RAPTORS MAKE 'NET GAINS...

Memo to over-45 newspaper columnists writing about fan interest in a sport which is anywhere below No. 2 in its own market: In 2007, you really should have something about whatever web culture has grown around it high up in the article.

The Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons wrote a column today saying the TV audience for Toronto Raptors telecasts "borders on the pathetic."

Can't argue that. You can't. Still, Simmons doesn't acknowledge anything relating to the web until the next-to-last graf, where a MLSE muckamuck is quoted saying "we have the second busiest website in the NBA."

That is the hook: The Raptors' core audience may be on the web more than it's in control of the TV clicker. Imagine a household with a 40-something dad and a 13-year-old kid who likes the Raptors. On Sunday, when the Raptors-Mavs game was up against a NFL playoff game, who wins an argument over what to watch? The dad's probably going to watch the football and the kid is going to retreat to the computer and follow the game on ESPN.com or Yahoo! Sports while chatting about it with her or his friends over MSN, or go to the skatepark (which you could have done in southern Ontario on Sunday before we got all this snow) and then come home later and talk about it on a blog or message board. That doesn't make it into TV ratings which columnists love to fetishize, especially if they may be looking to justify their bias for or against a particular team or sport.

(It's also noteworthy that Scott Carefoot of RaptorBlog has parlayed his knowledge and love of basketball into a paying gig as a sports editor for Sympatico. It took four-plus years, but Carefoot built a huge following and was rewarded.)

This relates to the rebuttal that ran here after Mark Spector of the National Post wrote a column two weeks ago about Canadians' apathy toward university sports in this country.

The point I want to make, politely, is that TV coverage/ratings and newspaper column inches are not the only measurables for a team or sport's audience. Neither is the be-all end-all. The columnists and their illustrious ink-stained ilk have to reorient their thinking.