ESPN no longer a desirable workplace?

[Radioguy41]

Once upon a time everyone in sports broadcasting aspired to work for ESPN. Apparently not anymore, quite the opposite. Defections started a couple of years ago and the trickle is turning into a flood. Numerous on-air personalities have left or announced they are leaving with Skip Bayless (good riddance) and Mike Tirico the latest but less obvious is the defection of very high ranking, long term, executives. George Bodenheimer (33 yrs) and John Wildhack (36 yrs) are the latest to leave. Now if John Skipper would take a hike maybe, just maybe, new leadership could turn the slowly sinking ship around, but Skipper has to go before that can happen. Statistics show between 2013 and 2016 ESPN has lost nearly 10 million subscribers which translates to approx $2 billion in lost income. That lost income combined with the huge amount of money they keep spending for those ridiculously ugly studio sets, not to mention the ill-conceived International Soccer TV agreement, is really digging a hole. Don't be surprised if, for instance, the Los Angeles facility shuts down and maybe even ESPN3 and/or ESPNews disappear. One thing's for certain, Disney is not going to keep dumping money down the ESPN toilet forever.

 

[harshness]

They need to concern themselves with some fiscal restraint on new technologies as well. The 3D venture surely hurt and the UHD thing cost them a whole lot of money without much identifiable ROI (although I expect that some of that was "donated" in order to prime the pumps).

I think they need to bail on 720p too!

Sports, like news and weather, can be overdone. While there are a few that have the time to watch everything that comes along, I don't imagine that there's enough of an all sports crowd to keep the revenues up and with people finding ways to avoid paying for ESPN, this is going to become more and more of a problem.

 

[Jimbo]

Now that it's being mentioned and brought up ....
Outside of games of teams I follow, I rarely ever turm espn on anymore.

I do watch MLB Network and the NFL Channel much more.

As for that channel that came aboard to take away espn's dominance, Fox Sports 1 ....
Again, I'll turn it on IF my teams are playing on that channel.
Or a Nascar race.

 

[SamCdbs]

Absent live sports, ESPN is about one thing. The NBA. Constant repetitious idiocy about a sport that, really in the grand scheme of things is not that popular. The reason is fairly simple. Talking about the NBA is easy. A few catch phases, analysis based on emotions and empty conclusory statements. All you need. Contrasted with other, far more complex, sports which have layers of nuance that the NBA will never approach. Talking NBA is easy. Talking football, let alone baseball, is hard. You have to actually know things.

So, having created an NBA yammer machine, ESPN was faced with letting the league's rights go elsewhere. It panicked and grossly overpaid. So now it has to cut staff and lose rights to other things. And the talent with ability to cover serious sports is leaving. Stephen A is not.

 

[zippyfrog]

Absent live sports, ESPN is about one thing. The NBA. Constant repetitious idiocy about a sport that, really in the grand scheme of things is not that popular. The reason is fairly simple. Talking about the NBA is easy. A few catch phases, analysis based on emotions and empty conclusory statements. All you need. Contrasted with other, far more complex, sports which have layers of nuance that the NBA will never approach. Talking NBA is easy. Talking football, let alone baseball, is hard. You have to actually know things. So, having created an NBA yammer machine, ESPN was faced with letting the league's rights go elsewhere. It panicked and grossly overpaid. So now it has to cut staff and lose rights to other things. And the talent with ability to cover serious sports is leaving. Stephen A is not.

This is so true. I really liked ESPN back in the day when SportsCenter was more about highlights and less about the talking heads and debating. I love Around the Horn and PTI - that is where the debating should be, not so much on SportsCenter. But as time goes along, even those two shows cover the NBA more and more when there are other sports stories to cover. Also look at First Take - the amount of coverage of the NBA. So I 100% agree with you on the NBA after they overbid on that last TV contract.

The other thing outside of the live sports that drew me to ESPN was Sportscenter - and as I already mentioned, the highlights. One of the best things for me was ESPNEWS. Back before the rebranding when it stood on it's own with the blue and yellow theme, had all the geeky stats for the games, and just was all around solid - I had that channel on for most of my non-live sports information. The best show I liked was on ESPNEWS in the mid to late 2000's - the Highlight Zone and Highlight Express show. Showing highlights of every single MLB game during the summer, NBA and NHL games during the winter. I knew what was going on in sports. The closest thing to that now a days is ESPN showing highlights of all NFL games on an NFL show. You really have to watch the league owned networks if you want to see highlights of everything. And how many times do we see in-depth NHL highlights and analysis outside the playoffs, the last days of the season, or opening night?

