What's Going On Here : The Blood-Horse

Balancing Past, Present, and Future - By Marla Bickel

aspradling — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:41:00 GMT

(Originally published in the December 4, 2010 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

By Marla Bickel

"What’s the future of The Blood-Horse?”

This is the question many readers, advertisers, and industry partners have asked during the many conversations I’ve had since I assumed the role of Blood-Horse Publications’ publisher and CEO Nov. 1. The answer has two parts.

While the future often seems unpredictable, we will be here imagining, planning for, and realizing it. Getting to those goals, however, requires a balancing act with the present and the past.

The Blood-Horse is fortunate to have a strong past from which we can learn, a long and rich history as the Thoroughbred industry’s authoritative voice. Since its founding in 1916, the publication continues to serve its audience with news, insights, and features that cover every aspect of Thoroughbred racing life and historical events. The publication’s mission is simple and straightforward: the preservation and prosperity of the Thoroughbred industry.

When The Blood-Horse was purchased in 1935 by the American Thoroughbred Breeders Association, John Hay Whitney said of the magazine: “Its whole idea, as far as its editorial pages are concerned, will be to support racing as a sport in which the interest of breeders, owners, trainers, riders, promoters, and public shall have their just portion of consideration.”

So in the present, we continue our mission. Our publication has a strong reputation for and a commitment to quality, and we will continue focusing on providing accurate, pertinent, and provocative content. The Blood-Horse has been richly honored by its peers in the Thoroughbred industry with Eclipse Awards and by the American Horse Publications and many other professional organizations for writing, photography, design, and service to our readers. We look forward to earning more accolades.

The present has provided us with a number of challenges, too, in both the Thoroughbred industry and the publishing world. We embrace rather than shy away from these challenges while recognizing that none of our problems will be solved by one person or one group. It will take a community of dedicated industry professionals to resolve the issues, and we will continue giving that community a voice. The Blood-Horse, as part of that community, will continue bringing issues to the table, present diverse viewpoints, and challenge assumptions. Effective communication will be key in finding solutions.The Blood-Horse also must meet the demands of a world that is 24/7. You, the reader, expect news, features, and analysis whenever, wherever, and on whatever platform you desire. Print magazine, digital magazine, website, or mobile—you want us to be wherever you are.

So what does the future hold? I can assure you we will respect our past and continue to focus on editorial quality. We will meet the present challenges by focusing on depth and breadth of coverage. I can also assure you that we will be wherever, whenever, and on whatever platform you want. We continue to develop new ways to share information with our readers.

There is no doubt that what you want in a magazine will change. We recognize that readers use our publication in different ways. Some of you read it cover to cover; others prefer to read the features and personality profiles first, while others jump straight to the graded stakes section to learn about the connections of the previous week’s stakes winners. Many of you have embraced the Web as a great supplement to the print magazine and dive right into its constant stream of news and information. As your habits change, we need to respond by shaping the design and content of our magazine to suit you.

Through the years The Blood-Horse has informed and educated horsemen, professionals, and fans about events, trends, and issues affecting the industry, and it has provided a forum for debate about those trends and issues. Your feedback drives us.

What is the future of The Blood-Horse? This leads us to part two of the answer: What the future is is up to you.

Horse Racing Ranks High with SportsNation - Eric Mitchell

EJMitchellKy — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 01:01:00 GMT

By Eric Mitchell

@EJMitchellKy on Twitter

Seeing the results of a recent ESPN SportsNation Fan poll was a kick because horse racing ranked among the top 10 sports. Not only did racing crack the top 10, it was ranked seventh, getting beat out by the NFL, college football, Major League Baseball, college basketball, the NBA, and the NHL. Incredibly, NASCAR ranked 15th on the list.

Granted, this was not a scientific poll. It was a fan poll. ESPN website visitors were asked to rank 20 sports by their most favorite. Points were then assigned to the rankings with 20 points going to the sport in first place, 19 points to second place, etc. From Aug. 31 through Sept. 22, 13,297 people completed the poll.

