ESPN Profit Plummets As Network Turns Left

#507
#507
Nerwen Aldarion said:
Why did it take them so long to realize this?
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Because it had to have a significant financial impact on them before they would elect to reverse their position on increased political discourse.

My guess is advertisers looked at the Nielsen ratings and starting decreasing their advertising spends on ESPN, and finally red flags were sent up by the bean counters.
 
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#510
#510
BeardedVol said:
Because it had to have a significant financial impact on them before they would elect to reverse their position on increased political discourse.

My guess is advertisers looked at the Nielsen ratings and starting decreasing their advertising spends on ESPN, and finally red flags were sent up by the bean counters.
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Yep. The SJW politics was/is part of a strategy that was discussed ad nauseum earlier in the thread in order to make their network relevant in an era of cord-cutting.

Instead of that working and attracting more viewers in their key demographic, they actually ended up taking a lot of heat for it. Much more heat/criticism from people who didn't like it than support from people who did.

If they are dropping the political stuff, they are still left with a few parts of the strategy - heavy coverage of what is being discussed on social media, coverage of sports from a TMZ-type angle, and integration of non-sports celebrities and pop culture into the coverage. Ultimately, they might get more traction from those things than political coverage, but it still isn't a winner. Why do I need a TV channel to tell me what is trending on social media? I can pull out my phone and see it myself. I can also get TMZ-style sports stories and a dose of non-sports pop culture from social media too. It all boils down to you don't need ESPN for anything other than coverage of live sports anymore.

IMO, ESPN can't truly "reset" and figure out a long-term path forward until they get out from under some of these contracts they way overpaid for.
 
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#511
#511
05_never_again said:
Yep. The SJW politics was/is part of a strategy that was discussed ad nauseum earlier in the thread in order to make their network relevant in an era of cord-cutting.

Instead of that working and attracting more viewers in their key demographic, they actually ended up taking a lot of heat for it. Much more heat/criticism from people who didn't like it than support from people who did.

If they are dropping the political stuff, they are still left with a few parts of the strategy - heavy coverage of what is being discussed on social media, coverage of sports from a TMZ-type angle, and integration of non-sports celebrities and pop culture into the coverage. Ultimately, they might get more traction from those things than political coverage, but it still isn't a winner. Why do I need a TV channel to tell me what is trending on social media? I can pull out my phone and see it myself. I can also get TMZ-style sports stories and a dose of non-sports pop culture from social media too. It all boils down to you don't need ESPN for anything other than coverage of live sports anymore.

IMO, ESPN can't truly "reset" and figure out a long-term path forward until they get out from under some of these contracts they way overpaid for.
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I'm with you, for sure. I will consider ESPN truly "fixed" when I stop seeing Lebron on my timeline 5x daily.
 
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#513
#513
mrmax86 said:
I'm with you, for sure. I will consider ESPN truly "fixed" when I stop seeing Lebron on my timeline 5x daily.
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That's a by-product of them massively overpaying for the NBA contract. They are trying to protect/defend their investment.

ESPN has always shown live sports, but back in the day when SportsCenter was your one-stop-shop for all sports highlights they had a vested interest in talking about lots of different sports, including sports they didn't even broadcast. As the media landscape has become more fragmented, SportsCenter is irrelevant, and they have much more of a vested interest in talking about just the sports they broadcast.
 
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#514
#514
hog88 said:
Outside of watching an actual sporting event how many of you even watch ESPN? Myself the answer is no.
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College GameDay is still a pretty good way to get juiced up for a day of college football, and the 30 for 30 documentaries are good (although they don't make as many anymore, and the most recent ones aren't as compelling). Other than that, their programming is completely irrelevant.
 
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#515
#515
05_never_again said:
College GameDay is still a pretty good way to get juiced up for a day of college football, and the 30 for 30 documentaries are good (although they don't make as many anymore, and the most recent ones aren't as compelling). Other than that, their programming is completely irrelevant.
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I used to like the 30 for 30s but haven't watched one in a few years.
 
