U-M, OSU Agree to Halt Printing Sports Guides

Submitted by Brian on

Press release from the U; thought it was interesting enough to diarize.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--The University of Michigan and The Ohio State University have agreed to halt the printing of athletic team media guides in an effort to develop new media initiatives for more effective communications and help with cost containment.

“With the new media environment and current economic climate, the decision to cut back in this area was prudent,” Bill Martin, University of Michigan Director of Athletics, said. “The discussion to eliminate the printed version of the media guide has been ongoing within the Big Ten and NCAA administrative services for some time.

“We understand there is a need for a stronger commitment to new media,” Martin added. “Our alumni and fans want more timely information.”

Both Martin and Smith also noted it is important to make changes that will not affect the athletic and academic well-being of the school’s student-athletes.

“With Ohio State and Michigan together making this statement, I hope our decision will be a catalyst for other schools to follow suit,” Gene Smith, Ohio State Director of Athletics, said. “All athletic programs are in the midst of cost containment discussions, but our decision is not only based on economics, the structure of media consumption has changed rapidly and we need to meet the challenges head on.

“New initiatives will have to be developed to allow media, recruits, alumni and fans to follow our teams,” Smith said. “Social networking already plays a role in our communication plan and new platforms will continue to develop.”

The elimination of printed media guides will take place immediately and effectively will result in a total cost reduction of more than $250,000 per year.

Comments

Blazefire

May 28th, 2009 at 3:36 PM ^

Now that's interesting. I wonder if the rivalry is so deeply ingrained at this point that the schools have to agree to make athletic changes like this together to make it stick.

Or alternately, it might be the idea that the "Big 2" making changes will basically force the rest of the conference to follow suit.

mvp

June 1st, 2009 at 12:16 AM ^

I know there's a ton of advertising in the game programs, but I didn't realize there was in the media guide.

I regularly look at the weekly media update. I don't think that has ads in it.

Regardless, there's nobody in the press that doesn't have a laptop and/or the ability to download the .pdf each week. This seems like a no-brainer to me.

Milwaukee_MGoBlue

May 28th, 2009 at 11:04 PM ^

has fallen dramatically due to the fact that all newspapers have been cutting back on editorial content and have lost a lot of advertising. The schools would have saved a decent amount of money just on the cost of the newsprint without having to discontinue the printing or reduce the size of the media guides. YOY newsprint has probably fallen around 15-20%.

BigBum

May 29th, 2009 at 9:40 AM ^

It's almost like Russia and the US agreeing on the reduction of nuclear armaments and the rest of the world follows suit. Maybe there is a peaceful thaw to this cold war on our horizon.

Maybe if they weren't such f'ing d-bags...maybe.

Griff Cannon

May 29th, 2009 at 4:45 PM ^

So all anyone could talk about 2 weeks ago was ND not printing every season Weis coached in their media guide but Michigan and pOSU don't even print a media guide and its acceptable?