Bill Simmons Says ESPN Blew It By Not Embracing Tech (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: ESPN's problem isn't competition over content: They didn't position themselves for a future where cord cutting was a reality, according to former ESPN personality Bill Simmons. "They didn't see a lot of this coming," said Simmons. "They didn't see cord cutting coming. They weren't ready for it. A lot of decisions were made based on subs staying at a certain level. They had to realize they were a technology company. The ones winning are now Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Hulu. ESPN should have been in that mix, but they're in Bristol. They should have had a place in Silicon Valley. That was their biggest mistake." ESPN is far from over, Simmons points out. Though it may make less money in the future, it has such strong cable deals, he said. "Everybody in here was paying $7 for ESPN whether they watched or not," he said. Simmons left ESPN in May 2015 after a public breakup, and signed a deal for an HBO series called "Any Given Wednesday" shortly after. The HBO show was cancelled in November 2016. Simmons also launched a new website called The Ringer in 2016. Also read Bloomberg's profile of executives at the company: ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It.

Comments

ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that?

Re:ESPN?

[lgw]

ESPN?

What's that?

ESPN blew it when they went aggressively progressive in their commentary and corporate statements. Sure, it made both ESPN subscribers in SF very happy, but the first post is typical of lefty big city dwellers.

ESPN's audience 2 years ago was something like 65-35 conservative (including a lot of folks who kept cable just to keep ESPN). Well, they certainly got rid of that "deplorable" majority of their subscribers, didn't they? Perhaps focusing entirely on pleasing the crowd you have cocktail parties with is a mistake for a nationwide business, just as it was for a Democratic presidential candidate?

Re:ESPN?

[Mr D from 63]

ESPN decided to focus more on political statements than on pure sport culture, which may have given them a bump in viewership for a while, but its not going to sustain interest. 3 months of analysis about who is standing during the national anthem is enough to drive the most avid sports enthusiast away.

Re:ESPN?

[__aaclcg7560]

A sports channel for bars that are too high class to run Fox News.

Re:ESPN?

[meta-monkey]

Sports in general has gotten too political. The entire point of watching sports is to escape all the shitty stuff in real life.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Man, you're so committed to the crap that gets fed to you on your email list that you're willing to face ridicule by positing a completely orthogonal theory to the TFA. I mean, fuck Bill Simmons, he only worked there, right?

Kudos to your brass balls.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god shut the fuck up retard. I can;t wait until we have you peasants back to running plows through fields of your own shit.
Treating deplorables fairly has turned out to be a huge disaster luckily you all seem happy to embrace feudalism.

Re:ESPN?

[lgw]

Oh god shut the fuck up retard. I can;t wait until we have you peasants back to running plows through fields of your own shit.
Treating deplorables fairly has turned out to be a huge disaster luckily you all seem happy to embrace feudalism.

How nice to see a congressman posting on Slashdot. It's always humorous when the mask slips.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I don't think that's accurate. ESPN just had a large number of layoffs again, and have actually started using programs from MLB Network to cut costs. ESPN's problem is paying massive fees for rights to broadcast certain things when it just didn't make sense.

Longhorn Network is a great example of this, betting on interest in a network primarily for University of Texas sports while showing games from a few smaller schools in the state. They've paid huge rights fees for the rights to college football and, to some extent, basketball from major conferences. They're also on the hook for huge deals with MLB, the NBA, and the NFL.

Every time those packages get renegotiated, the rates go up quite a bit, and the networks keep paying for them. They bet that advertisers would keep paying more to air commercials during those times and that cable companies would go along with raising subscription fees. ESPN bet on the advertising bubble and now they're regretting it.

This has little to do with politics, despite your attempt to turn it into a political discussion. Take your political trolling elsewhere. It's about advertising being less lucrative and cable companies becoming less willing to renegotiate subscriber fees. Charter, in particular, is concerned with keeping those fees down because they need to pay off the debt from the Time Warner Cable acquisition. At some point, networks need to quit driving up the prices for the rights to broadcast live sports, and refuse to bid any higher.

Re:ESPN?

[DogDude]

I don't watch sports at all, so all I know about ESPN is it looks like what people watch in Idiocracy because I see it when I go to some restaurants and bars. What about ESPN is "aggressively progressive"? How can a sports TV channel be "progressive" (or not)?

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Anything that doesn't conform to rigid conservative dogma gets excommunicated and called "progressive". It's really that simple.

Re:ESPN?

