ESPN can't afford Monday Night Football any longer

One of my sisters-in-law was on Jeopardy. This impressed the hell out of both sides of the family, especially my Mom. It's a socially acceptable way of being seen as a brainiac.

 

For the last 10 or 15 years, I'd guess, if the game doesn't involve one of the teams I've followed my whole life, the number of games I've watched start to finish is no more than half a dozen per year. Just . . . don't . . . care.

 

Pats bye week. Games on TV here were Eagles-Broncos and Rams-Giants. Both over at halftime. Click.
By the way, I have a tentative theory that the bye weeks are partially responsible for declining Sunday ratings. If the home team isn't playing, fewer fans are gonna watch other games. Ratings tend to go up around Thanksgiving, when bye weeks are over (and when in much of the country it starts to suck being outdoors).

 

The 1 p.m. games were almost universally awful yesterday. I think the Ravens/Titans game was the only one that was within one score for most of the game. The Falcons scored a TD with 3 minutes to play to pull within 3 points and the Titans scored a TD with 6 minutes to go to pull within 6.

 

Almost everyone would take the gift certificate because going on account meant they had to save the remainder in case they won again and could get a different shopping set-up. But if they lost or spun bankruptcy, they lost it.

Deal or No Deal used to drive me nuts when Howie Mandel would do a build-up, then go to commercial. And it quickly got tiring when they would bring in the contestant's long-lost third cousin who they hadn't seen in 40 years for a reunion right on the show.

 

No Steelers game this week combined with temperatures in the lower 80s meant I didn't watch a single second of any game.

 

I think weather (and the return to standard time) has much more to do with ratings than is assumed. It gets cold, it gets dark at 4:30. What to do on what used to be Sunday afternoon and all of a sudden is Sunday evening? Well, the NFL is on.

 

Maybe Disney/ESPN can afford the NFL after all.

Fox held talks to sell most of company to Disney: CNBC

 

But it had one hell of a large cast for a game show.

That's all I'm going to say. Well, and a lot of skin on Mandel's head.

 

Disney gets the studio, the FX networks, and the production company. Fox owned and operated stations and Fox News remain in the Murdoch fold. They're selling the money makers to keep the propaganda outlets.

 

Disney's up 2 percent on the rumor. The Disney fourth quarter earnings call is Thursday. Is the long-term strategy for Disney to consolidate its wildly successful theme park and movie divisions (by adding 21st Century Fox), and perhaps spin off/divest ABC/ESPN down the road? Or just jettison ESPN? Right now, the double-whammy of rights fees and declining subscribership have to continue to be a cause for concern at the Mouse.

EDIT: DIS was as high as $116 in April/May and despite a spike in early August, is trading close to yearly lows at $100.64.