ESPN pay cuts?

HBO has always acted like they want sports but really don't. Loved having Inside The NFL and Wimbledon all those years. Real Sports is always strong but, I imagine, expensive to produce. The Joe Buck and Bill Simmons shows... meh.

 

Love "Real Sports", but have recently fallen out of the habit of watching. Need to get back on that. Liked both the Costas and Jones shows, but not enough to make them appointment viewing.

HBO used to be outstanding on sports documentaries. "The Ghosts of Flatbush" was my absolute favorite one, but it was hard to find last time I looked, which has been a while.

 

Stephen A sounds off on the layoffs and his future
https://www.nj.com/sports/2023/07/i...cold-black-folks-catch-pneumonia-he-says.html

 

It's funny, Stephen A. has done a much better job providing value for ESPN than Rick Reilly did. With Bob Ley retired now, who is the network's "King of Gravitas" - the person with the perspective? SVP is good, but he's down in the daily muck with everyone else. They really could use someone with the 10,000 foot view of sports - yeah, they probably fired a few of them in the last couple of years - but someone who could at least "note" all the changes in sports in the last 10 years - whether we're talking about "load management," conference realignment, changing baseball rules, NIL, diminishing contact in football, the LIV/PGA deal. But we get so caught up in the scandal of the day or whatever, and then we're looking for "What's Next?"

 

Reading about the sub-par box office for Elemental and the Indiana Jones movies makes me wonder if Disney saw those coming after test screenings, which cued up the deep cuts in ESPN and elsewhere. In the past, they could count on a Marvel, a Pixar and another movie clearing $2b over the summer - when you suddenly realize you can't bank on that $500m in profits - you need to find it elsewhere.

 

When this began I read in an article that these cuts are about ESPN meeting internal cost projections and are unrelated to the overall Disney cuts. Also, these cuts probably took a while to figure out with everyone's contract status and new show lineups.

 

But Reilly is in a completely different galaxy as a sportswriter. Which once again proves that the skills necessary to be a good writer are much different than those of someone on television. Print journalists have long believed that they are much smarter than television anchors or reporters. It is not true. Being good on television requires a different skill set but the people who are good at it are not dumber than reporters.

 

Jeremy Schaap fills that role now.

 

The Mad Dog's conspiracy theory re: Van Gundy firing
https://nypost.com/2023/07/06/chris-russo-thinks-adam-silver-ordered-jeff-van-gundys-espn-exit/

 

Read a story that said Pollack was making $81k a year doing GameDay. Figured it was at least six figures - I realize it's only a couple of days a week each fall - but at the same time - it's not like that's going to put a dent into the savings Disney is looking for.

 

OK, so where do all these people go? Does FOX start hiring and creating screen-online-stream content and pick up some of them? Other entities, such as the pro leagues or a new venture? Does someone like Kronke or another owner with multiple teams-outlets-things hire and create a new media thing, perhaps with talk-pods-XM?