OT: ESPN Layoffs

[billikenfan05]

12 minutes ago, Littlebill said:

And those people have twitter to where they see those "wow" type plays anyway with SB Nation and Barstool. There's no demand for anything like that

I'm not talking wow type plays. I'm talking straight here's the goals, important baskets and the final score. I don't want to watch 4 tv personalities talk about wether Joe Flacco is elite for 20 minutes 

[TheChosenOne]

1 hour ago, billikenfan05 said:

Nostalgia is huge market. ESPN needs to cash back in on that. The people who grew up on the highlight heavy episodes of SC are the people paying for cable now. Remember when you could sit down and watch SC and see a basketball/baseball/hockey/tennis/soccer highlight in 30 minutes before you had to leave for school/work? 

That is an interesting thought. I assume there was a reason they went away from that (although I assume the biggest financial issue for them is the decrease in subscribers due to cord cutting coupled with the crazy amount they are spending on rights), but clearly the direction they decided to go instead is not desirable to anyone I know. I don't know the answer, but the various hot take shows and former athletes/coaches breaking down every possible sports story is of no interest to me. I think people are able to consume the media that caters to their specific fan hood from plenty of other places, so ESPN needs to figure out where they best fit beyond the live sports programming that they have drastically overpaid for (although they were able to do so because of the crazy amount of $ they were making from cable subscriptions). I probably would watch ESPN every once in awhile if it were more highlight focused. I do enjoy the 30 for 30 documentaries, but that, College GameDay (football), and live sports is all I watch ESPN for. I never watch the station so I may be off, but I find it odd that FS1 seemingly tried to replicate that hot take heavy content.

I will say that if I am working out (which has become fairly seldom) and need something to watch, as a big college football fan, sometimes I will go to SEC Network for content that is of more interest to me even if it is people who have no business being on tv giving bad takes.

[RUBillsFan]

20 minutes ago, CBFan said:

What Crews recruit took that scholarship

I can't recall specifically, but looking back at the rosters I'm thinking that maybe it wasn't even used:

Here is the 2012-13 roster (http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/saint-louis/2013.html) Jared Drew is not listed because the red shirted, but this was his freshman year and he was "run off" after the season (also not listed is McBroom sitting out per the transfer rules) all 13 scholarships were used.  Here is the 2013-14 roster (http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/saint-louis/2014.html).

From the 2012-13 team Kwamain, Remekun, and Ellis graduated, Carter left, and Drew was "run off" meaning 5 new scholarships were available.  4 of 5 were used on Crawford, Agbeko, Lancona, and Yacoubou (who had to sit out).  I don't think the 5th (Drew's scholarship) was ever used.

I still maintain that Eamonn's article is a hit job on SLU (it unnecessarily singles them out and doesn't go into extenuating circumstances surrounding the program at the time (Majerus death / coaching transition).  However, in hindsight, it looks like Crews just botched the out of this situation (what else is new) and left SLU with egg all over its face and bad PR.  

[Box and Won]

14 minutes ago, TheChosenOne said:

I find it odd that FS1 seemingly tried to replicate that hot take heavy content.

I caught a few minutes of one of FS1's hot take shows.  It almost seemed like a parody of a sports show, like "Sports Sesh" from Eastbound and Down.

For my money, no one did sports talk better than The Onion:

 

[2010andBeyond]

1 hour ago, billikenfan05 said:

Nostalgia is huge market. ESPN needs to cash back in on that. The people who grew up on the highlight heavy episodes of SC are the people paying for cable now. Remember when you could sit down and watch SC and see a basketball/baseball/hockey/tennis/soccer highlight in 30 minutes before you had to leave for school/work? 

Exactly. I was more knowledgeable on the NBA/NHL/MLB as a whole in grade school because I could watch 30 min of non stop highlights every morning before school. 

