Sporting News/AOL Fanhouse

Now online employers are breaking as many hearts as traditional print places.

I don't think this is progress.

 

Have to jump in and agree on Scott Ridge. He is truly one of the best in this business. I feel so fortunate to have worked with him. Honestly,the entire team of people involved with FanHouse has been great, which is why so many people are finding this difficult to deal with. People checked their egos and then went to work to make FanHouse a force in the industry and it has been fun going to work every day. It is my sincere hope that the Sporting News realizes it is the people there who turned FanHouse into a must-read one and one of the top four sports sites in the country in no time and does what it can to keep most of the people there in order to grow their investment. Maybe that is wishful thinking.

 

Sucks. Sucks. Sucks.

 

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-aol-announces-content-deals-across-sports-health-and-real-estate/

Here is the key takeaway:

"One of the reasons that sports is being outsourced has to do with the sense that AOL had no endemic ad sales for that vertical, Armstrong said, though he was at pains to reiterate several times that the Fanhouse brand will not be disappearing. That said, it will be folded into The Sporting News, which is much more widely known brand, despite the growth that Fanhouse has had."

The bit about "endemic ad sales" means Fanhouse had few major sports advertisers despite its traffic. In other words, Fanhouse was not always the first choice of major sports advertisers, who were more likely to turn to Yahoo!, ESPN and CBSSports first.

 

Terrible news.

 

Fucking dial-up.

 

How many other markets did they (ESPN) launch?

 

Dallas and Boston

 

Where are the others Mizzou? Those five are only ones ESPN links to.

 

Disregard my post about the ESPN sites. I explained it very badly. I was not implying that the ESPN LA and ESPN Chicago sites or any of the others were in trouble.

 

The ESPN sites will be fine. The current sites are all in major markets and the staffs are small. ESPN is so flush with cash that it can afford to ride with these sites losing a few million a year while everyone studies what happens with newspapers.