More Cuts at ESPN

A few years ago, Sportscenter had a producer for the late-night edition who believed the world revolved around the NBA. They'd start the show off with 15 minutes of NBA, go to a few minutes of the other sports, then come back with more NBA... look, I know you've got the NBA TV deal, but enough! There are some at that hour that want to see more than just basketball.

They haven't exactly improved leaps and bounds, but there's more variety now like longer segments with Barry Melrose, more soccer highlights (another ESPN sport) and SC Featured.

Oh, and bring back the one that did the aerobics in the morning. I forget her name, but she was suuuuuuure worth looking at...

 

You might be thinking of "Bodies in Motion" with Gilad. He's a dude, BTW ... not that there's anything wrong with that ...

 

Kiana's Flex Appeal with the lovely Kiana Tom?

 

This right here. Long before I cut the cord, I'd stopped watching ESPN outside of actual game coverage because of its insistence that every tiny NFL off-season event was huge news. As a believer than the NFL is the single most overhyped entity in American culture, I got tired of hearing about a backup offensive tackle's calf-muscle injury in April when there were actual sporting events going on.

 

Coco, I was thinking Denise Austin. But I got a kick out of your reference... lol

And I couldn't agree more about hyping news. I was on a spring trip several years back and Donovan McNabb was dealt to the Redskins on the opening night of baseball season. Granted, that was news at the time, but all I could think was "What the hell?" I thought the trade might have been executed in February or March, but Goodell said "Wait... we'll announce it on baseball's opening day so we can hog the spotlight..."

 

Seconded, with college football as a close second. If they were to lose the daily shows on the NFL and CFB, would anyone miss them? Or Wednesday night MAC or CUSA games, or Friday nights with the Mountain West? And live coverage of minicamps, OTAs and, in the case of CFB, spring games (which, by the purest of coincidences, became a thing after the formation of the SEC Network)?

To echo Playthrough's post, no, poker may not come back to the levels it was at. But one sport it did lose that will hurt is soccer, namely, USMNT, USWMT and World Cup rights.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that probably didn't happen.

 

Oh, I know you're right... lol. But the need for the NFL to hog the whole calendar year lends some truth to the conspiracy theories.

 

I am reading a book "Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction". The author, Derek Thompson discusses ESPN programming strategy. He says that ESPN consciously moved to a strategy of concentrating on fewer sports and emphasizing a few stories. The rationale is that the typical viewer only watches for a short time each day. That viewer not want a vast selection of things to watch. He wants to see a story about what interests him the most or a game in his favorite sport.

So ESPN started editorially emphasizing a couple of stories a day because they thought a new audience would rotate through during the day to view that story. Since football is the sport Americans most like to watch ESPN emphasized that and dumped soccer, poker, NASCAR, et. al.

 

And then they chose to do it with 6 different shows, back to back, consisting of multiple panelists commenting on the same 8 highlight segments. A phenomenal plan.