Fox/Scout fiasco

Is it wrong of me to take some joy in the derpness of Fox Sports Next's massive launch failure? More important, how does a national site so royally screw this up?
http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2012-articles/october/scout-forced-to-abandon-fox-sports-next-rebranding.html

 

The same way FOXSports.com let go of its entire staff and had a skeleton site in 2001 or 2002. Then there was the myspace.com fiasco. Rupert Murdoch has never liked the Internet, and outside of partnering with MSN, it's been pretty bad over there.

 

Wow, what a disaster. And Scout did/does need a massive design overhaul.

But this was more than just a design change. It was a re-branding. And to botch it so badly (especially with wolves like Rivals and 247 at the door) is just brutal. Scout/Fox did NOT need this.

 

Who are Scout's best remaining writers? Seems like 247 has reached out to many of the biggest names in past year.

 

And the new look wasn't impressive at all, in my opinion. It was hard to find anything that wasn't right in front of you (regardless of the f-ups of the switchover).

 

I remember them telling all their publishers about the great things that were going to come from switching Scout over to Myspace Sports. That was the plan for months, and just never actually happened. Everything about their operations structure was completely baffling, though some sites are successful in spite of the ineptitude from above.

 

"Fox Sports Next?"

More like "Fox Sports New Coke."

Even Reed Hastings at Qwikster Netflix marvels at how badly that switchover went.