Let us acknowledge, to commence matters, that yesterday marked the 100th Anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, political founder of the Soviet Union, as well as its first Supreme Leader. Some confusion reigns as to when and why he changed his sir-name from the highly Slavic Ulyanov to the more Germanic Lenin, but it appears to have been around his 30th birthday, and shortly after having completed a multi-year prison term for revolutionary activities. He went on, under the Lenin handle, to lead both the 1905 and more decisive 1917 Revolutions, talked his contemporaries into withdrawing from WWI, and took over operations, whereupon many of said contemporaries tragically and in Grand Russian Tradition, disappeared.
He ran the show until his death in January 1924, leaving those of us among the living to wonder how we have endured a full century without him.
Fortunately, in one sense, he’s still with us. One can still view his remarkably well-preserved corpse, encased as it is in ice, in Red Square. However, as a public service to those not wishing to travel to Moscow at this frigid and geopolitically dangerous juncture, I offer the following image:
He takes a nice snapshot, no doubt, even dead, but let’s face facts. It’s not the same.
But this here note ain’t about Vlad. Instead, I wanted to write about the wholesale dispatch of virtually the entire staff of the iconic Sports Illustrated Magazine, which controlling enterprise Arena Capital Management announced on Friday. The ACM crew is making appropriate noises about ensuring the continuance of the publication, but we’ve heard that yarn before. More likely than not, the script calls for its full toe-tagging, on the same trajectory, as, say, the much more deserving of our lamentations Village Voice.
One wonders what went wrong at SI, and there are several unforced errors that come to mind. Perhaps it was the embracing of the cause of quixotic quarterback turned social justice warrior Colin Kaepernick. More likely, the force multiplier for brand erosion was the unfortunate inclusion (if you’ll pardon my wholesale descent into the vernacular) of trannies and fatties (and, in some cases, both) in the roster of models gracing the pages of their perpetually hungered-for-this-time-of-year Swimsuit Issue.
But if I was to mark the time when this whole thing was set in motion, I would wind the clock back further. To the late ‘80s. And, more specifically to the creation and widespread distribution of the SI Football Phone.
It was, plainly, a remarkable device – part football, part phone, but, objectively, and to borrow from that great 20th Century philosopher Archie Bunker “a little too much of both and not enough of neither”.
It looked like this:
Or, if you prefer action photos:
Operational problems abounded, naturally. It was nigh impossible to throw it in a tight spiral – into, say, the waiting arms of Fred Belitnikoff. Even if you were Ken Stabler. Kicking a field goal or extra point rendered the place holder at direct risk of electrocution.
Using it as a telecom device was also a dubious proposition. It required an ethernet connection, and even if you managed to reach your intended recipient, reception was, at best, sketchy. The dial tone sounded like a ref’s whistle, and signal for an incoming call was not a simulated bell, but rather the Notre Dame fight song.
However, from a commercial perspective, it was an unmixed success. SI outsourced to China the production of hundreds of thousands of these faux pigskin dialing contraptions, at a cost of $4/unit. In a flash of ‘80s marketing brilliance, Time, Inc. then the owners of Sports Illustrated, gave the device away for anyone willing to pluck down $55/year for a magazine subscription.
1.6M did. You can do the math here, but by my cipherings, Time did OK.
But it may have been Time’s top tick. In 1990, it merged with Warner Brothers, thus combining a print world once occupied by such luminaries as J.D. Salinger, Gore Vidal and even Donald (The Bard) Trump with turf controlled by Bugs Bunny.
Even that was hardly a disaster. But then, a mere 10 days into the new millennium, the magazine/cartoon factory merged with AOL, and what could’ve gone wrong there? A couple of years later, I recall asking a friend on the periodical side how the merger was going, and he replied: “what merger?”. “Why, the AOL merger” I answered. “He looked at me and said: “I don’t know. I’m still working on the Warner integration”.
So, Time (which still exists) and Tide (which continues to grace our washing machines) do indeed march on. It’s 2024. AOL is, if not gone, at minimum zombified. We now have smart phones. And metaverses. And AI. I don’t think the designers of the SI Football Phone properly anticipated any of this. And now, perhaps in result, SI is entering its death throes.
The markets have taken it all in stride, with the Gallant 500 and (albeit amid less fanfare) Col. Naz closing at all-time highs on Friday – wobbly first fortnight notwithstanding. I kinda suspected investors would rally and bid ‘em up. I’m not overly enthusiastic as to how high they go from here, but I did know a bid would materialize.
And, while streams of data flows await us up-river, including the fat part of earnings, introductory Q4 GDP estimates, and, by the end of the month, the latest proclamations from the FOMC, I sense that what moves the market in either direction will have more to do with vibe than analytical content. Investors are either gonna take a notion to bid ‘em up. Or they ain’t. And, when one delves more deeply into the matter, there is a solid case to be made for a continuation of the former.
The Fed, depending upon the measure one selects, has reached its Inflation targets. Q4 GDP estimates range around +/- 2% — a Milton Friedman wet dream. The FOMC, albeit with iffy time targets, has shifted its rhetoric towards rate cuts. Somehow, amid the din of despair about the perils of fossil fuel production, the United States has achieved record Oil Production:
Funny how one fails to hear much about this assault on either the planet or the ozone layer – even at the recently completed (and miraculously survived) Gathering ‘O the Hypocrites in Davos. But, then again, it is an election year, and the Green Private Jet crowd might perhaps be forgiven if they allow this outrage on a temporary basis, with notions to rudely shut down the pumps if they emerge victorious in November.
Plus, if all else fails, there’s this handy little item:
So, lotsa cash available, under the right circumstances, to pile into the private securities markets. And All of this represents pretty strong tailwinds for risk assets.
None of which is reason for over-optimism, as factors can change – instantaneously or over time. Time Warner decided that a football is a football, a phone is a phone, and ne’er the twain should (again) meet. Four decades later, Sports Illustrated itself began its own football phone descent.
Lenin shed his mortal coil and gave way to Stalin. There was another World War, a Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union. The year he died, the Soviets renamed its spiritual capital – St. Petersburg/Petrograd – in his honor. 67 years later, and not many months after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, they shamefully (shamelessly?) reverted the metropolis back to the original handle of St. Petersburg.
All of which begs a couple of questions. Could a SMART football phone save Sports Illustrated? And, had Vlad simply retained the original Ulyanov, would ANY Russian leader DARED to rename a city away from the elegant (if somewhat garbled) name of Ulyanovgrad?
Well, my friends, these are counterfactuals, and thus unknowable. Better instead, I think, to look ahead. And hope for the best.
TIMSHEL