The most startling piece of data in this poll was not how high horse racing ranked against the other sports. The real eye-popper was the number of #1 rankings horse racing received—3,084. That’s 23% of the polls submitted and second only to the NFL, which ranked #1 in 3,749 polls submitted. College football got ranked in the top spot in 2,413 polls, and MLB was top-ranked in 1,277 polls.

The wheels start to wobble on the reality bus as you dig further into these #1 rankings. European soccer was ranked on top 414 times, while NASCAR was #1 in 57 polls. Hmmm...I am having a hard time believing there are more European soccer fans in the U.S. than NASCAR fans.

Let’s go back to the first point. This is not a scientific poll but it still provides some good news, even if horse racing fans stuffed the digital ballot box and NASCAR fans are too busy watching Kyle Busch chase the Sprint Cup championship title to take the time to complete online polls. I find it encouraging that 23% of SportsNation fans who did submit a poll picked horse racing as their favorite sport.

Change Agent - By Dan Liebman

Blood-Horse Staff — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:23:00 GMT

(Originally published in the March 6, 2010 issue of The Blood-Horse magazine. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions at the bottom of the column.)

Speaking recently to a group of students in the University of Louisville’s Equine Industry Program, I wanted to make a point about the dwindling size of newspapers and magazines around the globe. There was only one problem. Asked if they had read a daily newspaper that morning, not a single hand went up among the 20 students.

People, and not just college students, mind you, are getting their news differently.

The Blood-Horse is closing in on a century of publishing, a historic number of years to be in any business. But The Blood-Horse was founded as a news magazine, and that term applies to very few weekly publications today.
(Begun in 1916, the name was changed from The Thoroughbred Horse to The Blood-Horse in 1928.)

Today, news is delivered by Web sites, social media, cell phones, and e-mail and text alerts. News, like never before, is instantaneous. It is why The Blood-Horse was the first equine publication to offer breaking news alerts.

Despite that, the rumors of print being dead are exaggerted. Wounded maybe, but not dead.

The fact is the number of advertisements has always determined the total number of pages in any publication. Simple economics. Fewer ads mean fewer pages. So, at a time when society is getting its news on the fly, the recession began, and it took advertising budgets down with it. Newspapers and magazines were hit hard.

According to MediaFinder, more than 600 magazines ceased operations in both 2007 and 2008. The good news is the number slowed in 2009 to about 500. Of course, hundreds of magazines were also launched, but it is still hard to accept that such titles as Gourmet (begun in 1941), Home (1951), and Teen (1954) folded last year.

Media companies must adapt in these turbulent times. The Blood-Horse recently redesigned its Web site, BloodHorse.com, which gets more than 1.1 million page views weekly. Now, the latest headlines always appear on top, the latest race replays, videos, features, and blog entries are prominently displayed, and a cleaner, leaner navigation makes it easier to find what you want.

The print magazine must change as well, allowing us to provide as much content as possible in fewer pages. In fact, it has been changing for years. For example, for decades The Blood-Horse printed the hip-by-hip results of every horse sold at public auction in North America. Today, those results are on BloodHorse.com. And they are even better because they are searchable.

With news so readily available, we understand that readers demand to know not only what the news is, but what the news means. While we have published two commentaries each week, this column and The Final Turn, this week we introduce a business analysis written by Bill Shanklin and a pedigree analysis penned by Les Brinsfield, both experts in their fields. Blood-Horse senior correspondent Steve Haskin will regularly write analysis of recent racing. Other writers will begin appearing soon.

In the issue of June 7, 1980, The Blood-Horse began a news section titled “Dispatches.” Beginning in this issue that section of the magazine has been renamed “The Wire” and will contain shorter news items, but more analysis and commentary. Along with that, many sections of the magazine have been redesigned by art director Beth McCoy—the look and feel of her work provides a clean, fresh, imaginative way to help us enter this new era.