[Maltheus]

TV and movies too. We rarely get entertaining stories anymore. Mostly just agendas and/or the director's personal issues, patched together with some CGI.

Re:ESPN?

[DogDude]

I was asking about concrete examples of what makes a sports TV channel "progressive" or not.

Re:ESPN?

[lgw]

In the commentary (ESPN has a lot of talking heads discussion shows). In firing commentators who say something that can be twisted to offend someone if you try hard enough. By making a corporate statement about shit like the NC bathroom bill, or the BLM-affirming stuff some NFL team did, like not standing for the national anthem.

There's just no reason for a sports channel to take a political stance of any kind, to take any position on such issues, or to indulge in social commentary in sports discussion shows. Leave them alone - anything you say will piss of a big chunk of your audience, and nothing you say will get you a new subscriber.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandering to people who don't have money is retarded when you want green money and not votes. People voted for trump because he lied and told them he could get them a job.
Why would anyone care about a group of people who don't have any money to spend and probably never will?

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone try to attract Trump voters? They voted for him because they believed he could get them jobs.

That means they don't have money and probably never will again.

Re:ESPN?

[jcr]

I mean, fuck Bill Simmons, he only worked there, right?

Seems to me that the people who ran the place into the ground are the last ones we should look to for insight on how they fucked it up.

-jcr

Re:ESPN?

[meta-monkey]

I was talking with my wife about this and I said in the last year (or whatever) my favorite TV show or movie had been Stranger Things. The show was nothing special, no fantastic plot or Terrible Secret of Space I hadn't seen before, and the acting was solid but not phenomenal. But it was a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and characters with motivations that made sense. And no political commentary, it wasn't trying to teach me a story about racism in a small town or female empowerment, and no associated political controversy. It was just a coherent story about some people and some weird shit and that was enough to make it best of the year. And that's sad.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

There aren't any, that's the point. All any TV network cares about is eyeballs and ad revenue. Trying to tie them down ideologically is a fruitless task.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... whatever keeps you happy.

Don't know about others but I cut the cord 10 years ago and couldn't be happier. Besides the spiraling costs, I lost interest in sports when I realized it was horribly boring. 10 seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of inane commentary. Another 10 seconds of action followed by 2 minutes of commercials. 2 minutes of boring commentary then 15 seconds of players standing around followed by 3 minutes of commercials. 15 seconds of action then 1 minute of replays and another 2 minutes of commercials.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

By making a corporate statement about shit like the NC bathroom bill

Which they did because they think it's bad for business. Shockingly, they've been joined in this statement by many other large corporations.

BLM-affirming stuff some NFL team did

ie, not ESPN.

So, to recap: one mild corporate statement, and ESPN is now irredeemably "progressive", and further, that is the reason for their demise, not because (like many a fat corp before them), failing to anticipate that their rent-seeking strategy was not infinitely viable.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Sure, if it was some nameless exec VP. But Simmons was talent, not management.

Re:ESPN?

[DogDude]

I wasn't aware that ESPN made a corporate statement about the NC bathroom bill. All I can see if them reporting on it, since the NCAA refused to have championship games there until it was repealed.

What does an NFL player have to do with ESPN?

I'm still confused as to what ESPN did to be "aggressively progressive". Were they not supposed to report on NCAA's actions? Were they not supposed to report on the whole not standing during the national anthem thing? Does just reporting facts make an organization "aggressively progressive" in your mind (or the mind of other people)?

Re:ESPN?

[jimbolauski]

While it's unfair to characterize espn's woes solely to their political agenda it also unfair no ignore the repercussions of that agenda. Cord cutting gave many people a choice to subscribe to espn instead of being bundled with every subscription. Espn's political agenda caused many people to devalue their product, no one wants to be preached to when they are trying to watch highlights.

Re:ESPN?

[lgw]

Pandering to people who don't have money is retarded when you want green money and not votes. People voted for trump because he lied and told them he could get them a job.
Why would anyone care about a group of people who don't have any money to spend and probably never will?

One might well imagine that ESPN would care about the money flowing in from actual subscribers, but the evidence clearly shows they didn't. Odd business plan, that.

Re:ESPN?

[lgw]

I guess you'd have to watch the commentary shows, then, to understand (there's a real difference between "commenting on" and "endorsing a side"). Not that I recommend it - your curiosity is better unsatisfied on this point.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well future subscribers would have been coming in through VOD and livestreaming. Sounds like they just kept losing money and couldn't figure out why.