[DirtyRican]

11 minutes ago, 2010andBeyond said:

Exactly. I was more knowledgeable on the NBA/NHL/MLB as a whole in grade school because I could watch 30 min of non stop highlights every morning before school. 

My 6 year old wakes up every morning and puts on Quick Pitch.  It reminds me of my childhood when I watched highlights over and over. 

[BillsCPA]

I also noticed MTV no longer plays music videos. The internet has crushed the highlights and scores market. Why would you ever sit through 30 min of "boohya's" when you can use an app to get everything you want. Everyone under 35 has cut cable and Barstool dominates the young white male market. ESPN missed out when they didnt buy into barstool for $15 mil a year ago. 

Unsolicited advice to the worldwide leader would be that their ESPN's target demo should be middle age to old white men who haven't figured out how to cut cable yet. I'm only sort of joking when i think their best move would be hire Bill O'Reilly and he could ***** for an hour about how the kids don't respect the game. 

[billikenfan05]

9 minutes ago, BillsCPA said:

I also noticed MTV no longer plays music videos. The internet has crushed the highlights and scores market. Why would you ever sit through 30 min of "boohya's" when you can use an app to get everything you want. Everyone under 35 has cut cable and Barstool dominates the young white male market. ESPN missed out when they didnt buy into barstool for $15 mil a year ago. 

Unsolicited advice to the worldwide leader would be that their ESPN's target demo should be middle age to old white men who haven't figured out how to cut cable yet. I'm only sort of joking when i think their best move would be hire Bill O'Reilly and he could ***** for an hour about how the kids don't respect the game. 

It's not about sitting through. It's about watching something that you can tune in and out of for the short duration you watch tv while eating breakfast. It's hard to jump in and pay attention to hot take shows. You might turn it on mid segment and or have to leave mid segment and it's annoying. 30-60 second game highlight packages. Personally, I want to know in the most concise format: What happened yesterday/last night in major sports.

 

[TheChosenOne]

Clay Travis gives a pretty good take. I certainly agree with his first two while not being sold on the third issue since the first two (significant loss of revenue due to loss of subscribers vs. significant increase in expenses due to sports rights they drastically overpaid for) had them headed for the ledge without an obvious solution. A simple margin analysis would tell you they were screwed. I agree in a sense since I have no interest in their current opinion/discussion focused formatting, but that has nothing to do with the political aspects of the discussions. It just seems like the business model is broke regardless of whether they are becoming more liberal which I honestly don't watch enough to how pervasive that has become.

https://www.pscp.tv/ClayTravis/1ynKOjgLlekxR

[bonwich]

1 hour ago, Box and Won said:

I caught a few minutes of one of FS1's hot take shows.  It almost seemed like a parody of a sports show, like "Sports Sesh" from Eastbound and Down.

For my money, no one did sports talk better than The Onion:

 

Great head fake. I thought you'd pulled out a tape of Onion Horton.  

[brianstl]

Nice Larry Hughes factoid at the end of that.

[majerus mojo]

2 hours ago, DirtyRican said:

My 6 year old wakes up every morning and puts on Quick Pitch.  It reminds me of my childhood when I watched highlights over and over. 

MLB Network has overtaken ESPN as my go to channel. Great stuff over there. Hopefully they're able to add up Jayson Stark, he was the biggest surprise for me today 

[AnkielBreakers]

If they didn't get Stephen A. Smith, then they need to get back into the board room and keep cutting.

[TheA_Bomb]

Yeah MLB network going in to live games and hopping around from game to game is great. Then they actually talk about the game of baseball.

I use to love Sports Center and Baseball Tonight, now I don't even watch.

Also remember CNN had a sports high light show back in the day.  Headline News used to be just that, the change to all the talk shows and these channels sucks.

Plus get politics out of sports.  

[BigMouthBilliken]

16 minutes ago, TheA_Bomb said:

 

Plus get politics out of sports.  

If they did that then how would they brainwash us?

