More Cuts at ESPN

[playthrough]

If they are going to trim so much talent, does it mean Sports Center repeats in the morning? Just wondering how ESPN keeps up its current daily schedule while losing a bunch of people.

SportsCenter used to repeat the previous night's west coast edition all morning and the world kept spinning.

 

[sgreenwell]

Each of the four major professional sports has its own cable network with its own hosts. They have screamers (Michael Irvin, Deion), but they also present lots of information. Yes, much of that information is spoon fed pablum, but some isn't. So much ESPN programming is competing with the leagues to which it pays huge sums to broadcast their games. Let's take the NFL draft as an example. It was one of the events that put ESPN on the map as a national entity. And now, it competes with an NFL Network broadcast in which the latter naturally gets first dibs on "scoops."

This is also why I doubt ESPN can go back to its old model though, of just showing more sports. What's available from the major four or college sports that isn't already owned by regional cable sports networks, and that's actually valuable inventory? I suppose if they just want cheap programming, they could buy the rights for broadcasting some mid-major games, and just because it's ESPN it'll probably get more valuable over the years. But that would be a hell of a hit to current ratings, and they're broadcasters, not the TV equivalent of AAA baseball.

 

[CD Boogie]

50 percent of espn's content more or less sees the eyeballs of college kids and the unemployed. They don't need to give those demographics original content all the time

 

[Vombatus]

ESPN also missed the boat on fantasy sports. They used to have a wide diversity of games, but kept cutting them back - particularly if they lost the coverage contract to that sport (think NHL and NASCAR, for example).

I played religiously from 2003 to 2014, but quit after they chopped all your records out. Still surprised that Yahoo surpasses them in free leagues.

 

[playthrough]

ESPN also missed the boat on fantasy sports. They used to have a wide diversity of games, but kept cutting them back - particularly if they lost the coverage contract to that sport (think NHL and NASCAR, for example).

I played religiously from 2003 to 2014, but quit after they chopped all your records out. Still surprised that Yahoo surpasses them in free leagues.

Do you think hosting free leagues helps a company's bottom line? (Asking legitimately, not being snarky.) Surely there are some pretty big costs in maintaining the infrastructure.

 

[Vombatus]

Do you think hosting free leagues helps a company's bottom line? (Asking legitimately, not being snarky.) Surely there are some pretty big costs in maintaining the infrastructure.

That's the rub. I think it helps your branding and loyal customer base beyond the toob. It attracted lots of eyeballs to the WWL website too.

Sure, it would be best if the fantasy angle could generate a profit all of its own (and with a big enough following combined with ads, I personally think it could have).

But they never did it that well, and I have always wondered if their location in Bristol hurt them a lot by having a lot of computer sci/programmers say **** no, I'm not living in CT.

 

[CD Boogie]

Do you think hosting free leagues helps a company's bottom line? (Asking legitimately, not being snarky.) Surely there are some pretty big costs in maintaining the infrastructure.

I have played fantasy football with CBS Sports since 2001. All the league records are still there. It's pretty much the only reason I still go to that site, which I used to write for. None of the same columnists are still there. At least none of the ones worth reading. Gotta imagine it's a boon to CBS to maintain fantasy sports.

 

[dixiehack]

SportsCenter used to repeat the previous night's west coast edition all morning and the world kept spinning.

Bring back Nation's Business Today!

 

[TexasVet]

They quit showing hockey and began the World Series of Poker. After every golf tournament, they spend five minutes on Tiger Woods finishing 66th and half a minute on the actual winner. They praise Colin Kaepernick and try to chastise Tom Brady. They want to shove a leftist agenda down our throats rather than stick to what got them here, all because of social pressure.

I know this sounds like a Clay Travis rant, but I thought this long before he ever did. ESPN used to have really good, creative talent, and Chris Berman was one of those pioneers - and now he's leaving. Slowly over the decades the really good talent has retired, got fired, moved to another network or died. Now we're stuck with athletes who can't speak proper English and way too many people on the set for one football game.

The world will survive without a bloated ESPN. I haven't watched any of its networks since the day after the Super Bowl, and quite honestly I don't miss it at all (Not until college football season, at least).

 

[JC]

They quit showing hockey and began the World Series of Poker. After every golf tournament, they spend five minutes on Tiger Woods finishing 66th and half a minute on the actual winner. They praise Colin Kaepernick and try to chastise Tom Brady. They want to shove a leftist agenda down our throats rather than stick to what got them here, all because of social pressure.

I know this sounds like a Clay Travis rant, but I thought this long before he ever did. ESPN used to have really good, creative talent, and Chris Berman was one of those pioneers - and now he's leaving. Slowly over the decades the really good talent has retired, got fired, moved to another network or died. Now we're stuck with athletes who can't speak proper English and way too many people on the set for one football game.

The world will survive without a bloated ESPN. I haven't watched any of its networks since the day after the Super Bowl, and quite honestly I don't miss it at all (Not until college football season, at least).

Scorching.

 

[HanSenSE]

I know they tried to become involved in high school sports as well, which was an absolute disaster (we've talked about the them trying to bar Joe Davidson of the Sacramento Bee from the press box of a game they were broadcasting, which is unrelated, but an example of how they like to bigfoot everything). That's something best left to RSNs and local stations. And in addition to state and regional polls, Maxpreps and similar sites blew what they had out of the water.