Probably seems dumb to you but when the ground moves out from under a business the normal executive reaction seems to be denial. (blockbuster, american auto makers, nearly comcast itself)

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

We watch sports to get a break from politics, not to get more politics shoved down the throat. Would be great if people across the political spectrum could enjoy it together.
But they don't get it, not even WSJ seems to understand why people don't want to mix the two.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...

ESPN became a cable-television giant by offering wall-to-wall sports, so naturally the channel has increasingly chosen to offer political commentary. In a remarkable coincidence, its viewership has been declining. ESPN’s shrinking audience triggered layoffs of about 100 employees this week.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...

Re:ESPN?

[mpercy]

From Salon.com

Longtime ESPN anchor Linda Cohn argued that her network’s alleged liberal bent scared off some of its viewers and subscribers, leading to this week’s “bloodbath” in Bristol.

During a radio interview on 77 WABC Thursday, Cohn addressed the mass layoffs at her network, which saw over 100 on-air talent get the pink slip this week — including a former co-anchor of Cohn’s. The sportscaster candidly blamed the firings on “bad decision making” by ESPN executives.

Talking head Bernard McGuirk, one of the hosts of “The Bernie and Sid Show,” asked Cohn if the “whole Kaepernick thing,” and Caitlyn Jenner winning an award at the ESPYs, perhaps explained the network’s dwindling audience.

“There seems to be a lot of folks that have distaste for the way ESPN goes about some of their programming, and some of their promotions, when socially folks don’t accept these things,” McGuirk said.

“That is definitely a percentage of it,” Cohn immediately agreed, according to the New York Post. “I don’t know how big a percentage, but if anyone wants to ignore that fact, they’re blind,” she said.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have struggled for some time to find anything on TV I wanted to watch and for the last year I haven't watched any, I didn't even care to watch netflix and I let the account expire with the credit card attached to it.

Re:ESPN?

[mpercy]

From ESPN.com

http://www.espn.com/blog/ombud...

Jim Brady, Public Editor Dec 1, 2016

The 2016 presidential election season has been one most of us will never forget. The tone has been ugly, the controversies endless, the coverage unrelenting. Our social media feeds are full of politically charged statements, and what dialogue does exist between differing sides more often resembles a WWE match than nuanced debate.

Thankfully, I get to write about ESPN, where the focus on sports means I never have to deal with politics.

Ah, if only that were true.

As it turns out, ESPN is far from immune from the political fever that has afflicted so much of the country over the past year. Internally, there’s a feeling among many staffers -- both liberal and conservative -- that the company’s perceived move leftward has had a stifling effect on discourse inside the company and has affected its public-facing products. Consumers have sensed that same leftward movement, alienating some.

Before digging in, one quick clarification: I’m not here to advocate that ESPN take any particular political position or lean a certain way. It’s not my place to make that recommendation, and no one would listen anyway. This is more about the impact that taking a more identifiable political stance -- which I do believe ESPN has done -- is having on the company.

For most of its history, ESPN was viewed relatively apolitically. Its core focus was -- and remains today, of course -- sports. Although the nature of sports meant an occasional detour into politics and culture was inevitable, there wasn’t much chatter about an overall perceived political bias. If there was any tension internally, it didn’t manifest itself publicly.

That has changed in the past few years, and ESPN staffers cite several factors. One is the rise of social media, which has led to more direct political commentary by ESPN employees, even if not delivered via the network’s broadcast or digital pipes. Another is ESPN's increase in debate-themed shows, which encourage strong opinions that are increasingly focusing on the overlap between sports and politics.

There have also been concrete actions that have created a perception that ESPN has chosen a political side, such as awarding Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2015 ESPYS despite her not having competed athletically for decades, the company’s decision to move a golf tournament away from a club owned by presidential candidate Donald Trump and a perceived inequity in how punishments for controversial statements were meted out.

Many ESPN employees I talked to -- including liberals and conservatives, most of whom preferred to speak on background -- worry that the company’s politics have become a little too obvious, empowering those who feel as if they’re in line with the company’s position and driving underground those who don’t.

  But, in talking to people in the course of reporting this piece, it is clear that ESPN has a challenge in front of it. I don’t think the answer is to try to stifle those with strong viewpoints; rather, it’s to make sure a broader range of voices are heard.

