More Cuts at ESPN

At the start, when the legendary Scotty Connal was the brains behind the operation, ESPN was whatever college football and basketball games the networks didn't want and those no-frills SportsCenters with likable personalities in the anchor roles. It had to fill the rest of its airtime with American Legion baseball tournaments, log-rolling contests, tractor pulls, boat races, etc., etc., etc.

I kind of liked the old way better.

 

It was great until people started realizing how much money it was making. It became more about the personalities than the sports. It became about maximizing profits. It bugs me how they will purposely ignore sports they don't cover and promote-the-hell out of their own stuff. Not that there was a danger of people flipping over to TCU-Oklahoma last week, but you would have thought they would have given their viewers a courtesy update when they broke away for updates from Bama-MSU or Miami-ND. The people in front of the camera weren't that much different from the people watching at home. I still don't understand how they could have blown it so bad on their rights fees negotiations. You would think a network that can micromanage a narrative it is pushing - could figure project subscriber erosion and not overbid just because you had the money anyway.

 

And "hoping" often is the least of it, given callous campaigns to get people fired when they have different opinions than you.

 

FWIW

Just turned on ESPN in the middle of the day for the first time in awhile.

OTL round table discussing underreported stories = great stuff.

NFL Live on a classy set hosted by classy Suzy Kolber with a cogent discussion of Jameis Winston and the Uber allegations, with good input from Herm Edwards.

Well-reported piece on Goodell-Jerry Jones feud with information I have not seen elsewhere.

After an hour of this, I can't help but wonder what the problem is.

 

The hours of hot takes (save PTI) that follows?

 

The hours of regimented hot takes. Not only do the 4:30, 5 and 5:30 shows discuss the same topics, which is probably unavoidable, they do so in the same order of topics. It's like Idiot Big Brother.

 

I read an article that said ESPN assumes the average viewer is only going to watch for something like 30 minutes. So they program it like all news radio. That logic is what lead to the obsession with Tim Tebow. the network decided they could replay the same lead story all day to a shifting audience.

 

If that's what they assume, and I know that they have research backing their belief, then they are also assuming really low ratings for those programs. It's not like the car radio where people switch to all-news when it's traffic report time, they are competing with the entire programming universe. Sports talk radio has the same problem with repetition, but at least it allows the hosts (and callers!) to wander around the limited field of topics. ESPN's panel shows are so formatted, the repetition becomes obvious and quickly moves to annoying.

 

ESPN will cut $80 million in salaries in layoffs: report

 

Whew. That's a huge number.

And around the holidays.

Sucks.

 

I think they could do it by restructuring their studio analysts pay. Make them all "per-appearance" instead of salaried. Give them a signing bonus to secure exclusivity.
Figure you could drop the regulars (Steve Young level) $1 mil plus to $300k and the in-studio types to $4,000 a day. There are plenty of retired athletes who would be fine with that.

 

Don't forget Canadian Football and Australian Football. I loved when they'd score in the Australian game and they'd make an extra point through the candystripe uprights and the refs would signal it was good. I would watch games just to see that part when I was a kid LOL