 

[dixiehack]

Flipping back and forth between ESPN and ESPN2 just trying to kill 10 minutes before basketball starts and I already want to put an ice pick in my skull. Everything's about the NFL except for a segment on Tim Tebow going 0-3 in Mets spring training, which is only a thing because he was part of the NFL hot take-industrial complex. Enough.

 

[steveu]

A few years ago, Sportscenter had a producer for the late-night edition who believed the world revolved around the NBA. They'd start the show off with 15 minutes of NBA, go to a few minutes of the other sports, then come back with more NBA... look, I know you've got the NBA TV deal, but enough! There are some at that hour that want to see more than just basketball.

They haven't exactly improved leaps and bounds, but there's more variety now like longer segments with Barry Melrose, more soccer highlights (another ESPN sport) and SC Featured.

Oh, and bring back the one that did the aerobics in the morning. I forget her name, but she was suuuuuuure worth looking at...

 

[I Should Coco]

Oh, and bring back the one that did the aerobics in the morning. I forget her name, but she was suuuuuuure worth looking at...

You might be thinking of "Bodies in Motion" with Gilad. He's a dude, BTW ... not that there's anything wrong with that ...

 

[Huggy]

Kiana's Flex Appeal with the lovely Kiana Tom?

 

[playthrough]

They quit showing hockey and began the World Series of Poker. After every golf tournament, they spend five minutes on Tiger Woods finishing 66th and half a minute on the actual winner. They praise Colin Kaepernick and try to chastise Tom Brady. They want to shove a leftist agenda down our throats rather than stick to what got them here, all because of social pressure.

I know this sounds like a Clay Travis rant, but I thought this long before he ever did. ESPN used to have really good, creative talent, and Chris Berman was one of those pioneers - and now he's leaving. Slowly over the decades the really good talent has retired, got fired, moved to another network or died. Now we're stuck with athletes who can't speak proper English and way too many people on the set for one football game.

The world will survive without a bloated ESPN. I haven't watched any of its networks since the day after the Super Bowl, and quite honestly I don't miss it at all (Not until college football season, at least).

In fairness to ESPN, it had poker back when the WSOP final table was outside at Binion's and Gabe Kaplan was the analyst. When the game really blew up 15 years ago, ESPN went, um, all-in (sorry, sorry), and surely the rights fees were a fraction of a fraction of the big-time rights deals. Alas, there's not another phenomenon like that coming down the road anytime soon.

As for the leftist agenda, to me that's a reason to change the channel but not to cut the cord. Casual fans can get information and highlights elsewhere and are finding they can live without seeing a game every night. That, and the cost savings, leads to cutting the cord. Not because Stephen A. sucks and ESPN is holding town hall meetings.

 

[Old Time Hockey]

Flipping back and forth between ESPN and ESPN2 just trying to kill 10 minutes before basketball starts and I already want to put an ice pick in my skull. Everything's about the NFL except for a segment on Tim Tebow going 0-3 in Mets spring training, which is only a thing because he was part of the NFL hot take-industrial complex. Enough.

This right here. Long before I cut the cord, I'd stopped watching ESPN outside of actual game coverage because of its insistence that every tiny NFL off-season event was huge news. As a believer than the NFL is the single most overhyped entity in American culture, I got tired of hearing about a backup offensive tackle's calf-muscle injury in April when there were actual sporting events going on.

 

[steveu]

Coco, I was thinking Denise Austin. But I got a kick out of your reference... lol

And I couldn't agree more about hyping news. I was on a spring trip several years back and Donovan McNabb was dealt to the Redskins on the opening night of baseball season. Granted, that was news at the time, but all I could think was "What the hell?" I thought the trade might have been executed in February or March, but Goodell said "Wait... we'll announce it on baseball's opening day so we can hog the spotlight..."

 

[HanSenSE]

This right here. Long before I cut the cord, I'd stopped watching ESPN outside of actual game coverage because of its insistence that every tiny NFL off-season event was huge news. As a believer than the NFL is the single most overhyped entity in American culture, I got tired of hearing about a backup offensive tackle's calf-muscle injury in April when there were actual sporting events going on.

Seconded, with college football as a close second. If they were to lose the daily shows on the NFL and CFB, would anyone miss them? Or Wednesday night MAC or CUSA games, or Friday nights with the Mountain West? And live coverage of minicamps, OTAs and, in the case of CFB, spring games (which, by the purest of coincidences, became a thing after the formation of the SEC Network)?

To echo Playthrough's post, no, poker may not come back to the levels it was at. But one sport it did lose that will hurt is soccer, namely, USMNT, USWMT and World Cup rights.

 

[da man]

Coco, I was thinking Denise Austin. But I got a kick out of your reference... lol

And I couldn't agree more about hyping news. I was on a spring trip several years back and Donovan McNabb was dealt to the Redskins on the opening night of baseball season. Granted, that was news at the time, but all I could think was "What the hell?" I thought the trade might have been executed in February or March, but Goodell said "Wait... we'll announce it on baseball's opening day so we can hog the spotlight..."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that probably didn't happen.