Why, some might ask? Because, at heart, ESPN is a business. And based on a Gallup survey on political affiliation from mid-September, 44 percent of the country identifies itself as either “Republican” or “leans Republican.” That’s less than the 49 percent that identifies itself as “Democrat” or “leans Democrat,” but not by much.

Re:ESPN?

[Dutch Gun]

I guess you haven't heard. Season 2 will reveal that Gaia has finally snapped, and is punishing humanity for polluting the earth. The kids will join up with Captain Planet and the Planeteers to save the world from the eco-villains and restore Gaia to loving benevolence.

Re:ESPN?

[Maltheus]

Yeah, I liked that one. It's a shame it got so overhyped though. Not sure I would have appreciated it as much, had I watched it after all of the buzz. But I guess all of that buzz underscores what you were saying.

The only other show that I've been impressed with lately has been Better Call Saul. It may not be as fast moving as its predecessor (perhaps a disappointment for some), but the story draws you in, there's no agenda and I'm not frustrated with how stupid all of the characters are. The characters are all different, but you actually get a feel what it's like to be in their shoes, rather than just siding with one over another.

Re:ESPN?

[DontBeAMoran]

That's why I watch porn. I get to see someone else getting fucked for a change.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

"By making a corporate statement about shit like the NC bathroom bill

Which they did because they think it's bad for cocktail parties. Shockingly, they've been joined in this statement by many other fat, stupid corporations."

FIFY.

Re:ESPN?

[Ol Olsoc]

One might well imagine that ESPN would care about the money flowing in from actual subscribers, but the evidence clearly shows they didn't. Odd business plan, that.

The sitution as usual, doesn't have one single cause. And people with an axe to grind will always find a wy to make it about their cause.

This was fairly simple. It cost people a lot of money to have ESPN on their cable Almost all had to pay, even if they didn't ever watch ESPN. Cord Cutting cost them a lot of customers.

Then there was the content. ESPN on television wasn't all that great to watch. Poker is not a spectator sport.

They opened a Southeast Conference specific channel. This makes no sense, especially as the SEC was losing dominance in football.

They are trying to appeal to younger people. Many of the remaining people on cable don't want politics mixed with their sports. Now for my opinions, with some facts mixed in. ESPN has become really boring. I used to listen to the radio, and still do a little. But aside from Dan LeBatard in the morning - a show that traditionalists hate, and Stephan Smith in the evening - Who I don't think anyone likes because it's yelling mostly, everyone else has been mostly talking about football, and when I say football, it's quarterbacks, and drafting quarterbacks, and then they turn into talking about Tom Brady. Seems like every damn story turns into Tom Brady. In the end, their product just isn't all that great.

Re:ESPN?

[Ol Olsoc]

I was asking about concrete examples of what makes a sports TV channel "progressive" or not.

Some of their announcers and some athletes made it clear they didn't like Trump. Some were women. Dunno if tou consider that concrete or not.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted the AC comment that you're replying to, and I'd like to clarify some things.

Back in the 1990s, Sportscenter was a great program that was mostly highlights of games and telling viewers the important stories such as free agency moves and injury updates. Sportscenter was so successful that the Espnews network was created pretty much for the purpose of being all Sportscenter all the time. As an aside, the old jazz Sportscenter theme with a saxophone was far better than what's used presently. I don't know that it's so much people objecting to the social positions advocated by ESPN's commentators so much as it takes away from the actual sports news. That's the difference between what you said and what lgw said.

There were shows that did more in-depth analysis of sports-related topics. Baseball Tonight is one such show that's been around for over 25 years. It's not what it used to be because a lot of the good analysts have gone other places such as MLB Network. Those shows are interesting when the analysis is sports-related. As a baseball fan, I like to know what knowledgeable analysts think of trades, strategy decisions, and why a player is hot or cold. Those are interesting, and they are a great alternative to showing Sportscenter all evening when they aren't showing a live event. I enjoy those when they actually talk about sports, especially when something interesting is going on like around the trade deadline.

Political discussion does take away from the time spent discussing sports. If I turn on Sportscenter, I want to see highlights and the headlines, not analysis. If I want analysis, I'll watch shows like Baseball Tonight. I don't think the issue is that people object to a perceived political bias, but rather that the politics takes away time that could be spent discussing sports. That's the key distinction between your post, which I generally agree with, and what lgw wrote. Undoubtedly, it's not good for the network when fewer people are watching Sportscenter because it's no longer highlights and headlines. And I do admit, Sportscenter is pretty much unwatchable now.

