01/26/04  Is Belo really desperate for cash?

Because DallasArena.com has friends in high and low places, we hear stuff that never makes print space in The Dallas Morning News or anything Wick Allison publishes.  Word on the street is Belo's advertising revenue has taken a dramatic downturn since last year, which might explain the financial illogic that appears in their story on Houston's success in getting two Super Bowls. 
 

	Houston beats Dallas as Super Bowl host In hosting the Big Game, the Bayou City is running rings around Big D 12:04 PM CST Sun, 01/25/04 By BARRY HORN / The Dallas Morning News
The moment toe meets ball on the opening kickoff of Super Bowl XXXVIII next Sunday in Reliant Stadium, the scoreboard will read Houston 2, Dallas 0.    Dallas, the city that gave America its team, has never hosted a Super Bowl. Houston, the city that gave America the Tennessee Titans, is about to host its second NFL championship game. . . .
So what?  Is that where we are -- two cities pretending to be sports teams?
Houston hosted its first Super Bowl in 1974. . . .    Houston is living proof of the adage, "If your NFL team can't get to the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl will come to your city." . . .    Houston has been far hungrier to host the Super Bowl than its neighbor 240 miles up Interstate 45.
So what?  If you had to live in Houston, wouldn't you be "hungrier" for anything?
In the formative years when the Super Bowl was still only a game, Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams actively pursued it while Cowboys owner Clint Murchison didn't show much enthusiasm. . . .    "When you consider the history of the Dallas Cowboys franchise, its tradition and its success, it's a shame the big game has never been here," said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys' executive vice president and chief operating officer. . . .
So what?  Clint Murchison apparently thought it was a better investment to put his money in a winning team than pursuing a huge weekend event that his team might or might not be participating.
"With the facilities we have in Dallas, we could not get the game," Stephen Jones said.    "Facilities" translates to stadium. Houston has a shiny, new 70,000-seat stadium with a retractable roof. Dallas has 32-year-old Texas Stadium, a relative dinosaur with 4,000 fewer seats and a giant hole in the roof.  . . .
So what?  Hire Grandpa Jones' plastic surgeon to do a facelift on Texas Stadium.  Stephen and Grandpa Jones should be talking to bankers and not politicians about financing a new "facility" for their team to do their business.
. . . "And clearly Houston has a world-class stadium as well as all of the other physical assets to attract a Super Bowl. But the thing to remember about getting a Super Bowl is that it takes a respected NFL owner to lead the way," Morgan said. "You just can't buy a Super Bowl."    Yet that apparently is just what Houston did.
Well, they have us there.  No one in their right mind can say that the Dallas Cowboys have a "respected NFL owner", unless you count the creeps who admire thieves and robber barons.
. . . "The extra $50 million we paid for the team was for the Houston community," McNair said. "Having the Super Bowl here is good for our sponsors, our suite holders, our fans.    "It benefits everyone." ...
How's that?  Does that mean you have to spend $450 Million for a stadium to attract the Super Bowl?  Is anyone going to tell us the citizens of Houston will see $450 Million in revenue from Super Bowl weekend?  How many citizens in Houston are going to get into the Super Bowl game?
This time around, the host committee has spent $15 million to make sure everything goes smoothly. . . .    In addition, Houston expedited the building of the city's newest and largest hotel to serve as Super Bowl headquarters. There's also a new rail system, a new downtown entertainment district and an expanded convention center.    "We are going to get the kind of publicity you can't get for a billion dollars," Tollett said.
So, Houston spends $450 M on the stadium, $15 M on preparation for the Super Bowl and has to build a hotel for God knows how many millions?  That's pretty high $$ for some advertising.
The publicity wasn't so good surrounding Houston's first Super Bowl. ...
What do they think it's going to do for Houston in the long run?  Is some CEO going to move his or her company to Houston because of something he sees about Houston during the Super Bowl?  Or, is some group going to plan a convention in Houston because of something they see about Houston during the Super Bowl?  Even if either or both events occur, is Houston going to see $500 M in return?     If a CEO picks Houston for relocation due to the Super Bowl, he is very likely to be expecting the local politicians to build his new building and give him tax abatements.  After all, look what they did for McNair.
Meanwhile back in Dallas, one man feverishly worked to get the Super Bowl for his hometown. Field Scovell, affectionately known as Mr. Cotton Bowl, watched as the stadiums that hosted the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl passed around the Super Bowl.    If Clint Murchison didn't want the Super Bowl for Texas Stadium, Scovell wanted it for the Cotton Bowl. . . .  I don't want to imply that Clint was lackadaisical in pursuing a Super Bowl, but that reduced his enthusiasm." . . .
If Scovell really cared about the Cotton Bowl, he would have been raising money to restore it back in the 60's.  Darryl Jordan and Tom Taylor and their group were well on the way to raising the funds to dome the Cotton Bowl to make one of our few historic structures useful and profitable again -- until Ron Kirk, et al started that ridiculous pursuit of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Certainly with Jerry Jones' status as one of the NFL's most innovative owners and astute businessmen, he could secure a Super Bowl for Dallas.    All it will take is a state-of-the-art stadium with a retractable roof.    The cost of Houston's publicly funded Reliant Stadium was in the tony neighborhood of $450 million. That's chicken feed compared with the billion-dollar sports and entertainment complex Jones wants to build with the help of increased taxes.
That's exactly the point.  Houston will never recoup its investment in that stadium at any level.  It was a poor investment of limited public monies.  For what?  For a Super Bowl game?  Tax money should be going for the public good, not for the good of Billionaires.
The Cowboys envision a 75,000-seat stadium with club levels and suites under a must-have retractable roof. The end zones would have social viewing areas that could give way to 25,000 additional seats for a Super Bowl. . . .   The Cowboys could become the first team to play a Super Bowl in their home stadium. . . .   the Cowboys' new stadium could become a semi-permanent site for future Super Bowls, just as New Orleans' and Miami's stadiums have been.
That means the "commoners" will be standing below as Our Downtown Betters (the ODB) look down on them.
. . .   The Joneses wish Houston a flawless Super Bowl XXXVIII.    "Maybe that will open the eyes of the people of the metroplex to see what a Super Bowl can be, and it can finally be here," Stephen Jones said.
So what?  So, we get to spend $600-800 Million for the chance to have a weekend event?