These changes are being made to strengthen The Blood-Horse, which for 94 years has been covering the Thoroughbred industry. But there are things that are not changing, most importantly the mission of The Blood-Horse, which is to serve Thoroughbred owners and breeders.

How we serve you has changed significantly since 1916, just like much has changed in the industry since the top 50 stallions that stood in North America prior to World War II averaged 15 foals a crop.

We do not take lightly the trust you put in us to deliver the content you desire, deserve, and demand.

Nick of Time - by Dan Liebman

Blood-Horse Staff — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:08:00 GMT

A few days after selling a yearling for the world-record price of $13.1 million in 1985, Warner Jones had no problem describing his breeding philosophy.

“I look at what worked in the past and try to repeat it,” Jones said.

Jones knew a lot about breeding horses, and a lot about selling yearlings.

So that’s it? “Yeah, that’s it,” a smiling Jones said.

If something worked, repeat it; as simple as that.

Of course, there is more to it than that, and Jones knew it—things like soil, water, horsemanship, conformation, luck, and marketing.

In essence, the late owner of Hermitage Farm was describing an important factor in breeding: nicking, the process of assessing the affinity for breeding certain sire lines to certain broodmare sire lines.

There have been many successful nicks over the years, the most recent being Mr. Prospector/Northern Dancer. The obvious success of the Mr. Prospector/Northern Dancer nick is responsible for so many of today’s breeding animals being from those two dominant sire and broodmare sire lines.

Nicking services have been available to Thoroughbred breeders for years, but, unfortunately, they did not take the entire pool of foals into consideration. Until, that is, Blood-Horse Publications, in conjunction with Pedigree Consultants owners Alan Porter and Byron Rogers, brought TrueNicks to the market.

(Full disclosure: As a partner in TrueNicks, Blood-Horse Publications benefits financially from the company’s success.)

Other nicking services do not look at all foals bred on a cross, only the successful ones. So, which is of more use to a breeder: to know only how many stakes winners have been produced from a cross; or to know how many total foals have been produced from the cross, and from those foals, how many have gone on to win a stakes race?

Obviously, it is the latter.

Think of it this way. If a stallion has 100 foals, 20 starters, and five stakes winners, what is his percentage of stakes winners? Is it 25% (five stakes winners from 20 starters) or is it 5% (five stakes winners from 100 foals)? Of course, it is 5%. So, why would you look at all foals in this instance, but in terms of nicking look at only the successful foals? You wouldn’t, and TrueNicks doesn’t.

TrueNicks uses The Jockey Club Information Service’s entire database to examine every cross of a sire and broodmare sire, and then an algorithm formulates a Sire Improvement Index and Broodmare Sire Improvement Index, multiplying the two to express both the opportunity and expectation from each cross. A score of 6.0, for example, means the nick performs six times better than the average opportunity, which translates to an A+ True-Nicks rating (go to www.truenicks.com for a complete explanation).

In 1948, The Blood-Horse editor Joe Estes, always seeking statistics to aid Thoroughbred owners and breeders, developed the Average-Earnings Index and subsequent Comparable Index as ways of measuring the success of stallions. The ratings have been included in The Blood-Horse sire lists and on Stallion Register pages ever since.

Last year, all A, A+ and A++ nicks were included in The Blood-Horse Stallion Register (while 13% of the entire Thoroughbred population earn A, A+, or A++ rankings, 37% of the stakes winners are rated thusly). Now, TrueNicks ratings, regardless of letter designation, will be included for the first three finishers in stakes worth $100,000 or more that receive write-ups each week in The Blood-Horse. And, beginning with the yearling sales this summer, TrueNicks ratings will be added to Auction Edge, making that product even more of an aid to those shopping at Thoroughbred sales.

A mission of The Blood-Horse has always been to inform and educate the industry, and useful statistical information fits that mission perfectly. That nearly every major breeding farm in Central Kentucky, and many others in regional markets and internationally as well, have signed their stallions up for TrueNicks shows the company is continuing to fulfill the mission set forth nearly 100 years ago.