Right now, though, I have no problem with what's on ESPN. I'm happy to watch Dodgers-Cardinals, especially because I'm a Cards fan and they're up 1-0.

Re:ESPN?

[Ogive17]

It's funny.. that think called "choice". You don't like the commentary shows but keep watching them then complain about progressive media.

I don't like them because I want to watch sports, all kinds of sports, not just basketball, baseball, and football.

Instead of whining about it, I voted with my wallet.

Re: ESPN?

[dougdonovan]

$...any ?'s.

Re:ESPN?

[TechyImmigrant]

>We watch sports to get a break from politics

Suit yourself. I shoot zombies. If the zombies were playing American football, I might be encourages to aim better.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you haven't heard. Season 2 will reveal that Gaia has finally snapped, and is punishing humanity for polluting the earth. The kids will join up with Captain Planet and the Planeteers to save the world from the eco-villains and restore Gaia to loving benevolence.

But not before Gaia takes away Wheeler's fire ring and gives it to Kwame (in addition to his earth ring) in the name of social justice. Also Ma-Ti will have a character arc about xis sex change operation, and Gi and Linka will be revealed as lesbians and in a relationship with each other. ... There you go, Hollywood. I just gave you some ideas for a Captain Planet remake movie. If you get started now, you might be able to get it in theatres in the summer of 2020. Make the main bad guy look and sound suspiciously like Trump. Use it as propaganda going into the 2020 election. If you try really hard, the movie might even sell less tickets than that remake of 1975's "The Ghost Busters". Pretty good casting there for the three main characters, but I'm still confused about why you added a fourth ghostbuster to the cast.

Re:ESPN?

[Dutch Gun]

There you go, Hollywood. I just gave you some ideas for a Captain Planet remake movie.

Oh dear. This might actually be happening.

One thing intriguing to Paramount and Appian Way was the subversive take by Matt and Powell on the material: Sources say the story takes place years after the adventures of the show, with the Captain now a washed-up has-been who needs the kids more than they need him.

Wow. You try to parody Hollywood, and they just outdo you.

Re:ESPN?

[bluefoxlucid]

Simmons is also the kind of unmitigated retard who thinks putting a building in a location makes all the difference. Seriously, ESPN failed because it didn't have an office in SV? You don't need an office in SV; you need a business strategy.

Next, Simmons will try to become a billionaire by moving across the street from Warren Buffet.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

No.

ESPN isn't losing subscribers because of too much progressive content, it's losing subscribers because they're cutting cable.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Seriously, ESPN failed because it didn't have an office in SV?

Nice trick, turn one of his points into his main point, and then make fun of him him for it.

Then again, speaking as someone who's run a business for 12 years, location, sadly, is quite important. He might be on to something here.

Re:ESPN?

[bluefoxlucid]

Location is important when your primary market is affected by location. Got a store? Needs to be accessible.

As a content distributor, you have viewers. Your business partners include rebroadcasters (clients) and producers (vendors). Viewers are all over the place and expect you to get content to them; clients and vendors are generally going to expect you to come to them. Your other clients--the advertisers--will mostly call you to bid for a spot, then Fedex you the film (or transfer it via FTP nowadays).

You can have a major network broadcaster in frigging Baltimore if you want. For that matter, you can have a video game studio or a security consultation firm wherever you want to stick it. It doesn't honestly matter when your interactions are primarily unconstrained by geographic region.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Spoken like a true geek. And, like you, I wish it were the case that accomplishment and hard work and innovation were more important than things like proper location and networking and face to face meetings. But they're not, mainly cuz boomers still run the world. Shit, I'm just happy I was able to dump my fax line 5 years ago.

Re:ESPN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Simmons is a blowhard idiot, but I'll give credit where credit is due. His idea for how to fix the NBA playoffs and the problem of bad teams tanking is fucking genius:

• * Top 14 teams in the league get guaranteed playoff spots.
• * Bottom 16 teams play a single-elimination tournament for those last 2 spots, seeded by record.

This has several effects:

• * Gives mediocre and bad teams something to play for in the last weeks/months of the season. All it takes is things clicking and going on a little hot streak into the tournament and they can still make some noise in the playoffs.
• * Reduces the incentive for coaches/GMs to make the team tank for lottery position. The better their record, the better their seeding in the tournament, and therefore chances of still making the playoffs.
• * Gives fans of crappy teams a tiny glimmer of hope for that Cinderella story. More ticket sales and viewship for the league.
• * A good team that has its players injured for the first half of the season isn't penalized by just missing the playoffs due to a bad record. If they all get healthy in March/April, they can win the tournament and still do some damage in the playoffs.
• * The tournament itself will probably be more exciting than the actual slog of the playoffs, with 4 rounds of too many games played. Kind of the like NBA's mini-March Madness. Better for fans.