Comments in Blue are those of DallasArena.com. 

It is clear the DMN has started pumping up the campaign to divert more of our tax money to Grandpa Jones.

Has anyone forgotten the DMN wasting $40 Million on that CueCat thing? 
 

Goodbye Kitty CueCat was a little like a mule with a spinning wheel--so says Dallas' own Lyle Lanley  BY ERIC CELESTE

In case you're wondering--and lots of stockholders/employees at Belo Corp. are--there were plenty of people who knew the CueCat was a ridiculous investment. Mark Cuban said as much. Newsroom grunts who were asked to evaluate its worth said, in the kindest terms possible, that the digital scanner cat-lookin' thingie was, in the parlance of the high-tech industry, retarded. It didn't matter. The brain trust at Belo dumped nearly $40 million into the kitty last year, with promises that the investment wasn't so much a gamble as it was a money-making lock. A sure thing. . . .

Real smart business minds -- not.  They are now going to try to convince us to spend $700 Million so we have a shot at staging a Super Bowl?  About as  smart as reading your paper with a CueCat handy instead of just reading the whole thing on line.

Is Belo going to tell us commoners we need a new football stadium for the same reasons we did not need a new basketball arena?

On more than one occasion, DallasArena.com has said our current crop of ODB are not our Fathers' ODB.  Current ODB are second/third generation and their bloodlines are not getting stronger.  An ODB, Jr. has done a negative number on DMN's advertising revenue. 

It was interesting the way DMN covered County Commissioner Ken Mayfield's stupid handling of Grandpa Jones' attempted bribe with those Super Bowl tickets.
 

Hits and Misses 12:01 AM CST on Saturday, January 24, 2004 What was he thinking?

After a public outcry, County Commissioner Ken Mayfield gave up his free Super Bowl tickets. But we just have one question: Why'd he accept them from an attorney representing the Dallas Cowboys in the first place? None of his colleagues took the tickets, perhaps sensing a conflict of interest with the Cowboys looking for help with a new stadium. The attorney says he was acting on behalf of Houston clients, not the Cowboys. But Mr. Mayfield should have seen this conflict coming. It shouldn't have passed his smell test.

Grandpa Jones had his lawyer make a very questionable offer of a pair of Super Bowl tickets to each County Commissioner.  Why is the only bad guy the Commissioner who took them?  Yes, Ken Mayfield did a bad and stupid thing taking those tickets for any reason, but Grandpa Jones made the offer. 

We should  have seen this coming.  Here you have Attorney/County Commissioner Ken Mayfield up against big time lawyer Mike Baggett.  Poor Old Ken never had a chance of getting this one right.  Mayfield was the guy who continued to practice law before Dallas County Judges after he was elected as County Commissioner, making over $100,000 annually from our County taxes.  Dim-witted and ethically challenged vs. Mike Baggett?  Someone should have called the round when Bagget drew back for the first punch.

Last season, Grandpa Jones entertained Dallas City Council Members in his boxes at Texas Stadium to win their favor for supporting another rip off of Dallas taxpayers.  Nary a word in the DMN about that conflict of interest.

That's why I can't get all exercised about these allegations against Sheriff Jim Bowles.  Bureaucrats and elected officials have always been wined and dined by supplicants seeking lucrative public contracts.  Why is it suddenly an issue now?

It's nothing to me if some guy gets a contract to feed the inmates at the County Jail. 

It's a big deal to me if my property taxes stay high so we can build a new place for Grandpa Jones and his thugs to do their business. 

Don't tell me our property taxes are not impacted by layering on more sales tax on the hotel/motel and car rental business in Dallas. 

It takes money to run this city -- even poorly.  When we continue to have declining revenue from our convention business because our hotel/motel taxes are the same as cities with more amenities, the money to run the city has to come from someplace else.  That would be you and me.

You need to get ready for more DMN headlines about all the benefits Houston will see from hosting the Super Bowl.  Read them from the view point of looking for the cost to Houston for hosting the Super Bowl.

If you ask me, hosting the Super Bowl will mean the citizens of Houston have taken a hosing.