MSG/Cablevision Fortunate Son James Dolan (above, middle) has long demonstrated he’s no fan of facing the music — not counting the sub-Swayze-Willis Band sludge offered by Dolan’s Straight Shot, of course — and if the Emperor of The World’s Most Dysfunctional Arena would sack Marv Albert for the latter’s measured criticism, how might he react to something more pointed? The Village Voice’s Foster Kramer has a pretty good idea (link courtesy Joe Gross)
Back in March, a blog post we published regarding a potential media acquisition by Cablevision, MSG Entertainment, and Rainbow Media owner James Dolan — compounded by a vaguely worded, ominous legal threat from Dolan’s corporate office, which was ignored and then published in a naive showing of cliched blogger belligerence — cost The Village Voice an advertising deal worth upwards of $20,000/year in revenue. And if you’re a blogger three weeks into your new job (or the editor who – now, possibly regretfully – hired him), you can only laugh. And we did. And that was that.
That same post has now resulted in all Madison Square Garden Entertainment advertising being pulled from the Village Voice.
Furthermore, LiveNation — one of America’s biggest concert promoters — has now pulled all of its advertising from all Village Voice Media properties at the behest of James Dolan, whose MSG Entertainment employs the services of Live Nation/Ticketmaster in their ticketing and promotions operations.
In toto, a mediocre dick joke about a media acquisition has now cost this company upwards of $1M in yearly advertising revenue.