Behold the ever-shrinking ESPN -- The World Leader in "Liberal" Sports, now 150 employees lighter after its second round of layoffs this year. ESPN President John Skipper today issued a memo to employees announcing the elimination of more jobs, just seven months after the April trimming of 100 employees.
Skipper said, "The majority of the jobs eliminated are in studio production, digital content, and technology and they generally reflect decisions to do less in certain instances and re-direct resources. We will continue to invest in ways which will best position us to serve the modern sports fan and support the success of our business."
What he really meant was for the network to serve the modern "liberal" sports fan. ESPN has made a concerted effort in recent years to politicize sports with a progressive bias that is alienating a large share of its market and contributing to a declining subscriber base. Fewer people are watching cable TV, and the network is struggling under the weight of enormous broadcasting rights. With 13 million customers lost in the past six years, ESPN has now laid off 550 employees since 2015.
Today's blood letting at ESPN is the talk of the sports media world.
Barry Petchesky, deputy editor at Deadspin, one of ESPN's harshest critics, wrote: "It’s been a brutal year for ESPN, which is feeling the same pressures as all media organizations but has also garnered some very avoidable bad PR."
The New York Post's Jaclyn Hendricks' story is headlined, "ESPN lays off 150 employees in latest bloodbath."
Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch reports that the network will continue to reduce costs by not re-signing “SportsCenter” anchors whose contracts are coming up in the next 12 months.
The Washington Post's Matt Bonesteel and Cindy Boren reported ESPN employees must attend a mandatory meeting in Bristol, Conn., Dec. 13, when the company will address another of its headaches -- loose cannon liberal employees embarrassing the company on social media. Sports Center co-anchor Jemele Hill was suspended this fall for tweeting that advertisers should boycott the Dallas Cowboys. She evaded punishment for tweeting that President Trump and his supporters are "white supremacists."
Does the mandatory meeting indicate ESPN will finally get serious about fair minded reporting and tweeting? Twice this year the network has revised social media policies without discouraging its talking heads from going rogue and radical.
Kevin Draper of The New York Times directly addressed ESPN's role in the culture wars:
ESPN has also frequently found itself in the middle of cultural and political wars this year, including the White House calling for the firing of a prominent “SportsCenter” anchor.
The network has been searching for ways to cut costs as fans increasingly watch video clips on their smart phones rather than traditional highlight shows like “SportsCenter.”
Draper mischaracterized ESPN's involvement in the culture wars. The network didn't find itself there; it launched itself into the fray from the Left.
Today's cuts are projected to save ESPN $80 million, according to Andrew Bucholtz, a writer for Awful Announcing. LA Times contract reporter Daniel Miller reported ESPN's parent company, Disney, is suffering financial decline for the sixth straight quarter, including a 12-percent decrease in the past year.
Amid this tale of woes, Skipper recently got a big fat raise for presiding over ESPN's sinking ship. I'm not sure who's doing a worse job of leading, Skipper or NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who's lobbying for an obscene raise with red flags rising, bells and whistles going off all around him, too.