[DeSmetBilliken]

While I don't get the decision to inject politics into sports coverage like ESPN has in recent years, that's not why ESPN is in the shape it's in now. Their problem is that their business model doesn't work in today's market. In the pre-smartphone/tablet era, you didn't have instant access to sports news like you do now. If you wanted to see how your favorite team did, you had to watch SportsCenter, or the sports report on the news. If you were at home, you could check your computer. Now, SportsCenter isn't needed for that anymore. 

Also, the NFL, MLB, and NHL all have their own networks that cover their sport better than ESPN does. I don't watch the NBA, so I can't comment on that. 

Throw all of this together with ESPN throwing out absurd prices for coverage and fewer money coming in from cable/satellite bundles, and you got a bad combo.

[willie]

41 minutes ago, DeSmetBilliken said:

While I don't get the decision to inject politics into sports coverage like ESPN has in recent years, that's not why ESPN is in the shape it's in now. Their problem is that their business model doesn't work in today's market. In the pre-smartphone/tablet era, you didn't have instant access to sports news like you do now. If you wanted to see how your favorite team did, you had to watch SportsCenter, or the sports report on the news. If you were at home, you could check your computer. Now, SportsCenter isn't needed for that anymore. 

Also, the NFL, MLB, and NHL all have their own networks that cover their sport better than ESPN does. I don't watch the NBA, so I can't comment on that. 

Throw all of this together with ESPN throwing out absurd prices for coverage and fewer money coming in from cable/satellite bundles, and you got a bad combo.

Let's not write the deathnel for ESPN just yet. Yes subscriptions are down,but ESPN is still very profitable for Disney,and Disney is trading at an all time high. They got a little bloated and they are adjusting. 

[Pistol]

I think people are overemphasizing the amount of politics in ESPN's content. Have any of you read "Those Guys Have All the Fun", the big oral history of ESPN published 6 years ago? Their top execs plainly state that they saw their prime viewer as a white, southern, Christian male and they geared their programming toward that demographic basically until the last few years, certainly after the book came out. I think part of it was that they were losing respectability as TV in general was evolving and they were literally having SportsCenter anchors celebrate Tim Tebow's birthday on air. It was getting embarrassing. Plus, they finally realized their target demographic was only one slice of the pie. With a big NBA deal on the horizon, that's certainly a league whose fan base is a lot different than the one they're getting for SEC football.

So in their attempt to broaden their appeal, they alienated a big part of the demographic that was used to being pandered to, and which couldn't handle some of the changes there, especially as it relates to on-air talent. And when they're shifting away from highlights and toward hot take discussion-type shows, a little bit of political talk is unavoidable. Politics is in everything. Saying "get politics out of sports" is refusing to acknowledge how importantly the two are intertwined. If they really want to eliminate the fear of alienating people with political discussion, it's the discussion that needs to be trimmed first, and the politics will follow. When you're focusing on highlights and actual sports coverage, it's naturally going to wander from actual sports a lot less.

But I'm with the rest of you. I just have no use for their talking heads. Hearing people like Stephen A. Smith give hot takes is a special kind of hell. Watching them breathlessly cover Tim Tebow's ever move a few years back was downright hard to watch. I confess to liking Pardon The Interruption when it was new, but as every subsequent show built off that format and as the two PTI stars became their own biggest fan, that became unwatchable, too. I don't listen to sports talk radio, which is 98% by and for morons, but have found a few podcasts that are quite good.

Give me games, highlights, good analysis, and the documentaries. The rest is useless.

[DeSmetBilliken]

13 minutes ago, willie said:

Let's not write the deathnel for ESPN just yet. Yes subscriptions are down,but ESPN is still very profitable for Disney,and Disney is trading at an all time high. They got a little bloated and they are adjusting. 

I agree that it's not the end of ESPN, but I think this goes beyond being a little bloated. It's going to have to be one heck of an adjustment. Here's a breakdown of some of the financial issues they're facing.

http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-621-000-subscribers-worst-month-in-company-history-102916

ESPN may be profitable now, but in a few years, that might not be the case. Fortunately for Disney, they're making tons of money on other things.

