"Bloody" Day at ESPN today

Started by bayonetbrant, April 26, 2017, 10:01:27 AM

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bayonetbrant

Quote from: MetalDog on December 19, 2017, 07:10:57 AM
Doesn't change that Skip Bayless should be nuked from orbit.

I agree 100000000000000000000%




(for good measure can we send Screamin' A Smith with him?)
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Arctic Blast

Quote from: bayonetbrant on December 19, 2017, 06:14:53 AM
Quote from: Arctic Blast on December 19, 2017, 12:54:28 AM
^^Will the next guy nuke Skip Bayless from orbit? If so, he's already ahead!

Bayless is at Fox Sports now; been gone for about 2 years now.

That's fine. Does ESPN know where his studio is? Than they could still nuke him from orbit.

bayonetbrant

The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

MetalDog

That does not make me sad.  I haven't liked him since he became permanent on the Scott Van Pelt radio show.  I liked him even less when he got co-billing.  Even less when he got the show on his own.  And, somehow, found a way to find even more dislike for him when he partnered with Kanell.  To be fair to Ryen though, I despise Kanell even more than I do Rusillo. 

I knew he was gone when the local affiliate suddenly started promoting the Stephen A. Smith Show in Rusillo's time slot.  Which isn't any better, but, Stephen A. is occasionally entertaining.
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob

bayonetbrant

The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

airboy

Quote from: bayonetbrant on January 26, 2018, 08:59:45 PM
Hill is leaving SC6 for The Undefeated.  Says it's all her call

https://www.si.com/tech-media/2018/01/26/jemele-hill-leaving-sportscenter-sc6-for-undefeated

I read something similar from a different news source.  Time will tell.

My snap opinion is she had gotten a huge salary like Megan Kelly but is now without an airtime slot that makes it worth what they are paying her.  But again, time will tell.

bayonetbrant

bottom line is that the job they were hired for is dying, and the failure of the show is not necessarily a failure of their style, but rather a failure of the entire concept
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

bayonetbrant

That's one of the least-surprising moves of the past 2 years.  They were a bad fit for a news show.  They're a radio-show duo whose focus was always on opinions & analysis and trying to front a news show was a bad idea from the get-go.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

mirth

It was a terrible format for them. ESPN should have kept them together on His & Hers.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

mirth

"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

airboy

Long, front page story on the WSJ today about ESPNs problems.  Weirdly enough, the story is out on the fox news website:
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/05/25/how-weakened-espn-became-consumed-by-politics.html

The story states that among ESPN overpaying for sports rights, having by far the most expensive channel on cable, and suffering from people deciding that ESPN was not worth it and either cutting the cable entirely or going to slim packages that:
1] John Skipper forced the leftist message through hires and his statements
2] John Skipper had a cocaine problem that was pretty severe.
3] John got mad at Jemele Hill about the Trump "white supremacist" tweet.  When he called her into his office he asked her if everyone at ESPN who voted for Trump was a racist.  She said that the Trump Voters were all benefiting from "privilege." 

4] Other factions at ESPN thought the network should avoid religion and politics entirely and felt Skipper was screwing everything up.

5] Skipper was the one responsible for giving Caitlin Jenner and the gay NFL player ESPY awards which also really irritated the "no politics" faction.

6] Then there were waves of layoffs and everyone got even angrier.

bayonetbrant

Yes, but there are also significant counterpoints to the idea that subscribers are leaving because of politics

https://deadspin.com/there-is-no-evidence-whatsoever-that-espn-is-losing-sub-1826305140


QuoteThe Wall Street Journal went deep on money problems in Bristol today in an article titled "How a Weakened ESPN Became Consumed by Politics." The feature, like many others that have come before, presents as a fact that the Worldwide Leader is hemorrhaging subscribers due to a perceived shift to the left in its sports coverage. This view's most prominent supporter is, of course, Donald Trump, and that he promotes it should be background enough for you to immediately question just how factual a fact this is. But if the Trump co-sign is not enough to convince you, there are some numbers—all of them culled from SportsTVRatings.com—that prove that this is, in fact, bullshit.

I'm not pulling the charts over here, but basically, everyone is losing subscribers, politics or not, because of cord-cutters.

QuoteEvery single network has fewer subscribers in 2018 than they did in 2015; NBCSN only managed to lose 191,000 of them, 0.23 percent, which means it came out "ahead" of everyone else. ESPN fared pretty poorly over this period, which is to say that it performed just as badly as Fox News did. It had nowhere near the losses of NBATV, MLB Network, or Golf Channel.

(Fox Sports 1 is not included in this list, as it—along with Fox Sports 2—were rebranded channels that existed, and in some cases still exist, on different cable tiers; thus, their subscriber numbers are not quite comparable. FS1 lost 1 percent of its subscribers from 2015 to 2018, if you were wondering.)

Are conservatives similarly "fed up" with Brian Kenny's political views? Those of NBATV's The Starters? Teen Titans? Of course not. People are just unsubscribing to cable TV altogether, and doing so in growing numbers.

ESPN is quite different from its partners in the above data cohort, though: its monthly carriage fee of nearly $8.00 is absurdly high compared to that of, say, NFL Network (which bills subscribers $1.40 a month) or NBC Sports Network ($0.32). Given that we can clearly see that basic cable subscribers are cutting the cord in favor cheaper, online alternatives, it seems a much more rational projection to assume that people seeking to reduce their cable bills would start with the programming that constitutes such a large percentage of it.

That choice has only become possible through more recent diversifications of cable package options. Until quite recently, ESPN was essentially included in even the most basic of basic-cable packages; now, at least with my providers, it is part of a number of "tiers" subscribers can choose from—meaning that for the first time, you can subscribe to TNT, CNN, and the national broadcast networks without buying the "basic sports tier" of ESPN and its more-expensive associates.

This is just the first phase of an a la carte cable TV future, and that future rightfully should terrify ESPN and Disney executives. But that path is straightforward and pretty obvious; it's a simple business story about an industry struggling into a period of disruption. If ESPN actually believes that "we've become too political" is the reason for its recent decline, they're in even worse shape than they know.

The real irony of the cord cutters being the one that are hurting ESPN is that the bulk of the cord-cutting population are younger folks (below 30) who are more likely to focus on streaming options for entertainment and are not heavy sports consumers.  They also (so far) tend to trend further left than older generations.

So they folks that actually are dropping EPSN (or not signing up at all) are the very population that you'd think ESPN's supposed leftward shift would appeal to.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

airboy

^ You may be getting overly focused on politics.  My commentary started with high prices of cable and people cutting the cord for that reason.  The other stuff was about internal ESPN squabbles and not given as a major reason for dropping the service.

bayonetbrant

Quote from: airboy on May 25, 2018, 12:51:29 PM
^ You may be getting overly focused on politics.  My commentary started with high prices of cable and people cutting the cord for that reason.  The other stuff was about internal ESPN squabbles and not given as a major reason for dropping the service.

The "ESPN is losing subscribers because of politics" isn't a new narrative

Moreover, the "ESPN is playing too much with politics inside the fence" narrative has been discussed widely, including by ESPN's own ombudsmen
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers