Al's Morning Meeting

In New York City, there is a boom in high-rise and skyscraper sales right now.

The skyscraper boom is also alive in Hollywood, Burbank and Orange County, Calif.

Too Many Golf Courses

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wanted to know why so many golf courses in that town were struggling. The paper found that the story is true nationwide -- the number of golfers is not growing, but there was a growth spurt in the number of courses opened -- until last year:

Nationally, the United States had a net loss of golf courses last year for the first time in six decades, according to the National Golf Foundation. Courses that closed did so primarily for redevelopment as residential or commercial real estate.

"What you're seeing in St. Louis is pretty common for the whole country," said Stan Gentry of St. Louis-based Stan Gentry Golf Design. "It's been stale for three or four years now."

Gentry redesigned and renovated the golf courses at Forest Park earlier this decade, and he's also done remodeling work at Old Warson, Boone Valley and Norwood Hills. That's where most of the work is for designers now -- giving facelifts to existing courses.

"There was a boom all over the country, and it was too good and too long," he said. "Now it's in the weeding-out process. But it'll turn around."

Gentry believes that one of the problems for golf courses is the high cost of maintenance -- a result, he says, of golfers' unrealistic expectations.

"American golfers may need to change their perception of what kind of turf they should be playing on," he said. "Maybe instead of spending $400,000 to $800,000 a year on maintenance, maybe we should back off and not have the bunkers perfectly raked every day.

"Part of the problem is they watch the PGA Tour every week and the courses are perfect. People expect conditions to be better and better. We're getting further and further away from the original concept of golf. We have conditions that are so ... fake. Hazards are supposed to be hazards. Players complain about a bad lie in the bunker. You're supposed to get a bad lie in the bunker. It's taking the sport out of the game."

Look at this from the National Golf Foundation:

Rounds through February 2007 were down 15.8 percent on a same-store basis, the weakest performance in three years for the same time period. In 2006, rounds were up 15.4 percent through February vs. 2005. And in 2005, rounds were flat vs. 2004 for the two-month period.

In February 2007, rounds were down 10.6 percent. Looking at the Central/South Florida and Southwest regions (where just over half of February rounds volume occurred), the number of play days doesn't provide much guidance as to reasons for the decline – play days were down only slightly in February 2007 vs. February 2006.

(Be sure to check out the list and map of rounds played in 2007 vs. 2006.)

The End Near for TV Repair Shops

The Boston Business Journal reported on the death of the mom-and-pop TV-repair business:

The decline of the TV and radio repairmen is just the latest example of how advances in technology have had ripple effects across the business world, forcing organizations to adapt or go under. Print publications are increasingly following their readers online. Many companies that once touted dial-up Internet service have switched to Web hosting or other Internet services. And the list goes on.

In the world of TV and radios, you can blame the microelectronics revolution. Electronics companies have increasingly shrunk the size and cost of components, making radios and TVs cheaper than ever, while repairs are more difficult. [TV repairman Herb] Pratt says some components are the size of the head of a pin. And newer models typically contain small, complex circuit boards -- rather than the standard parts that can be replaced in older models.

"It keeps the manufacturing price down, but repairs are more difficult," Pratt said.

So instead of having TVs and radios fixed, customers increasingly are just tossing them out with the trash and buying a replacement.

Al's Morning Multimedia

My old friend Mark Stencel turned me on to a Web site called JPGMag.com. Users upload their best photos, sometimes based on a theme. The readers vote on the best photos, and editors choose from the best of the best to get published in a JPG magazine. As Mark said to me recently, "I like this because it combines the best of reader input with the best of editor input."

Quizzing Candidates About the Cost of Milk

We are approaching the season where reporters will try all sorts of little tricks while covering politicians. One of the old favorites is to ask people running for office how much a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, or  six-pack of beer costs. The point here is to find out who is a regular guy/gal and who is out of touch. Is this any way to elect a president?

I like this essay from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The price test is just a lazy journalistic gimmick designed to imply that a political candidate is out of touch with the lives of the masses. (Some political scientists refer to pop quizzes as "degradation ceremonies.") Giuliani flunks the milk question, ergo he is an elitist. Ditto Lamar Alexander. Ditto Tom Strickland, a Democratic Senate candidate in Colorado, who in a 2002 debate was asked to name the price of a gallon of unleaded gas, and got it wrong. Ditto John Edwards, who blanked on the price of a six-pack of beer in July 2004. ("I haven't bought a six-pack of beer in years, so I don't know.") His questioner, by the way, was Don Imus.

I have an idea -- let's give this same test to publishers, editors and journalists covering the candidates. I bet the politicians score higher.

For the record, I bet I could not guess within 75 cents how much bread or milk cost, and I do about half of the grocery shopping for my family. I probably haven't bought a six-pack in 15 years. I could pass the gasoline price test, I think.

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.