by Clay Travis
Yeah… nah.
I like the work that the (sadly, now retired) Robert Seidman’s Sports TV Ratings blog did on this:
Robert was great. Someone needs to underwrite that guy.
Well, it’s not like they play NBA games at 9 AM everyday. And those damn sports seasons won’t go year-round. Selfish bastards.
Yeah, when Clay Travis starts talking political crap realize this: he really wants Bill O’Reilly’s old chair on FOX News. Wants it badly. He’s playing it to the hilt.
If anyone actually buys into that schtick about ESPN having a political leaning and that being the reason for the falling ratings…well shit. Clay Travis doesn’t even believe that.
Clay Travis was WAY ahead of the curve on this. ESPN is suffering primarily because of what they have committed to live rights programming versus their revenue losses due to cord cutters. But the ESPN hard left turn has not helped them. Sports fans lean right. ESPN has gone hard left. Their ratings for non live rights stuff are down way more than their subscriber losses.
“Hard left”, he said. LOL.
Yeah I wasn’t referring to any “left” or “right” stuff in those blog posts, just the hard money, financials, and numbers. Sorry for any unwanted connotations.
In fact I noticed I just skimmed right over that part, I’ve gotten so inured to political bullshit that I literally don’t read it when I see it on the page.
Pretty much exactly that. “I don’t like this [insert thing here], so that’s why ESPN laid off 100 people,” is the hottest – and stupidest – of hot takes.
Honestly, trig, how is “there is no possible way this [thing you don’t like] could have been a factor” any different?
ESPN isn’t just losing subscribers (and thereby funding), their ratings are falling as well. That means that some folks who were watching are not watching anymore. Not to mention who they are cutting versus who they are keeping. The blabbers stay, the meat-and-potatoes sports reporters and analysts are being tossed out. ESPN is not doing that unintentionally.
Interesting:
In some cases, ESPN offered people with years left to go just 50 percent of the money remaining to them — or they could finish out their contracts while effectively being benched.
If you were getting a million per year from ESPN, would you take the half million pay cut?
I guess it depends on how old you and how many years you have left on your contract, but getting 100% for not doing much doesn’t sound too bad either. Of course maybe they’d send you to Alaska to cover the Iditarod.
For most, it would be a bad deal. Sure, you’re getting paid to do nothing, but you’re also effectively killing your post-ESPN career. While you’re “benched” you’re losing contacts, missing events, and fans will forget about you. It’s a death sentence.
A lot would depend on how close to retirement you are. Three years on the bench at full pay is six years at half pay. If you’re ten years away from retirement, I’m not sure there’s a huge difference either way.
Even if you stay they could still bury you. With their viewership and subscriber decline, they probably want to shake up things no matter who goes or stays. How long before we start seeing reality TV series where ardent Redskin couples and Cowboy couples swap husbands? Being the emcee for that could be your new assignment at ESPN!
Sure, but if you’re close to retirement, I’d wager you’re not one of the people that got a cherry contract.
Yes, I have no idea. I can’t get my head around the idea of someone like Trent Dilfer getting a million+ per year for his contributions. I guess it’s just the scale of it all.
Almost everyone I see on sports broadcasts are replaceable. Few are interesting enough that I’d miss them if they were gone.
James Andrew Miller is an authority on the subject of ESPN and a great follow.
Because data.
Qualitative sentiment-based analysis is OK for what it is, but it doesn’t give us the story like data does.
ESPN’s viewer loss and ratings loss is correlated, but significantly lower, than traditional content cable, news cable, and broadcast television. So that’s good for them. Saying “ESPN is losing viewers” absent relevant data sets for comparison is how pundits sell a political agenda.
The loss of viewership isn’t a new trend, and it’s one everyone saw and has been trying to prepare for…but it caught Disney/ABC/ESPN in a mess because they’ve been overpaying for content rights for over a decade. The $300m deal for the LongHorn Network is small potatoes, relatively speaking, but it’s also emblematic of why ESPN is in this mess to begin with. No one was bidding against them for the rights to Tier 3 UT football, spring baseball, and non-conference T3 hoops. It’s that kind of idiotic, profligate spending that put ESPN/Disney in this hole.
FOX can reconcile their rights fees a little better because they were at least forward-thinking enough to include their small regional cable nets into their MLB and college hoops and college football bids. That allows them to spread the costs out and put ratings up head to head versus broadcast television. FOX, starting this year, is also treating NFL the way it does scripted TV for costing/rating purposes, which helps to justify their crazy NFL rights deal. They may soon have their own reckoning coming, and the fallout is likely to be NASCAR.
I don’t think ESPN’s “liberal agenda” had anything to do with these cuts, however ESPN’s “liberal agenda” has probably hurt them in the ratings. When you look at hard care sports fans you include demographics that will dump you in a minute for other outlets if you get political or social, and it is pretty hard to deny that ESPN has done that.
It hasn’t helped of course that over the last several years there have been an explosion of alternative places to get your sports fix on all media.
There’s simply no data to prove that this is a thing. None.
I still don’t understand why they are perceived as liberal. Because they talked about Jenner or the national anthem thing? Isn’t that just a small part of what they talk about everyday?
They have teh black people and wimmins as anchors, reporters, and analysts.