This just makes so much more sense than the way they do it. But NBA executives have their heads stuffed up their asses almost as far as ESPN's. So of course they'll never do anything remotely fun and fan-friendly like this.

Re:ESPN?

[bluefoxlucid]

I didn't say anything about hard work or innovation; I said your market isn't people walking through your doors if you're not Best Buy.

Here's a hint: those examples weren't made-up. Some of the largest American game studios are in retarded places like Baltimore (Firaxis), Santa Clarita (WayForward), or Austin, TX (home of Retro Studios, owned by Nintendo). The biggest broadcaster in America is in Baltimore; it was built from a one-station operation in Baltimore.

Many of these places are in population centers, and so have access to population. Population means labor, and also infrastructure; infrastructure means tech industry labor, because infrastructure includes telecomm. We've got eleven game programming studios in Baltimore and a few of them are actually big operations; Baltimore is, historically, a big industrial city, not the East Coast Silicon Valley.

Like ESPN, broadcasting corporations both license and produce content, and they distribute and sublicense for rebroadcast. Face-to-face meetings actually come here, because our local big broadcaster has its own helipad and, besides, has more negotiating power than pretty much every other party.

Comcast's HQ is Philadelphia, PA; Verizon's is in Basking Ridge, NJ; DirecTV is in El Segundo, CA; Dish Network is in Englewood, CO; Apple is in Cupertino, CA; Microsoft is in Redmond, WA; Google is in Mountain View, CA. Google and Apple are actually based in Silicon Valley; these other big nationals aren't--not even Microsoft.

It's cool that you have a snowball stand near a school bus station and make a lot of money from middle-school kids; Amazon (Seattle, WA) sells to people all over the world, and doesn't even have a warehouse in most cities. Location only matters to retail stores; if your customers aren't walking in your door to buy your stuff, they don't care where you are.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

jesusfuckingchrist nerds are the worst.

Re:ESPN?

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm a business nerd and an economics nerd. They're two vastly-different things.

You're trying to scream "LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION!!" as if you don't actually understand business. Maybe if you were a business nerd you would understand anything I said; instead you're just going, "Lulz, I put a shop where people walk, and they walk in! LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!"

Self-employed people with toy companies who think they're "a business" are the worst.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

I'm a business nerd and an economics nerd. They're two vastly-different things.

Sorry, I was addressing the pedantic nerd, not the other two. Better luck next time!

Re:ESPN?

[bluefoxlucid]

Fair enough. You're still wrong and you still haven't demonstrated how you're not wrong other than going "DUHRR NUH UH U DUM". You seem to be blowing hot air out your ass.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Took you all weekend for this shitnugget? This was never about being right or wrong, this is about you making mountains out of molehills, an aptitude you have shown tremendous proficiency in. But pedantic nerds never understand that part.

Re:ESPN?

[bluefoxlucid]

Your entire opening rebuttal was that location matters so very, very much.

speaking as someone who's run a business for 12 years, location, sadly, is quite important. He might be on to something here.

It's been an argument back and forth about location not being important if your office location isn't your major interaction point with, you know, damned near everyone. Moving the goalposts now that you lost?

Took you all weekend for this shitnugget?

No, I studied German, wrote a (very poorly-written) speech, and fed kittens during the weekend. Slashdot is a 9-5 site; nobody checks this shit from home.

Re:ESPN?

[Captain Splendid]

Your entire opening rebuttal

Ah I see your problem. You turned 'he might be onto something here' into an assault on your business nerdery. Put your dick away already.

Moving the goalposts now that you lost?

Says the guy who's twice avoided accusations of using strawman arguments. Good one.

ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting

[JoeyRox]

Of the ~$28/month that cable companies pay for their basic basket of content, over $8/month goes to ESPN and neither the cable company nor end customer has a say in the matter.

Re:ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting

[Anonymous Coward]

And of that $8/month that goes to ESPN, $7 probably goes to professional sports leagues. WIth things like MLB.tv, and NFL Sunday Ticket you are seeing the process of the professional sports leagues cutting out the 'middle men' and changing their models to market directly to consumers.

