City Paper: "Snyder: Hunter, Gatherer, Ruiner"

[Horatio]

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/cheapseats/

Hunter, Gatherer, Ruiner







Snyder sports a spotty mergers-and-acquisitions record.

By Dave McKenna
Posted: June 11, 2008



Dogs piss on things and claim them. Dan Snyder claims everything and pisses everybody off.

Snyder announced last week that the city’s big sports talker—WTEM-AM, better known as Sportstalk 980—was among three radio stations he’s buying. He’s purchased at least eight frequencies, six in this market and two in outer Virginia, in the last two years.

Big-dollar shopping sprees are nothing new to Snyder: This is what he did before Redskins fans ever heard of him.

He founded Snyder Communications in 1988, but the company’s profile didn’t take off until he took it public almost a decade later and used that cash to take over every direct-marketing and pharmaceutical company that would sell out.

His Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that Snyder went on an amazing two-year buying binge beginning in 1997. He brought firms from all over the globe, with names like MMD, American List, PharmFlex, Blau Marketing, Brann Holdings, Publimed Promotions, Promotech Research Associates, Sampling Corp. of America, Halliday Jones Sales, and Bounty (a company that produced baby-raising guides, not paper towels), under the Snyder Communications umbrella.

At the time, mergers and acquisitions were all the rage in the corporate realm. In 2000, just before the Wall Street boom busted, Snyder sold the whole portfolio in a stock deal for a reported $2.3 billion.

By then, he’d already acquired the Redskins.

The NFL team didn’t satisfy his takeover jones, however. While owning and operating the Skins, he’s acquired fan magazines and message boards. He’s bought burger joints and production companies and theme-park chains. He’s put journalists and movie stars on his payroll and even bought up the rights to other football teams.

And, as last week’s transaction proves, he’s not done hunting and gathering just yet. The pattern seems to be: He takes something over, that thing goes downhill, and before it improves or even gets off the ground, he’s moved on and taken over something else.

You can look it up.

His media acquisitions are many and uniformly fruitless. Shortly after taking over the Redskins, he took over Redskins Journal, a long-running Manassas-based fanzine, and it quickly dissolved.

In 2005, he acquired Extremeskins.com, at the time an independent fan message board, and made it a part of his team’s Web site. Snyder’s moderators protect him like a Jonas Brothers street team, but the fan base’s dislike for the owner is plain for all to read on the board.

Triple X Radio, his bizarrely named radio network, has to this point been essentially unlistenable for D.C. residents, and not just because of content issues: The stations’ signals are so weak, the programming can’t be heard downtown after sunset. Snyder requested that the three stations be combined for ratings purposes, and in the latest book their total audience ranks 23rd in the Washington market.

Snyder also has produced several television shows, which put area TV, newspaper, and radio sportscasters on the payroll of the team they cover. As of 2005, WJLA-TV was the only major-network affiliate in this market not corrupted by Redskins money. Among the big names who’ve taken Redskins money: George Michael, Michael Wilbon, Lindsay Czarniak, and Andy Pollin.

Pollin was hired by Snyder in 2003 to host a Sunday-morning TV show for the Redskins Broadcast Network called Redskins Game Day and was viewed as a Snyder suck-up back when he was taking checks from the owner. He’ll be viewed as a suck-up again for as long as he’s back on Snyder’s payroll. (Mark Gray, host of WOL-AM’s Sports Groove, is now the only unconflicted daily sports-talk host in the entire D.C. market.)

Despite the media strategy, people can’t stand Snyder around here. Look at what a Redskins affiliation has done for Larry Michael, the team’s broadcaster/minister of disinformation: In a recent unscientific popularity poll of local sports media types conducted by Dan Steinberg for his Washington Post “D.C. Sports Bog” blog, Michael finished last in a landslide, with an 18 percent approval rating.

Snyder’s media acquisitions aren’t the only ones that haven’t worked out. Nothing he’s taken over since becoming a big player around here has worked out, really.

Snyder’s failings atop Six Flags have been chronicled comprehensively in these pages, so, for this week, let’s just point out that according to MSN Money’s financial charts, only 10 percent of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have performed worse than Snyder’s amusement chain’s in the past year.

He’s had lots of low-profile flops, also.

Snyder, remember, tried becoming a local sports mogul right away: In 2000, just as he was putting his people in place at Redskins Park, he bought up the local franchise rights from the Arena Football League. He also filed for federal trademark protections in March of that year for a name for the team: Washington Warriors.

Then…nothing.

The feds warned Snyder that his failure to use the trademark could cost him the rights to “Washington Warriors.” So his lawyers, led by Melissa G. Bernstein, who served Snyder as both his assistant general counsel and a Redskins cheerleader (really!), kept asking the government for more time to get going.

“WASHINGTON WARRIORS is the name of a professional football team which has not yet begun playing,” wrote Bernstein in a letter to the trademark office on April 26, 2004, accompanied by a required $450 check for processing one of several filings by Snyder in an ongoing attempt to keep his trademark rights alive.

