David G. Surdam

Author, Speaker, Professor of Economics

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Television and Minor League Baseball:
Changing Patterns of Leisure in Postwar America

Author: David G. Surdam
Publication: Journal of Sports Economics
Publication Date: 2005
Link to Article

Minor league baseball flourished in the aftermath of World War II. However, a new technology, television, threatened to broadcast major league games across America. The minor leagues contracted by over a third between 1949 and 1953. Was television the culprit as baseball historians suggest? The diffusion of television does not perfectly match the contraction of the minor leagues. Statistical analysis of television’s effects on minor league teams’ survivability and on surviving teams’ attendance provides mixed support for the historians’ thesis. Instead, the minor leagues over expanded into small towns incapable of sustaining professional baseball when the boom ended.

BOOKS

2001-Nothern-Naval-Supeiority-and-the-Economics-of-the-Civil-War - copy
2008-The-Post-War-Yankees
2010-The-Ball-Game-Biz
2011-Wins,-Looses,-&-Empty-Seats
2012-The-Rise-of-the-National-Basketball-Association
2013-Run-to-Glory-and-Profits
2015-The-Big-Leagues-Go-to-Washington
2015-Century-of-the-Leisured-Masses
The Age of Ruth and Landis: The Economics of Baseball during the Roaring Twenties
Business Ethics from the 19th Century to Today: An Economist's View
Business Ethics from Antiquity to the 19th Century: An Economist's View
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