More Cuts at ESPN

[Doc Holliday]

Wow. Talk about racist.

 

[Alma]

I read that Marc Stein has more than three years left on his contract at 600K per year. I think Marc Stein was a very good guest on The Lowe Post and I am sure that he is very good at his job. I liked his work on breaking stories. But I would think that ESPN could have hired a really good NBA writer from a local paper and paid him 150-200K and gotten about the same results. Salaries have seemed to have gotten really out of hand in print at ESPN.

Also, I read Lowe signed a contract for 1.2 million a year. But Lowe has a podcast that he does twice a week in the season and I think once a week in the off season for a total of 80 times a year. Do audio podcasts, even highly rated ones, clear 15K an hour in advertising revenue?

Some salaries were out of hand, yes. ESPN overpaid for many things

 

[LanceyHoward]

Anything's possible, but $600K for Marc Stein? Not sure I believe it.

I have trouble believing it also but here is the link from Deadspin. And Stein is represented by CAA. I am not sure what the minimum contract that CAA will negotiate is but I think it must be pretty hefty.

http://deadspin.com/adrian-wojnarowski-finally-won-his-war-against-espn-1794817931

The article notes that Stein is still filing stories though and he is still on Twitter..

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

NBA's future b/c of cord-cutting ... less team ball, more LaVar Ballish tactics?

How Couch Potatoes Could Change the NBA

 

[BTExpress]

Some salaries were out of hand, yes. ESPN overpaid for many things

This is what I just don't get.

Yes, at one point money was flowing like water from a fire hose around there.

But still, do the beancounters still not want the best value they can get? As in, why pay someone $600K when we can get the same job done for $120K? Why pay $1.9 billion for rights to XYZ when we can get the games for $1.1 billion?

Are there people with full-time jobs to make those value judgments?

 

[Alma]

This is what I just don't get.

Yes, at one point money was flowing like water from a fire hose around there.

But still, do the beancounters still not want the best value they can get? As in, why pay someone $600K when we can get the same job done for $120K? Why pay $1.9 billion for rights to XYZ when we can get the games for $1.1 billion?

Are there people with full-time jobs to make those value judgments?

Sure there are. But they were arrogant. heck, they green-lighted Grantland, for goodness sakes, which grew to ludicrous size and was becoming a site of navel-gazing essays with inconsistent, questionable journalistic value. How many millions got poured into that? And then they shuttered it! There was so little useful management insight into this giant undertaking that no one could reasonably refashion it!

The Undefeated, instead of being a lean, powerful entity that prioritizes producing excellent, impactful journalism is instead unwieldy, complete with a fellowship program that files briefs on a HBCU quiz bowl team. Instead of, say, examining race the way the New York Times did in its 2000 series, it desires to a create a far more expensive and unfocused community of mile-wide, inch-deep conversation.

ESPN was, at one time, on the cutting edge of sports journalism. It's not now. It just made a lot of money off of its cable bill that people unwittingly paid for years and years, a cable bill possible because American can't figure out an ala carte system for TV.

ESPN is as poorly and sloppily managed as any organization out there. Money is thrown at stuff. Even worthwhile projects - and I think the Undefeated is worthwhile in ways the vainglorious Grantland never was - don't have the right kind of tenacity to them. The preview shows are bloated and full of loud, annoying radio commercial bombast. The storylines have been flattened out to the extent that LeBron James is mainlined into the veins of ESPN consumers at every waking moment. Great journalists have been reduced to shills for the NBA, probably because the paycheck lines up. ESPN still sucks at the teat of college football, yet can't cobble together a reputable recruiting coverage operation and laid off the only expert they had - the one with all the contact - a few weeks ago.

 

[Max Garcia]

But still, do the beancounters still not want the best value they can get? As in, why pay someone $600K when we can get the same job done for $120K? Why pay $1.9 billion for rights to XYZ when we can get the games for $1.1 billion?

Free market. People allowed to make mistakes. People allowed to negotiate higher contracts.

Communism sucks.

 

[paris trout]

This is what I just don't get.

Yes, at one point money was flowing like water from a fire hose around there.

But still, do the beancounters still not want the best value they can get? As in, why pay someone $600K when we can get the same job done for $120K? Why pay $1.9 billion for rights to XYZ when we can get the games for $1.1 billion?

Are there people with full-time jobs to make those value judgments?

Journalism: the only field where workers advocate for the suppression of wages within the profession.

 

[cisforkoke]

ESPN is as poorly and sloppily managed as any organization out there. Money is thrown at stuff. Even worthwhile projects - and I think the Undefeated is worthwhile in ways the vainglorious Grantland never was - don't have the right kind of tenacity to them. The preview shows are bloated and full of loud, annoying radio commercial bombast. The storylines have been flattened out to the extent that LeBron James is mainlined into the veins of ESPN consumers at every waking moment. Great journalists have been reduced to shills for the NBA, probably because the paycheck lines up. ESPN still sucks at the teat of college football, yet can't cobble together a reputable recruiting coverage operation and laid off the only expert they had - the one with all the contact - a few weeks ago.

Except the experts keep talking about how quality and content have nothing to do with these cuts. It's all due to cord-cutters. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing.

 

[tapintoamerica]

I saw or heard somewhere -- I think it was on Bruce Feldman's Fox podcast -- that ESPN went from 42 college football writers to 17. The original number shocks me. The new one still seems high for a business model.

 

[Vombatus]

Impactful? Is everybody ok with that word?

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Except the experts keep talking about how quality and content have nothing to do with these cuts. It's all due to cord-cutters. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing.

It is the nature of every business to make bad revenue allocation decisions. Good ones too. But when the revenue starts dropping, well, it's like the old Warren Buffett saying. It's only when the tide goes out you see who's swimming without a suit.