I understand that ESPN went away from the highlights because those are available so readily online, so why would someone tune into that, where as the debate and interviews is fresh and live. But once they focused on the debate side of things, moved away from the highlights, and focused so much on the NFL (which is now shifting to focus so much on the NBA), ESPN has not been the same.

 

[Radioguy41]

It has been my opinion for some years now that ESPN has an unhealthy obsession with the NBA. That obsession has lead to ordinary dunks appearing in the Top 10 every day and has now reached a point of absurdity with summer league games being broadcast followed by summer league dunks making it into the Top 10. Sportscenter spends more time on the NBA in the off-season than baseball during the season. A study was done a few years ago ranking all (not just Pro) sports in fan popularity. The NBA didn't even break into the top 5 yet ESPN treats it as if it were number one.

Another serious misstep has been ESPN's involvement with soccer, and International Soccer in particular. American sports fans have shown over and over that they could care less about US soccer (except in the World Cup) so what in the world was ESPN thinking when they climbed into bed with International Soccer? If we don't care about US soccer why the heck would we watch Portugal or Greece? And true to form, ever since they climbed into bed with soccer there isn't a day goes by that multiple goals don't appear in the Top 10. How absurd.

Number three in the "3 Strikes You're Out" catagory has been their overwhelming reliance on Twitter to drive their programming. If I wanted to read the junk people post on Twitter I would join Twitter. Actually, their reliance on Twitter is, to me, an admission that they no longer know what they are doing so they need some 10 year old on the Internet to tell them. It's not just ridiculous, it's sad.

 

[Jimbo]

It has been my opinion for some years now that ESPN has an unhealthy obsession with the NBA. That obsession has lead to ordinary dunks appearing in the Top 10 every day and has now reached a point of absurdity with summer league games being broadcast followed by summer league dunks making it into the Top 10. Sportscenter spends more time on the NBA in the off-season than baseball during the season. A study was done a few years ago ranking all (not just Pro) sports in fan popularity. The NBA didn't even break into the top 5 yet ESPN treats it as if it were number one.

Another serious misstep has been ESPN's involvement with soccer, and International Soccer in particular. American sports fans have shown over and over that they could care less about US soccer (except in the World Cup) so what in the world was ESPN thinking when they climbed into bed with International Soccer? If we don't care about US soccer why the heck would we watch Portugal or Greece? And true to form, ever since they climbed into bed with soccer there isn't a day goes by that multiple goals don't appear in the Top 10. How absurd.

Number three in the "3 Strikes You're Out" catagory has been their overwhelming reliance on Twitter to drive their programming. If I wanted to read the junk people post on Twitter I would join Twitter. Actually, their reliance on Twitter is, to me, an admission that they no longer know what they are doing so they need some 10 year old on the Internet to tell them. It's not just ridiculous, it's sad.

I agree with what you posted 100 %.

 

[Ramy]

They need to get SportsCenter back to highlights and stop the feel good stories. Do those in their own episodes if they want them.

 

[Radioguy41]

Might be in their own best interests if they did away with the yellow journalism of OTL (and often E:30, E:60) and concentrated on the positive side of sports. It seems to me they spend far too much time and effort biting the hand that feeds them. They'll spend an entire hour airing someone's dirty laundry while airing maybe a 5 minute piece of an athlete doing something positive. A prime example was the recent personal vendetta against Pete Rose. Whatever your personal feelings are about Rose the fact is he's the all time hits leader in the history of the game and belongs in the HOF You're not voting for the man, you're voting for the player, or should be. While Manfred was contemplating reinstating Rose OTL went far out of their way to dig up and rehash 35 year old dirt and deliberately aired it just before Manfred was to announce his decision. OTL went out of their way to ruin the man's chances and did it for no good reason. At the same time Sportcenter aired a short 5 minute piece on Maya Moore's relationship with a sick little girl. That's not an equitable balance but that's just one example of how far ESPN has sunk.