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#517
#517
hog88 said:
Outside of watching an actual sporting event how many of you even watch ESPN? Myself the answer is no.
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In the past 5 years, other than football, basketball, and a little baseball, I can’t think of a single thing I watch ESPN for. I don’t recognize their commentators because about 50% of the time, I have the games on mute.
 
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#518
#518
Remember when ESPN first started? They used to show Australian rules football, Rugby, Snow skiing etc. Almost like the old wide world of sports.
Remember when MTV (music television) played music?
Remember when the History channel showed history, and not pawn shops or people picking through old barns?
Remember when the weather channel had weather, not "Storm Stories"?
 
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#519
#519
Totally went all in on NBA and is costing them . Plus the political aspirations of Iger and Skipper’s personal issues directed them very left. I can’t believe they didn’t recognize their audience better or didn’t care. The 6 was a joke with Jemelle Hill and Michael Smith, Lebatard, Bomani (who I used to work with ) completely wears a massive chip on his shoulder, which is ********. He’s pretty much an unathletic academic who taught at UNC for years , who likes to seem like something he’s not. That doesn’t make him a bad guy, but just another fake SJW wearing a Cleveland “Caucasians” shirt instead of Indians. Espn bought in.
 
#520
#520
ptcarter said:
Remember when ESPN first started? They used to show Australian rules football, Rugby, Snow skiing etc. Almost like the old wide world of sports.
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At this same time, less than half of all major college football games were televised. Do you want to go back to that?
 
#522
#522
ptcarter said:
Remember when ESPN first started? They used to show Australian rules football, Rugby, Snow skiing etc. Almost like the old wide world of sports.
Remember when MTV (music television) played music?
Remember when the History channel showed history, and not pawn shops or people picking through old barns?
Remember when the weather channel had weather, not "Storm Stories"?
Click to expand...
While I agree with the sentiment there isn't really anything wrong with ESPN's live sports coverage. There's the odd annoying announcer or mention of something totally irrelevant to that particular game (like bringing up Zion or Kentucky in the middle of a game having nothing to do with them and talking about them for minutes), but that's always been there.

In today's environment almost 100% of their non-live sports coverage is simply irrelevant, and their ideas to make it more relevant are just stupid. I don't really think there is a way to make it relevant again. SportsCenter was a program built for a particular media landscape. That was where you went for scores and highlights because what was the alternative? When it was at its peak, the internet either didn't exist or was in its infancy and had minimal content, smartphones didn't exist, and SportsCenter was quicker and just more fun than reading the newspaper. That landscape has totally changed. Honestly, I find it kind of amazing that SportsCenter is even still around in any form and still referred to as ESPN's flagship program.

In a perfect world for ESPN, they would have been in on streaming much sooner, have even more of an online presence than they currently have (and it is pretty substantial), and the non-live sports programming they had on cable TV would be winding down, honestly. Instead, they were late to the game on all of that, and so the plan they devised revolved around cost cutting and trying to make the non-live sports programming fresh and relevant.
 
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#523
#523
TV is getting more complicated, due to the internet. Good example is Netflix, who is now tailoring their own shows. Pure internet. I can also spend an evening watching Youtubes rather than TV. Who knows what the landscape will look like in 10 years. Would love to have programming "a -la -carte", rather than bundles the cable channels force you into. There are many news outlets and channels which would evaporate overnight. I could live with about 6 of the hundreds of channels out there now.
 
#525
#525
BeardedVol said:
Because it had to have a significant financial impact on them before they would elect to reverse their position on increased political discourse.

My guess is advertisers looked at the Nielsen ratings and starting decreasing their advertising spends on ESPN, and finally red flags were sent up by the bean counters.
Click to expand...

It was mostly a rhetorical question. Anyone could see putting politics into a sports network was a terrible idea from the get go. People watch sports to get away from the pig pen that is politics.
 
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