

[ToMhIlL]

I don't have the link for this, (I think it's in the MLS News & Analysis forum) but one of the KC papers had an article about Peter Vermes retiring. Considering that the papers in KC generally don't do anything close to the coverage we usually get, how did they manage this? If you look at the bottom of the page, it says something like "article provided by the Kansas City Wizards." So it was someone in the front office that actually wrote it, largely because they knew the KC Star wasn't exactly going to send a reporter over to get some quotes.

Who ever would have thought that the Wizards of all teams, would be teaching our front office a few lessons on how to do things...

Tom

[ManInBlack]

Originally posted by ToMhIlL

Who ever would have thought that the Wizards of all teams, would be teaching our front office a few lessons on how to do things...

Tom

They may be able to teach us how to sell season tickets. I understand they may pass the Revs in total season tickets sold for 2003.

[jw]

George it gets pretty depressing when you have 25 pages in the sunday sports section covering the Sox, Celts, B's, horse racing, the Olympics, boxing, golf, high school, college, skiing, the Patriots, (6 months before the season!), etc...and NO soccer of ANY kind. Just like it was stated above, they seem to find ways of writing about all of the angles of baseball spring training EVERY DAY...but nobody throws us a friggin' bone. I guess I was too spoiled by one week of Gus. It was almost like I could depend on him.

There is PLENTY to write about.

[Soccer Doc]

Originally posted by The Magpie
[i]

George, no offense intended, but I work in communications...

... there is always a story to write about.



I agree with you Evan. I'm sure if someone was motivated to write something they could come up with something for a story . My point was more to the effect that we shouldn't make too much of the lack of press right now. "The sky is falling" and "They are out to screw us" and "They don't care" and "The system is broken" posts just get old and none of these contentions are valid.

George

[Tony Biscaia]

The Revs coaches and players are very cooperative, available and willing.

The main reason there is a dearth of Revs news is because the people who get paid to cover the team aren't being assigned to do it by the powers that be at their respective workplaces.

The Revs aren't exactly helping themselves when they stage tournament home games in foreign countries and hope it goes mostly unnoticed.

Also, as Magpie pointed out, the Revs could/should be providing a steady stream of press release updates to the various media outlets. As Reveler would say, every other MLS team does that, why not us?

btw jw, I'm not familiar with your station, but curious:

Are you allowed to speak of the Revs on the air?
Do you have any say on what your sports guy covers?

Years ago Joe-Max used to do a weekly live call-in on WZLX with Charles Laquidara and Tank (I occasionally helped out if I could get to the station, back then I worked at the Pru tower.)

Any chance you could set up something similar? You'd get a couple of hundred new fans of country music ;-)

[jw]

Originally posted by Tony Biscaia
Are you allowed to speak of the Revs on the air?
Do you have any say on what your sports guy covers?...

I have a fine line that I can walk on "soccer talk", as my boss calls it. We are music-intensive, with a target audience of 35-54 year olds, mostly women. So our topics must cover their lifestyle, and be very quick and to the point. From 1997 through 2001, Regan Communications used to feed me interviews probably once a month from February to August. I spoke with basically everybody, and then had to edit the...um, er...quite a bit of it out to fit the formatics. It got increasingly difficult due to pressures from above to keep cutting and cutting. I was down to only about a minute or so, and that was it. So, when Regan dropped the Revs, or was it the other way around, we stopped the interviews...very frustrating.
Yea, ZLX did it, so did one other, of which I cannot remember, but those stations skew males, we lean towards women, so "sports talk" is discouraged.
I still get in as much info as I can, as it is part of MY lifestyle, of which I am free to talk about, (within reason). I usually write the stories for the woman, (Sean Grande's wife, BTW, Lori), who handles our news, (we have no sports Dept). My philosophy, is that when I am on the air, and the Revs are playing that day, or the night before, that they are just as important as the "Big 4", so they get a mention.
I always make sure to feed info to our other stations, (WROR, WBOS, WMJX, and WTKK), and have even gone as far as to appear on with Mike Barnicle on 96.9 to try and "educate" him on the Revs, World Cup, etc.
Jeff Causey still keeps in touch, hey, he loves the music, and used to call and give me grief all the time, (I suspect he will again now that he's back in Boston!). Rusty Pierce is also a listener.
I must also admit, that I have auctioned off Revs stuff at our annual on-air charity drive, have given away tickets, I have tailgated with listeners, I have posed for publicity pics in my Revs jersey, introduced a George Strait concert in one in front of 50,000, not to mention wearing one nearly every year at our annual music festival at the Tweeter Center, (this is somewhat similar to the Kiss Concert). I push for the Revs schedule to be included in our quarterly magazine. If the Revs are breathing, and I can get details, then I'll work to squeeze it in somewhere.
I promote when I can, where I can, as much as I can, until I get yelled at.
I have to tell you, though, and you know this already, getting anything out of them has gone from bad to worse.
I will, however, make more of an effort, myself.

The bottom line: I am doing the best I can right now, Tony. Our audience is female, and I am increasingly discouraged by management from pursuing interviews, unless they are about the music. Until we can amass a higher cume, and continuously get Top 10 numbers, we all must toe the line quite closely. Once viable ratings are standard, more things might open up.

Not to mention the fact that this freakin' war is going to mess with our Spring Ratings period which begins in a week! And don't even THINK of bringing up the Dixie Chicks...


-john

[Jon Martin]

Originally posted by The Magpie
[i]Perhaps they could have taken a chapter from the book of the Dallas Burn, who've fully supported the efforts of individuals associated with a site very much like RevsNet, to provide content and coverage of the club on a foreign training jaunt. 3rd Degree may be the most informative team-based web site in MLS, not because Buzz writes better than Mike/Tony/etc. (though he does write well), but because he has seemingly unlimited access to the Burn at home and away. This to me represents a perfectly reasonable way for the Revs to reach their core audience with a minimum of expenditure. How much would it cost the Revs to have Revsnet become their day-to-day news outlet? How much would it cost the Revs to bring Mike with them to CR?