Newspapers, baseball and taking the young male demographic for granted

In the car this morning I heard an interesting segment on ESPN Radio’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd about the decline of baseball ratings and how it subsequently related to the decline in the newspaper industry. Both took for granted and are now losing one major demographic: young males.

As baseball was the king of TV ratings years ago, the MLB had a large amount of young males tuning in to watch their favorite teams. Years have passed since baseball was the king of TV sports and now those young males have turned their attention to MMA, the NBA and most notably, the NFL, according to Cowherd.

Similarly in the technology and media industries, young males have turned their attention away from newspapers and paying for subscriptions in favor of digital, up-to-the-minute news through aggregators, blogs, Twitter and websites that provide more news, for free. Some would argue that the decline of the newspaper industry and the move online has led people to get less of the local news that newspapers notoriously provide. This is largely untrue as blogs, local online magazines and the online versions of the newspapers that people have stopped subscribing to provide that same local coverage as readers have always been able to find.

As the newspaper and journalism industry change to accommodate the digital age, baseball remains stubborn and steadfast in its ways. The MLB doesn’t seek out the opinions of their fleeting young, male demographic. They insist that baseball is in a healthy place, the fact that ratings are down 9% from last year is no big deal. What? It isn’t? You’ve got men that are 18-24 tuning out or flat-out not caring and that’s okay with the organization? Something’s wrong there.

Or maybe it’s the years of steroids scandals and dishonesty has turned the young male demographic away. Boys watch sports for role models and maybe now it’s harder to find a role model in the today’s MLB so they shy away. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s a different generation, that young males now don’t want to see long and heated pitchers duels anymore. They want quick games with big hits, dunks and cage-fighting action.

I think that it’s a matter of speed. Undoubtedly American culture moves a lot faster now than it did in the 1950’s and ‘60’s when baseball was on a larger scale in the eyes of the American public. Younger generations want things and they want them fast. Just as people my age don’t want to go get the newspaper at the bottom of the driveway when they can find it on their computers, they don’t want to watch baseball either for a multitude or reasons. It could be the pace of the game and the desire for something faster or the steroids allegations that the game’s big names seem to fall under week in and week out.

The simple fact is that the journalism industry is changing, it’s adapting, it’s migrating to fit its needs and the needs of the public that it serves. Baseball isn’t.