[Pistol]

Also, as others have mentioned, they were WAY late in responding to the cord-cutting phenomenon. They thought they were bulletproof, saying that people still need them for live sports. For a while, they were right. But then people kept cutting, anyway. Paying $100+ cable bills to keep just a few channels isn't worth it. The customizable streaming options are just too good now. Entertainment options are almost limitless. Games can be gotten with annual subscriptions directly from leagues. They were really, really slow to respond. I can't remember where, but I know a couple years ago I read an interview with their CEO; when asked about the threat of cord cutting, his reply was basically, "Meh. We're fine." He was wrong. They're not going away but they needed to evolve faster.

[DeSmetBilliken]

2 minutes ago, Pistol said:

Also, as others have mentioned, they were WAY late in responding to the cord-cutting phenomenon. They thought they were bulletproof, saying that people still need them for live sports. For a while, they were right. But then people kept cutting, anyway. Paying $100+ cable bills to keep just a few channels isn't worth it. The customizable streaming options are just too good now. Entertainment options are almost limitless. Games can be gotten with annual subscriptions directly from leagues. They were really, really slow to respond. I can't remember where, but I know a couple years ago I read an interview with their CEO; when asked about the threat of cord cutting, his reply was basically, "Meh. We're fine." He was wrong. They're not going away but they needed to evolve faster.

On that note, how good are the cord-cutting options for sports fans? In my admittedly limited experience streaming sports, the quality has been pretty lackluster.

[TheChosenOne]

18 minutes ago, DeSmetBilliken said:

On that note, how good are the cord-cutting options for sports fans? In my admittedly limited experience streaming sports, the quality has been pretty lackluster.

I think the options are getting much better now with some over the top options for ESPN now too and more expected. That has been my only reason for sticking with cable. Some of my friends were going thru interesting exercises in being able to watch Cardinal games and SEC football games that I wanted to wait until I felt comfortable that I could watch the sports I want to without any sort of legality concerns. I think that time is getting near, I just need to take the time to research it all.

[Soderball]

6 hours ago, CBFan said:

What Crews recruit took that scholarship and Drew must have thought your telling me I don't fit in?

Crews was terrible. Worst coach. Demolished this program. That hit job journalism is well-placed. Any criticism of Crews is valid. I think Crews kicked a puppy and spit on a kitten once.

[TJHawk]

Freddie Coleman survived?

[Pistol]

53 minutes ago, DeSmetBilliken said:

On that note, how good are the cord-cutting options for sports fans? In my admittedly limited experience streaming sports, the quality has been pretty lackluster.

It depends on what you're looking for. MLB has pretty much the gold standard for pro sport-specific apps and I think it goes for about $130/year. There are some market blackout rules that suck - I had it last year and couldn't watch the Cards when they played the Reds because I live in Cincy - but otherwise, it's a smooth, seamless, really nice platform. NHL, MLS, and some other pro leagues also have decent apps. I'm not sure about the NFL, and I think the NBA is limited, too, as a league-specific app but maybe I'm just not familiar with it.

For college games, honestly, the streams that Go_Bills digs up and posts here have been my go-to for SLU. The WatchESPN and FS1 (for Big East) apps are just so-so in terms of reliability, and you need a login from a cable account. That's where it gets sticky; my wife uses her dad's password for FS1 games when Xavier is on the road. We don't use it a lot for ESPN because our teams don't show up there much. Arguably, if you're using someone's login, it's not true cord cutting.

It still seems like you can piecemeal most of what you want, and for your key teams you can pop for an annual app subscription instead of a monthly cable bill. Granted, when you start putting together a slate of apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBONow, and a sports league or two, you're basically approaching cable prices anyway, when you add in your internet-only bill. But it's also tailored to exactly what you want to watch.