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ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It (bloomberg.com)
From a report: ESPN has lost more than 12 million subscribers since 2011, according to Nielsen, and the viewership erosion seems to be accelerating. Last fall, ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers in a single month, the most in the company's history. In some respects, the challenges facing ESPN are the same that confront every other media company: Young people simply aren't consuming cable TV, newspapers, or magazines in the numbers they once did, and digital outlets still aren't lucrative enough to make up the deficit. But while most of ESPN's TV peers have courted cord cutters -- CBS and Turner Broadcasting, for instance, are allowing anyone to watch some of their March Madness games online for free -- ESPN's view cuts against the conventional wisdom in new media. Essentially, ESPN was hoping that sports will remain unaffected by the growing trend of "cord-cutting." The article adds: If a combination of hockey, low-wattage college sports, and cricket doesn't quite seem worthy of the Worldwide Leader in Sports, that's by design: ESPN doesn't want its new product to draw viewers away from its very profitable cable channel. And, as John Kosner, the network's head of digital and print media notes, when ESPN began broadcasting in 1979, plenty of people doubted whether anyone would want to watch bowling at two in the morning. "I was in college when ESPN started," he says. "I felt sorry for the people working there."
and I couldn't justify the $80 a month for the basic package plus the $15 for some sports package plus $5 for some other package that gave me access to the games I want. So I just cancelled cable all together. I'd be happy to pay $15 or even $20 a month for just ESPN or some other pared down package that has sports and not the other crap. As it stands now they'd rather have none of my money than less of it.
It's been covered at Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kotak...
Do you have ESP?
To quote Steve Jobs, "If we don't cannibalize ourselves, someone else will."
The reason large companies eventually collapse is almost never because they make stupid mistakes or because they fail to churn out new products, but rather because they start to fear innovation; when part of their product line becomes too lucrative, they begin to fear that their next product will undercut their cash cow, forgetting that the money still goes to the same place, like taking rocks from the underside of a cliff and cementing them to the top side.
To prevent that undercutting, they build up silos that keep anyone from building up the land (money pile) under the cow, preventing the sorts of innovation that would otherwise keep them on the cutting edge. Instead, other companies create products that whittle away at the cliff underneath the cash cow and start making their own cow cliffs thicker, and in the end, all the big company has left is a falling cow.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Another reason ESPN has seen a hemorrhage of viewers recently is their dive into politics and the decidedly one-sidedness of it.
And why does sports programming cost so much? Because they bid up the price to unrealistic levels because cable subscribers have no choice but to pay the sports fee. (* this is one of those "plus additional fees x, y and z" that is part of all cable promotional ads.)
ESPN's cost is one of the big reasons why I cut the cord. Don't watch sports, don't want to pay for sports. Don't want to subsidize the whole sports and sports media industrial complex.
People pay $80 a month?! For TV?!? Do you even watch it?
Tell that to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Crunchyroll, etc. al..
Professional sports leagues will continue to charge what ESPN is willing to pay. What cable co's have been long ignoring is that ESPN is an anchor that's just dragging them down. A very substantial component of the compulsory part of everyone's cable bill is basic access to ESPN. Sports fans might mind less, but everyone else is stuck with an excessively high subscription rate that subsidizes the cost of channels they rarely watch. It's the stuff cable cutters are born from. We're not talking about healthcare here. Many of us don't mind pulling up the disadvantaged when it comes to such matters. But, we surely do not view the consumption of sports entertainment that way. Pay for your own add-ons.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
ESPN by itself is crap. Way back in the day, it had a lot of actual games - I'm in the U.S., and used to love watching rugby or Australian rules football on ESPN in the middle of the night. But (at least as of three years ago, when I dumped that cable tier) they apparently spend all their budget to pay old retired athletes who sit on panel shows and offer bad "analysis" regarding the sports they used to play.
Most athletes seemingly have very little insight into the sports they excel at.
#DeleteChrome
I know I don't watch ESPN because I don't like my sports mixed with politics. Most of the guys I work with (hundreds of guys in five states) and all of my family and friends feel the same way. If we want politics, we'd watch a news channel. Sports, pure sports without any bullshit, would be nice.
ESPN has become the most politically correct channel on television and it's sickening. Even "Mike & Mike" is unwatchable now.