See This Movie
Congratulations to John and Brad Hennegan! The brothers’ award-winning documentary “The First Saturday in May,” which follows six contenders on the 2006 Kentucky Derby trail, will open in 18 cities on April 18 (and more the week after), thanks to a partnership with Truly Indie and Churchill Downs. Check out the movie’s freshly designed web site to find a theater and view the trailer.
Online Only, Please
A renewal notice for my Blood-Horse subscription popped up in the mail the other day. It’s been sitting on my desk since, as I waffle on re-upping for another year.
Here’s the thing — and I say this as someone who started out in print media, is an inveterate book collector, and subscribes to many magazines and little journals — I don’t want any more print in my life.
I don’t need any more print, unless it offers me something that can’t be found online — and that’s not quite the case with the Blood-Horse. Sure, I like looking at the farm ads, and the “Newcomers” list, but I’ve already read most of the content in each week’s issue by the time it arrives — on the web. The one argument for subscribing I can muster is access to BloodHorseNow.com, which is an attractive, usable site with most of the news and data I’ve come to rely on from Blood-Horse. I want to renew for that — but that means taking a print subscription, taking 52 more weeks of magazines stuffed with news I already know cluttering up my tiny New York apartment.
Dear Blood-Horse, I’d like to resubscribe. But online only. Sell me a subscription to your superb BloodHorseNow.com that doesn’t include the magazine — say, for $49. Or for $69 if I want a copy of the Stallion Register. But please — don’t make me subscribe to your print magazine anymore.
—
To be fair, if I read Blood-Horse solely online, I would have missed the letter to the editor in the March 15 issue written by Man o’ War biographer Dorothy Ours about the Breeders’ Cup changes announced last month. Excerpts below:
Moving all of the Breeders’ Cup filly and mare stakes to the Friday card seems like a promising marketing idea gone astray … if girl power is so potent, why don’t any of the “ladies” get to perform on Saturday? Instead, they’ve all been relegated to the less popular day … I’m afraid the impact of a very special event will be diluted.
Agreed, which is why a few of us launched a petition calling for the Breeders’ Cup to either restore the name of the Distaff or rename the race the Filly & Mare Classic, create a fans’ committee, and consider alternate Breeders’ Cup schedules. Add your name to the petition today!
Now Playing on Hulu
TVG. The racing network has launched a broadband division and uploaded a selection of evergreen trainer and jockey profiles and handicapping clips to the favorably-reviewed video site, which attracted a bit of buzz at SXSW when it was announced Monday that the site would come out of private beta this week. You might be thinking this is no big deal, but Hulu is no YouTube. Content isn’t user-generated, it’s original programming from NBC Universal and a raft of other providers — including the NHL, NBA, and Fox — and despite some shortcomings — such as no downloads or international access — the site is a pretty remarkable web service, pointing the way premium on-demand video is going online and offering significant potential for attracting an audience to racing — so long as the content is compelling.
Now in the Netflix Queue
“The Killing,” filmed at Bay Meadows, directed by Stanley Kubrick, recommended by Bill Christine (via Equidaily).
Paulick, Blood-Horse Part
The Thoroughbred Times reports that Ray Paulick has left Blood-Horse, where he was editor-in-chief since 1992 and oversaw all of the magazine’s editorial products, including the recently launched web venture Blood-Horse NOW. No comment, no details from Paulick or Blood-Horse.
DRF Sold for $200M
TheDeal.com reported this morning that Wicks Group has sold Daily Racing Form to Arlington Capital Partners for “just shy” of $200 million, despite the recent slowdown in the credit markets. Neither Wicks nor Arlington have confirmed the sale yet. Interesting tidbit pointed out by PaidContent: “The company has had more owners in the past 19 years than in [its] first 94.”
ESPN Will Still Show CCAO
– When news broke Monday morning that Rags to Riches was out of Saturday’s Coaching Club American Oaks at Belmont, it seemed logical that ESPN would go back to their original plan to show the San Diego Handicap at Del Mar, which had been bumped for the Oaks and the anticipated appearance of the Belmont winner. Well, that’s not happening. “[ESPN] just couldn’t react fast enough,” said Craig Dado, Del Mar’s vice president for marketing. “I guess it serves them right. I think that’s what they call karma” (North Country Times).
– Breeders’ Cup officials unveiled a new Breeders’ Cup web site today and announced that the entire Breeders’ Cup day card would be streamed live online (ThoroTimes). Cool.
– Curlin worked five furlongs in 1:00.2 over the Oklahoma training track this morning (BRIS). The Preakness winner is scheduled to start next in the August 5 Haskell at Monmouth.
No Box, No Coverage
Last November, when the Boston Globe made the disappointing announcement that racing entries and results would no longer be published in the paper’s sports section, sports editor Joe Sullivan tried to soothe readers who protested that “a Sunday box on feature races” would appear throughout the year. Two months later, there’s a small problem with that promise: There are no Sunday boxes on feature races. True, there wasn’t much to report through December. It was a quiet season. Yet, today’s Sunday paper has nothing on yesterday’s San Rafael, in which likely 2005 Juvenile champion and early Kentucky Derby favorite Stevie Wonderboy returned to the scene in what was basically a match race that just happened to be a graded stakes, finishing second. You would think that that race would warrant one of those little boxes Sullivan was talking about, or at least two inches pulled from a wire service story and tucked away in a side column sports news roundup. It didn’t even get that treatment, which begs the question: What races are big enough to earn Globe coverage? Let’s hope the answer proves to be more than the Kentucky Derby.
Related: MSNBC contributor Travis Stone urges fans to act to keep racing in the news: “The fall-out of our unwillingness to act could be devastating. Imagine the Kentucky Derby, going from front cover, to inside page, and then to a minor statistic before being taken off the press completely. The potential exists and it is time to step up. We may have broken slow, but it is too soon to ease ourselves out of this race.”
Globe Cuts Entries & Results
As of today, the Boston Globe will no longer publish entries and results for area dog and harness tracks or entries and results for New York thoroughbred tracks. “The Globe sports section has to evolve along with the changes that have taken place in sports,” writes sports editor Joe Sullivan in explanation of the decision. The paper does intend to print entries and results for Suffolk Downs when it reopens in the spring, and apparently will run “a Sunday box on feature races” throughout the year. Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.
Elsewhere in the paper: The Globe reprints, in its entirety and unchanged, a downer of an article about slots and the future of Suffolk Downs that was originally published on November 10. You’d think an editor would have at least updated the text about the “upcoming” end of the legislative session, which closed on November 18 without passing the slots-simulcasting bill discussed in the piece.
Moving in the opposite direction: The Boston Herald, which announced that it’s expanding its racing entries and results to include Calder.
“Who Do You Like Today?”
The NTRA is launching a new advertising campaign with the slogan, “Who do you like today?” replacing “Go, baby, go” (Blood-Horse). Patrick of Pulling Hair & Betting Horses thinks the new tagline puts too much emphasis on wagering, but I think it says more about the social aspect of the sport than the gambling. I’ve had a lot of racetrack conversations that start with some variation on the slogan — “Who do you like here?” or “Any tips today?” — followed by a couple of minutes talk about various horses or that day’s races. It’s companionable, and it’s one of the things that makes going to the track more fun than staying home and watching racing on TVG. I hope the ads convey that. Of course, whether or not tracks successfully capitalize on any response to the ads is another matter …
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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