Re:ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting

[TWX]

Well, the customer does have a say in it, in that they discontinue subscribing to traditional pay-TV. They cut the cord.

ESPN's foolishness was expecting the forced gravy-train to run forever, especially in the face of ever-growing costs to the consumer for subscription combined with other means of accessing content generally. Why should a customer pay close to a C-note a month for only a few networks that they actually want to watch? Why should a customer pay lots of money to access old reruns from broadcast networks? Why should a customer pay for more than the connection to the cable company for non-premium networks, especially when there are ads on those non-premium networks?

We got rid of cable when networks like TCM moved to the digital side and we couldn't receive them without paying extra. It's been some time since this happened. I don't really miss them either, and that's without even buying some Internet-based content service.

Re:ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting

[93 Escort Wagon]

Well, the customer does have a say in it, in that they discontinue subscribing to traditional pay-TV. They cut the cord.

I'm pretty sure that was exactly JoeyRox's point.

It was certainly part of the reason we dumped that cable tier - we were spending roughly $65/month just for the privilege of watching the local baseball team and, occasionally, Food Network or Cartoon Network. I hadn't watched ESPN in years - I used to love the channel back in the 80s and 90s, but they've mostly stopped broadcasting actual games and have moved to the "talking jock head commentary show" format.

ESPN isn't the only sports network which doesn't understand that the world has changed. My local baseball team was getting about $7 of that $65 - the "carriage fee". I'd happily pay them the equivalent amount (above my MLB.tv subscription) if they'd let me watch my local team's games, even with commercials. But they're so afraid of the loss of cable revenue (which is happening, regardless) that they won't let you stream local games unless you subscribe to the cable tier... in which case, the streaming option is superfluous.

Re:ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting

[Maltheus]

Yep, this tax was the primary reason I discontinued my Dish Network. I already had Netflix, threw in Hulu, Pandora and Prime into the mix (and now youtube red), and I still pay less than I did back then. I have more to watch than I can ever get to.

The only thing I was disappointed to give up (back then) were the news channels, and now you couldn't pay me to watch that miserable nonsense.

Re:ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting

[cayenne8]

See I don't get this. Why is the CableTV version so $$$$?

I only watch ESPN really during college football season.

I cut the cord with cable TV and now I pay $35/mo for Playstation VUE. I get like all 3 ESPN's plus a dedicated SEC channel, all my various cable news channels, etc....everything I watched on UVerse...and dropped from $118/mo to $35/mo.

I don't count my internet in that equation, as that I have a business connection for $69/mo...I'd have that for work regardless of my TV needs.

But with VUE and my Tivo OTA set up for local channels....why pay cable TV high prices?

Who cares?

[HangingChad]

ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It.

Then fade away into the scrapheap of tech history along with cable. No one is going to miss you, no one owes you a living. There's a whole generation coming up that's never even heard of you.

Funny how cable seems to see itself as so much more self-important than it really is.

Re:Who cares?

[DickBreath]

In the past, I wanted cable tv without ESPN.

Now I want internet service without cable tv.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you could come down off your pedestal for a moment you would realize that your high speed internet that lets you cut the cable company cord is provided to your house over ... the cable company cord. Ooops!

Re:Who cares?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Funny how cable seems to see itself as so much more self-important than it really is.

The cable companies spent a lot of time and a lot of money manipulating both local and national politicians into giving them de-facto local monopolies across the US... then the world completely changed underneath their feet. They're still in shock / denial.
 

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the early days, it didn't really matter. Cable TV was a luxury whereas stuff like telephone service was a utility/necessary/public good.

Then digital IP packet switched networks came along and you could use coax for both TV and internet service. Suddenly they were in the telecommunications game. Their previous model/monopoly is now a problem.

(My understanding is that the countries with the most fiber roll-out basically had low cable TV adoption. It's their telephone networks that are going fiber, not TV.)

Re:Who cares?

[Cajun Hell]

You can get it; you just might have to pay a little extra.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

What an astute observation. I can see you've had some college.

Remember when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sports was broadcast over the air for free and all you needed was to buy a TV set and maybe an antenna

Re:Remember when?

[DickBreath]

Remember when commercials only came every 1/4 hour, and were fairly short in duration?

Re:Remember when?

[ai4px]

I also remember TV series doing 26 episodes a season... and an hour TV show lasting 50 minutes, now down to 44 minutes. A lot commercial skipping eh?