 

[WiCkeDuDe]

Kinda funny. I always thought they covered the nfl wayyyyyyyy too much. Nba right now yes but there isn't much else to cover at the moment...


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[Jimbo]

Kinda funny. I always thought they covered the nfl wayyyyyyyy too much. Nba right now yes but there isn't much else to cover at the moment...


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Ummm, something wrong with baseball ?

 

[SamCdbs]

Ummm, something wrong with baseball ?

The only thing wrong with baseball (and the other sports being actually played right now, such as tennis and golf) are that covering these requires that one have an actual take. Yes, ESPN has some specialists who can cover baseball well (Onley, Tjerkisan (sp?) Gomez), as they do with most sports, but the general "talent" really is not going to put the work in. So much easier to toss up some dunk and scream "AWSOME" and then talk about trades and free agency, not with analysis, but with empty discussions of who likes one another, emotions, feelings, lifestyle, etc. Easy.

 

[Radioguy41]

I agree about the "talent". ESPN has the biggest bunch of boobs (Stan Verret + Neil Everett) , no-talents (Kenny Mayne), and just plain wrong-voice-for-broadcasting (Jonathan Coachman) in their history. I once heard a long time broadcasting executive explain how he selected on-air talent. His answer shows the different approach these days. He said he would give the prospective employee a test broadcast to do. He then went into a room that had a speaker mounted on the wall. He would sit in a chair with the lights off so the only sensory input was the voice. He said you can always massage presentation but you can't change the voice. He also stated that men with high voices (Jonathan Coachman) were unfit for broadcasting because the high voice (according to studies) tended to subconciously annoy or irritate a significant portion of listeners. The above named people are just examples, there are numerous others that are unfit for on-air appearance. Maybe it's a sign of the times; people would rather watch clowns and buffoons than professionals. If that's true it's a sad commentary.

This morning is a perfect example of ESPN's obsession with the NBA, last night was the greatest home run derby in history plus Jordan Spieth withdrew from the Olympics but it all got short shrift on SC, they only want to talk about Tim Duncan retiring and show more worthless summer league clips (I refuse to call them "highlights"). To me, Jordan Spieth withdrawing from the Olympics is as big a story as any NBA player retiring. In fact the debacle that Rio has become is the biggest story of the year, in my opinion, but it get's almost no airtime. I've watched ESPN from the beginning (C-band in it's heyday) so maybe I'm jaded by memories of seeing and hearing actually qualified personalities and balanced content.

 

[Rey]

Ummm, something wrong with baseball ?

Yes.....

 

[harshness]

ESPN's main problem is that they have way too many channels to fill. Next in line is that they are giving up lots of "margin" sports to the competition. NBC (and to a somewhat lesser extent CBS) are schooling ESPN on sports like footy, rally racing and motorcycle racing (both road and dirt). Unlike the old guard ESPN regular sports and soccer, these are high intensity all the time.

They need to go back to the films and see what Wide World of Sports used to do in terms of bringing some variety and broadening the public exposure to off-the-beaten-path sports and exhibitions that happen every day but don't have a huge following. There are eyeballs to be had in the many forms of racing and skills competitions (dozens related to boats alone). No need to get stuck in a rut like they did with poker tournaments. There's always something interesting going on in rodeo and lumberjack competitions.

 

[osu1991]

They bought the rights to the CFL. I don't see the logic in throwing CFL games on espn3 only in favor of nba summer league or 30 for 30 replays

 

[WiCkeDuDe]

hard for for me to argue with a fellow Jeepguy!

And no I dont have a problem with baseball, its just the regular season right now and they play sooo many games hence there most are not that interested until playoff time....

 

[Troch77]

Yes.....

Agree, right now it's down right boring.
Talk to me in September about Baseball when it actually means something and gets exciting.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Active

 

[Jimbo]

When I said, Something wrong with baseball, I was referring to espn guys talking about it.
They get about 25-30 games a day, all we hear about is nba.

I'll give them 3-4 days to talk about Tim Duncan ... I'm not a basketball guy, but I know he was a very good player and a quality guy.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

ESPN completely covers whatever sports/leagues they have broadcast rights with. Definitely makes sense from a business perspective and all of that extra programming is built into those contracts.


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