ESPN is calling today’s massive “bloodletting” – the layoff of 100 on-air personalities – a matter of “navigating changes in technology and fan behavior in order to continue to deliver quality, breakthrough content” that is part of “a strategic vision that will propel our vast array of networks and services forward.”
Yet, as we count on popular ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso to say: “Not so fast!” Because there is much more unsaid by ESPN President John Skipper to this breaking story. Technical changes don’t require the dumping of tens of millions of dollars in salary.
Corso went right to the heart of that matter when he tweeted: “What if I told you, there was a tv network that used to be completely devoted to sports?”
What’s this network devoted to now? Frankly, it’s the liberalism, stupid!
A new poll conducted by Barrett Sports Media, a sports media consulting company, revealed that nearly 61 percent polled say ESPN a "left-leaning agenda." A scant 3 percent mistakenly said ESPN tilts right politically!
Consumers are growing more and more disenchanted with ESPN’s hard Left veer on politics and social issues. And they haven’t been afraid to tell it to the network’s face virtually every time ESPN.com runs a progressively biased story. Those reader comments are always there below the stories telling ESPN enough with the liberalism.
The network can claim it’s all about technology, but the hard truth is that ESPN’s obsession with progressive causes has put it in high-speed reverse. ESPN has lost 12 million subscribers since 2011 and one million in November and December of 2016 alone.
The network’s precipitous downward spiral in ratings and subscription continues year after year. In 2013, the network pulled the trap door on some 400 employees. Then there were 300 more layoffs in 2015 and 100 today.
The network recently issued policy changes on political issues. But then it immediately yanked Sage Steele, a conservative by ESPN standards, off the NBA Countdown program. And then it very quickly ran a story on left-wing activism by the Seattle Seahawks’ Michael Bennett, completing lacking in any balance. That alleged adherence to balance was a complete farce.
ESPN, espnW, its satellite blog The Undefeated, and ESPN Radio are all obsessed with stories about transgender athletes, LGBT rights, race and attacks on President Donald Trump.
Aside from the layoff trend of recent years, ESPN has also ended relationships with some big names, who left for Fox Sports and NBC. Among them are Mike Tirico, who called Monday Night Football games, Bill Simmons and current Fox Sports 1 commentators Colin Cowherd, Skip Bayless, and Jason Whitlock.
Fox Sports 1 is making gains in the ratings race against ESPN. Forbes magazine reports: the Fox program Undisputed has out-performed ESPN’s Sports Center. Fox has been …
growing their numbers but unable to catch the flagship sports highlight show. That changed last week.
FOX Sports reports that for the first time, Undisputed, the show featuring Bayless and Sharpe had higher viewership numbers thatSportsCenter, albeit on ESPN2 in the same time slot. According to FOX Sports by way of Nielsen Media Research, FS1’s Undisputed beat SportsCenter on ESPN2 by 1% on viewership (122,000 vs. 121,000), from 10:00 AM-12:00 PM ET on Thursday, Jan. 5.
The names of those cut loose today by ESPN have been trickling in. Among the better known on-air personalities are NFL reporters Ed Werder and Trent Dilfer, along with college football analyst Danny Kanell and baseball analyst Jim Bowden, a former major league baseball executive, baseball analyst Jayson Stark and basketball analysts Len Elmore and Ethan Strauss. Many of them tweeted about their demise.
Amid the NHL playoffs, ESPN sent all of its hockey analysts to the “penalty box” outside the door.
Clay Travis, writer for Outkick the Coverage, has long been writing about the implosion of ESPN. He says: “ ESPN's business model is fundamentally broken and there is no saving it. The continuing collapse of ESPN is the biggest story in sports -- the sub-prime mortgage crisis with bouncing balls.” He also said its ratings are down 16 percent this year.
Also from Travis: “From 1979 to 2011 ESPN was part of the greatest business in the history of media. But from 2011 on we're going to witness the biggest media collapse since AOL. It's creative destruction writ large and ESPN is a dead company walking. Today sucks for many employees, but it was inevitable because the sports rights bubble has burst and the fallout is really just beginning.”
NewsBusters will continue to report on this developing story.