No such luck: In January 2005, the feds sent Snyder a “Notice of Abandonment” and put the trademarks back up for grabs.

He’s wanted to go Hollywood, also, but that campaign hasn’t gotten off the ground, either.

Snyder founded a film development company called First and Goal in August 2006 and paid a reported $10 million for a deal with Tom Cruise.

The release of Valkyrie, the first movie Snyder’s producing as part of his deal with Cruise, has been delayed twice already and is shaping up to be one of the biggest flops in recent cinematic history. Sure, Snyder signed Cruise at about the same point in his career that he got Bruce Smith, but nobody could have predicted First and Goal would face fourth-and-long so quickly: Rumblings from Hollywood hold that Snyder’s $100 million Hitler movie might never hit theaters.

Snyder’s acquisition of Dick Clark Productions looks shaky, too. He paid $175 million for the rights to broadcasts controlled by Clark, the biggest of which is the yearly Golden Globe Awards show. Snyder’s first shot at the Golden Globes was a debacle. The writer’s strike turned the show into a souped-up press conference and earned the lowest TV ratings in the history of the event.

Things also got off poorly for Snyder’s takeover of Johnny Rockets, a faux-retro burger chain that was started on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles in 1986.

Just a couple weeks after he announced he’d taken over, the chain’s Georgetown store, its most visible local outlet, was shut down by the city for health code violations including “failure to reduce the presence of rodents” and “operating with gross unsanitary conditions that may endanger public health.”

A report on WTOP radio said the inspectors were tipped off by “gnawed hamburger rolls.”

Johnny Rodents, anybody?

[Shilsu]

Great...

Another retarded article from the City Paper that ensues in another thread filled with posts like, "Who the heck reads the City Paper" and "How does this guy have a job".

[stoney26]

Haters will be haters.

[Califan007]

but the fan base’s dislike for the owner is plain for all to read on the board.

Wait...weren't they saying just the opposite before? lol ...

[Brandon Lloyd Christmas]

lol
ouch
sad but true

all phrases that can be used to sum up this article.

[Brandon Lloyd Christmas]

Originally Posted by Califan007

Wait...weren't they saying just the opposite before? lol ...

if youre referring to this article, he just said the mods protect snyder but the majority of everyone else dislikes him.

[laxpck]

What a worthless piece of garbage article by a worthless piece of garbage author on a worthless piece of garbage topic.

People with money spend it. On what they want. Called Capitalism and Free Market society.

Of course the City Paper knows NOTHING about money.

[skinfan2k]

When were George Michael, Michael Wilbon, Lindsay Czarniak ever employed by the redskins? NewsChannel 4 produces shows about the redskins. Wilbon is a host on redskins report which isn't produced by the redskins

[TheLongshot]

*yawn*

Jason

[Thinking Skins]

wow. Is there a school these reporters go to and learn how to use these unnamed sources? I couldn't even finish reading the article cause it was written so bad.

BTW, who the heck actually reads the articles in City Paper? I use it to see whats going on in the area, but I didn't even know they had articles until like last week. And this is the first time I've actually seen a sports article in this.

If anything, Horatio, you lose cool points for reading City Paper.

[Redskins:Victory_or_Death]

In 2005, he acquired Extremeskins.com, at the time an independent fan message board, and made it a part of his team’s Web site. Snyder’s moderators protect him like a Jonas Brothers street team, but the fan base’s dislike for the owner is plain for all to read on the board.

Which just goes to show that they have no idea what actually goes on here.

Congratulations on another relentlessly ****ty hack job of a Redskins article, City Paper!

[Tennessee Ed]

In 2005, he acquired Extremeskins.com, at the time an independent fan message board, and made it a part of his team’s Web site. Snyder’s moderators protect him like a Jonas Brothers street team, but the fan base’s dislike for the owner is plain for all to read on the board.

Snyder's "modyguards" sure have done a good job this off-season, with the draft, FA, coaching search, etc.

CityPaper=

[Brandon Lloyd Christmas]

without starting a war, is there any reason all of you are jumping to snyders defense here? what about this article is so untrue or way off base? seems like the guy is saying snyder buys stuff and it doesnt pan out, which unless someone can claim otherwise, its kinda true.

edit: yes his claim about the moderaters isnt true, that was a stupid thing to write. but youd be insane to think that high amounts of snyder bashing dont occur here, because theres plenty of fans who arent a fan of his.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

What amazes me to this day is how Snyder has the gazillions of dollars that he has. It seems like he never owned a company that actually, you know, did what it was supposed to do.

Snyder Communications seems like a highly-leveraged shell company for a zillion little companies that he managed to sell at the height of the craziest bubble in history.

True. He's managed to squeeze every penny out of the Redskins but as the Yankees and Red Sox and Patriots and others have proven, that is not exactly a challenge for high-profile sports clubs.

Everything else has been a disaster.

He's he lucky? Good? Both?

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Originally Posted by Thinking Skins

wow. Is there a school these reporters go to and learn how to use these unnamed sources?

Were there unnamed sources in the article? It was really just a compiliation of stock reports and other public documents.