More Cuts at ESPN

It averages about 1.2 million viewers a game.

 

So angry underemployed idiot is wrong again?

 

Those numbers are from 2015. I think it was down last year, like everything else. But it beats about anything ESPN could be showing this time of year, including college baseball by a lot.

 

College softball is so much better than college baseball it isn't funny. Oh my word.

 

College softball kills me with the endless high five and meetings at the mound, but it does beat college baseball.

 

Why Does Everyone Want ESPN to Fail? – The Ringer

 

Didn't love it, and I love most of Curtis' stuff. These two graphs:

Author Jeff Pearlman offered a similar theory of decline. ESPN cast its lot with Stephen A. Smith instead of dozens of workaday journalists, he argued, and “we (as a people) decided we prefer personalities and pizzazz over substance and detail.”

This theory was a real crowd-pleaser, especially for workaday journalists. But look at ESPN’s newly announced schedule to see what “personalities and pizzazz” really means. You won’t find many Stephen A.’s. Instead, you find journalists like Scott Van Pelt, Pablo Torre, Bomani Jones, Jemele Hill, Michael Smith, Bob Ley, Rachel Nichols, and Dan Le Batard. ESPN has also given pushes to Mina Kimes, Bill Barnwell, and Zach Lowe; it has funded the long-range reporting of Don Van Natta Jr. and Steve Fainaru. Thompson, who has reached the Operating Thetan level of longform, was one of the stars of ESPN’s upfront.

You don't have to have Stephen A's delivery to be in the same ballpark as Stephen A Smith. Dan Le Batard is a consistent bomb thrower. Bomani Jones - who I like - is nevertheless a hot take factory. Stephen A. Smith is a journalist in every bit the way Le Batard are Jemele Hill are. Columnists who then became TV show hosts? Same thing.

 

That article doesn't make sense. All the recent changes are towards personalities. It's Van Pelt's show, it's Hill and Smith's show, it going to be Greenberg's show, not just other generic Sports Centers. Listen to the radio ads for SC at 6 or whatever they call it. It's all soundbites of Hill and Smith's opinions. And Van Natta and Fainaru strike me more as something ESPN can reference to prove it does serious journalism.

 

That's a tension ESPN has always had. Always. They did a SportsCenter ad about it even, a West Side Story takeoff between the reporters and anchors.

 

I agree, and also in high school (at least in my area, though I'm betting it's better is in many areas).

 

I find it strange that Curtis makes a distinction between Smith and Jones, Hill and LeBatard. Don't you?