ESPN Ombud: Who's Now Wasn't Well Liked

Sorry if this is a d/b... if so, then Mods can delete....

In her third effort, the new espn ombud took the network to task over the Who's Now segments. One thing I liked about this column, however, was that she gave a solid suggestion at the end on how to fix the problem that SportsCenter and espn have created for themselves.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=schreiber_leanne&id=2965515

 

Gee, I don't remember seeing anything disparaging about Who's Now on these boards.

 

The endless segments were dumb and pointless -- who didn't think Tiger would win from the outset? Killing time with no payoff does not serve either the casual or hard-core fans.

 

Damn, she's good. Too bad she's being wasted talking to the wall...

 

Sportscenter's Glenn Jacobs:
"I think in this case there is a disconnect between our critics and some of our fans," he said. "There are certainly some fans who haven't liked it, and I respect that, but some of this negative response has also been driven by media critics."

This is the old hat standby that places like ESPN used to be able to use, when everybody hated something: "It's driven by the media critics". It was like proving a negative - a producer can say that and it used to be you had no way to refute it.

In 2007, with everybody and their mother BLOGGING, there was so getting around it. "Who's Now" fucking sucked. It was universally criticized. Media critics weren't leading the chant. If anything, those old warhorses couldn't keep up with the cacophony of complaints by everyone with a keyboard and a modem.

"Driven by media critics" is so 2001, Glenn. You can't hide behind that any more.

 

This just in: The sky is blue.

 

Remember the 50 States in 50 Days segment Sportscenter did two years ago? It was fluffy and obviously late summer filler, but it was still informative. Heck, I even bought a New Hampshire Fishercats cap after seeing the feature on them.

Who's Now served zero purpose aside from being filler.

 

Great suggestion by her at the end.

I wish Sportscenter was to sports news and highlights, as Le Anne Schreiber is to Ombuds-ing.

 

What bothered me was the sheer volume of time and effort and star power thrown at it. It would have been fun to do the online survey, maybe a quick 1:15 highlight package of the athletes. But there were actual panelists, trying to make seemingly important points about, "no no no, Tiger is more now than Federer because XYZ." It got absolutely pathetic, it gave nothing, NOTHING!!!! back to the viewer. It was ESPN trying to create a story, trying to make itself more important than the sports it covered. Oh, but I'm just another "media critic" I guess.

 

jacobs sounds like the bush administration defending iraq.

denial. a river in egypt.

 

It's almost like ESPN wants you to watch its sport-specific shows to get real news and highlights these days. I've found myself grumbling that I should just watch Baseball Tonight because I don't care for "all NBA, all the time" news on SportsCenter.

Still, like Schreiber said, there IS a good program in there. Its main problem is in how it's being presented. Ya, Kilborn acted like a frat boy on there. Olbermann and Patrick cracked up every chance they got. But you know something? They delivered the goods. I don't think today's anchors come even close.

 

Asked how divided he thought the SportsCenter's audience was over Who's Now, Jacobs said, "We don't really know. We clearly went into this with the belief that a majority of our audience is interested in both on the field and off. I don't think there is just one person reading about Tom Brady's personal life in 'Us Weekly.' I think there's a large number of people who care about Tom Brady and Gisele [Bundchen]."

This guy couldn't be more off base.

If it doesn't have a roto-value, people don't give a fuck.

The people reading about Tom Brady and Gisele in US don't watch SportsCenter. They watch soap operas and Dr. Phil.