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Strange days at World Soccer Football Daily. So as I mentioned about a week back, World Soccer Daily went off the air due to threats aimed at one of the show’s hosts as well as his children. Now they’re planning on coming back on October 1 with a subscription-based show as opposed to the free podcast and Sirius XM broadcast.

As many over at BigSoccer have pointed out, the timing here seems a bit fishy. The worst accusations are that Cohen made up the threats to his stepdaughters so he could a) turn the tide of public opinion against the Liverpool supporters, and b) play the victim thereby easing the pain of asking for $10/mo for a show that used to be free. Even though I’m a big fan of the show, the quick U-turn seems at best a bit insincere since I don’t see how moving to a pay-per-listen would protect Cohen’s family from hooligans out for blood. However, the pure conspiracy theory that this was all made up just to switch a subscriber-based system makes even less sense. Would the guys go to all the trouble, really, to openly lie to their listeners in the hope of retaining some of them at a fee?

So here’s what I think happened: the sponsor boycott more or less worked and WSD was hurting for cash, since they need to fund the studio, staff, and pay Sirius XM for the airtime. With the Liverpool yobs hounding potential sponsors to scare them off, things were looking grim. The guys start kicking around other ideas of how to run the show without depending on sponsor cash, all the while receiving lots of hate mail and getting on with the show. I do believe that someone contacted Cohen’s stepdaughters (does it really have to be a threat in order for that to be scary?) and he said, right, this isn’t going to end until we pull the plug now. So they did, without a secure backup plan in place but always planning on coming back somehow.

The last show featured an outpouring of support, perhaps more than they expected, and I have to believe Hassan did indeed contact Cohen and say they’d be nuts if they didn’t pitch something immediately, as public support would never be higher. If they waited six months, how many fans would they lose and potentially never regain? So they patched together some ideas, kicked around some subscription plan ideas, and have done a couple shows to let people know that they will indeed be back around October 1 when they get it all hashed out. I also believe that the Liverpool yobs had one goal: to put (and keep) WSD out of business. Now that they’ve succeeded, they won’t wish to further tarnish their image by continuing to hound Cohen in other, non-sponsor-based shows.

To me this makes a lot of sense. Otherwise Cohen and Hassan are the dumbest businessmen around, because why else would you risk losing your fan base by abruptly pulling the plug on a successful show without a replacement plan fully in place? It’s fairly clear they’re making up this new plan as they go, mostly because there is no advantage to pretending to be clueless about how it’s all going to work. In terms of transitioning from one business model to another, this is a disaster. That leads me to believe that the change in format was precipitated by some unforeseen event and now the guys are simply trying to keep the momentum they had from the support they received during the “last” show.

At the end of the day though, I don’t really care how this all went down because I’m pretty sure no one’s getting stinking rich from WSD/WFD. The show makes me laugh, they have great guests, they do good analysis, etc. The drama surrounding the issue of Cohen’s comments is boring, no question the worst part of the show. I’ll be very interested in the different subscription options, and I’m a bit wary of the format change (not sure I want the opinions of every nimrod on Skype, nor do I need more J-League and A-League updates), but let’s just say I’m there in spirit.

The transfer window shuts today for the English Premier League, meaning no more player movement until January. Spurs are making some exciting moves: I’ve always thought Niko Kranjcar was a quality player and they’re getting him for pocket change, and if they can land David James then things are looking much rosier.

I’m sure there will be more madness ahead as the window closes at 6:00 pm CT (midnight in England). There’s always some last minute drama as the fax machines jam up at 11:55 PM and some player’s paperwork doesn’t get processed in time. Let’s just say I’ll be refreshing my browser throughout the day.

Current Mood: Okay |