The Fisherman Deal: Clash of the Texas Outdoor Titans

LISTEN: (6 min, 08 sec)

IN EARLIER LEGS of this trip we’ve been taking down memory lane, in observance of our 40th anniversary, we have recalled Fish & Game’s humble beginnings as an offshoot of a weekly newspaper in the Hill Country, and our efforts to grow TF&G from zero to over 100,000 readers. 

Once we separated from the newspaper—The Highlander, in Marble Falls—things really took off, and really got interesting.

For starters, we made the strategic decision to relocate to San Antonio. In 1990, long before Zoom meetings were even possible and remote offices only worked for reclusive authors and multi-level marketing salesmen, a small town like Marble Falls presented obvious limitations in running a media business looking to attract most of its revenue on a national stage. 

With the healthy proceeds raised from the sale of The Highlander, we were able to  fund an aggressive growth strategy for the magazine. Within a year of leaving Marble Falls, Texas Fish & Game’s audited circulation, the combined distribution of subscription and newsstand copies, had broken the 60,000 barrier.

At the time, another magazine sat at the top of the Texas outdoor publishing food chain. Texas Fisherman had been around since the early 1970s. In fact, as we’ve logged in previous columns, Marvin Spivey, the founding editor of Fish & Game, had served as Fisherman’s editor during its climb to dominance.

And dominate, it did. In spades.

It was a time before a wave of takeovers hit the fishing industry and left a wake of consolidation that would have made Teddy Roosevelt and his Trust Busters blow their stacks. But in the 80s and 90s, there were dozens and dozens of major independent brands in the fishing market, selling boats, motors, baits, rods, reels, tackle and accessories. And spending large sums of ad dollars competing with each other.

Most of those ad dollars were spent with old guard national media, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and an ever expanding glut of fishing TV shows. But Texas, so big and so much a powerhouse in fishing participation, was impossible for national advertisers to ignore.

Texas Fisherman, as the largest player in the state, got the lion’s share of this regional attention by advertisers. Heck, with not a single syllable of hunting coverage in their pages, they even got ads from a few gun and ammo accounts!

Fisherman was the big fish in the biggest outdoor state market, and we were the little squirts trying to wedge ourselves into the big game. But these little squirts had a big pile of cash to burn, and an owner—the larger than life Bill Bray, who we described in more detail three issues ago—willing to burn it.

The fire we set with our stake from the Highlander sale powered a series of huge direct mail campaigns aimed at recruiting subscribers and increasing our numbers, and getting us on the radar of those big-spending national brands.  

At the time we moved to San Antonio in mid-1990, Texas Fisherman boasted a circulation of about 70,000. When we did our 1990 circulation audit and tallied the return on our investment in those costly mail campaigns, Texas Fish & Game settled in at just over 64,000. 

And Bill Bray got a phone call.

On the line was a guy in Tulsa, Oklahoma who identified himself as Mike Henry, sole proprietor of Texas Fisherman. Henry had purchased Fisherman several years earlier (but his Okie drawl and snake-oil charm conjured the idea that he could have won it in a poker game).

Henry came right to the point: “You Texans have chased me into a real corner with your crazy circulation shenanigans. Ya’ll started a war that’s costing me too much money trying to stay ahead of you.”

It turned out that our efforts to gain the attention of big advertisers had instead drawn the attention of their biggest Texas beneficiary.

Henry was calling to propose a merger.

“Now, Bill, you and me, we could keep fighting each other over subscribers, and I gotta keep my numbers ahead of yours. And you’re gonna keep chasing me. So we’re both gonna end up spending all the money that should be going to our little grandkids.”

Henry, whose voice was a dead ringer for the character Mr. Haney on the old “Green Acres” TV show, would have probably rented grandkids to emphasize his point, but he didn’t need to.

“I’m listening,” said an intrigued Bray.

This began an intense period of negotiations over the end of 1990 and start of 1991.

The first sticking point, aside from money, was what to call the merged publication. Henry, strutting his dominant status in the marketplace, proposed, “Let’s just call it ‘Texas Fisherman’ and stick the words ‘…And Hunting’ below it.”

That was never gonna fly.

Second, Henry wanted to move the merged headquarters to Tulsa, and only keep a satellite office in Houston, where his salesman, Mike Haines—a young hotshot in double-breasted suits—played his Rolodex like a fine instrument, pulling in the ad dollars that had incentivized our own jealous push for subscriber growth.

Trade San Antonio for Tulsa? No offense, Tulsa, but… no deal.

In the end, the negotiations brought us to a single conclusion. Henry and Bray would have made horrible partners. The merger became a “You buy me out? No, I buy you out” tug of war that Bray, wanting it more, won. 

The “new” magazine debuted in May 1991 retaining the Texas Fish & Game nameplate, with 120,000 subscribers. The Fisherman brand was retired, a victim of its former owner’s corporate battle fatigue. 

As things turned out, we did leave San Antonio, for Houston. But it was our choice, and it was not Oklahoma.

 

E-mail Roy at rneves@fishgame.com and Ardia at aneves@fishgame.com

 

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