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by scotch_drinker 3342 days ago
And it's only going to get worse. The article notes that most of the 100 laid off were reporters and that ESPN was moving towards opinion. This is the beginning of the end for most sports fans, I'd imagine. I remember the days of being home in the morning from classes in the early 90s and seeing Australian Rules Football or a quality discussion of some sport on ESPN. Now it's Mike and Mike or some other inane uselessness.
2 comments
Dan_Nguyen 3342 days ago
No kidding. I miss the old days of ESPN. Doesn't help either that ESPN isn't showing good games anymore and that it has big competition now.

For football, this past season they were only showing the MNF games. In the Bay Area, NBC Sports Bay Area has broadcast rights to all the Giants and Warriors games. IIRC, NBC broadcast holds the rights to the Sharks. In San Diego, Fox Sports San Diego has the rights to the Padres. I can't remember the last time I tuned into ESPN to watch a game I wanted to see beyond "Oh that's on, I guess I'll watch."

Even ignoring the broadcasting rights, sports talk on other channels have become vastly superior to ESPN. My two favorite segments on sports this year (ARod + Pete Rose discuss batting, Isiah Thomas discusses dribbling) came out of Fox Sports and TNT. I'd pay good money to hear more detailed analysis from former players, rather than talk endlessly about how Tom Brady looks like he's from NSync with his haircut.

In my opinion ESPN just got too complacent with their status and is digging themselves into the grave. I swear I can go on for hours over all the things ESPN is doing wrong in the sports media today.

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hkmurakami 3342 days ago
Well the giants were on Fox before (at least in 2001 when I followed them religiously) and tbh ESPN has never carried MLB games in the home region since the network (non cable) channels with bigger viewership can outbid them?
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_asummers 3342 days ago
Not to mention them turning down their hockey coverage dramatically after they lost the TV deal (remember when they had an hour show devoted to NHL?), followed by them laying off all their competent hockey guys in the recent round of layoffs.
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AdamJacobMuller 3342 days ago
> most of the 100 laid off were reporters

What I was thinking when I saw the lay-offs is that this is exactly the wrong move for them. I understand why ESPN did it, to cut costs, but they're cutting them in the wrong area.

ESPN needs more reporters and more people doing direct content production.

ESPN needs to go back to content producers (sports leagues) and tell them that they're no longer able to force effectively 100% of the population to subsidize subscription costs for the percentage of the population that watches their sport and that their license payments need to be renegotiated to compensate.

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