Re:Remember when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when if you were a fan out a team that was outside of your region, you were lucky if you got to see one or two of their games a year on TV. God forbid if you were a hockey fan and wanted to see any games at all, local or otherwise.

If all you wanted to watch was your local NFL teams games, you were likely okay with OTA.

Re:Remember when?

[Cro Magnon]

I also remember TV series doing 26 episodes a season... and an hour TV show lasting 50 minutes, now down to 44 minutes. A lot commercial skipping eh?

Damn, you're old! So am I. :)

Re:Remember when?

[DickBreath]

I remember when it was green screen text. No GUI. And it was uphill both ways. And you had to memorize a three foot thick stack of manuals -- which were bolted to a table in the computer room and could not be removed.

AARP is proposing a study of the environmental impact of young people's feet upon lawns.

Re:Remember when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, when I was a kid there was no cable, and we had one broadcast channel. If it wasn't NBC, we didn't get it. No channel surfing for us. For the most part I can't stand the junk on TV, but apparently there are people that watch it hour after hour. Those people almost remind me of stoners who sit there with their eyes glazed over and drool running down their chins as one inane thing after another comes across the wire.

Re:Remember when?

[Anonymous Coward]

44 minutes of programming per hour would be a godsend to people who still watch television. I believe you'd be lucky to get 40 minutes of programming per hour nowadays and think the current standard is just a little north of 38 minutes of programming per hour.

Re:Remember when?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember having only one TV channel - and there were no commercials at all.

Now there's commercials, but I no longer watch live TV. I record what I want to see, and skip through commercials at 16x speed or more.

Re:Remember when?

[ai4px]

I think you're right.... AND the tv networks do a litle picture in a picture showing the closing credits of one episode and the opening of the next. By overlapping those two incoming / outgoing programs, they get to sell an extra 45 seconds of commercials. I swear this is just like the saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves". We don't like commercials and skip them in DVR.... and they scheme how to play more commercials.

Bill Simmons fucked up too

[Anonymous Coward]

He started Grantland, based on his own style of funny sport writing mixed with pop culture and then went full bore pop culture. Early on, granland had talent like Bill Barnwell writing great articles as their main focuses. Then they went to survivor and other reality show critiques and it went way downhill.

Simmons was relevant but he no longer is,

Re:Bill Simmons fucked up too

[Anonymous Coward]

The one good thing he did for them is push the "30 For 30" documentary series which is among the finest things ESPN has ever done.

poor sports with poor spirits

[Anonymous Coward]

greed/fear/ego fueled unprofessionalism (personality disorder) epidemic. comforting to know that everything changes in the wink of an eye sometimes... spirit of creation all++++++ we invented the minus pool as part of the neverending wmd on credit religious franchise holycost..

Trickle down budget crises.

[0100010001010011]

I'm more interested in the long term affects of how this is going to trickle down into affecting higher "education" budgets.

Back in the day people flocked to football games because it was seemingly the only thing to do. They graduated and continued watching their home team. Now there are multiple different events that students can participate in and follow. I had friends that skipped Homecoming to go to the LoL championships.

I think that NCAA Football and the NFL is in for a rude awakening as their profits have been propped up by people with cable that may not really watch the sport. There are only a few teams that are economically viable and that is with ESPN deals.

Re:Trickle down budget crises.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had friends that skipped Homecoming to go to the LoL championships.

Your friends are nerds who no girl would have anything to do with. Ten years ago they would have skipped homecoming for some other equally ridiculous reason.

Re:Trickle down budget crises.

[0100010001010011]

Half of them were women. Turns out gaming's changed a bit in the last few decades.

The key quote in the summary...

[gweilo8888]

is this one: "Everybody in here was paying $7 for ESPN whether they watched or not."

And that's precisely why I will never, ever watch ESPN, nor any sport it signs a deal with -- even if they subsequently leave ESPN. I've lived in the USA for a bit over 18 years now, and paid for cable or satellite TV for all of that time. Let's assume that $7 figure applies for the whole of that time, and does so in 2017 dollars (so in then-dollars it was some much lower sum). I think that's a pretty safe assumption, and it says I've personally paid US$6,700+ into the pockets of ESPN and its affiliated sports, yet I've watched maybe between five and ten minutes of ESPN in the last couple of decades. At around US$900/minute, that's hands-down the most expensive entertainment of my life.

And it's also why I will never renew my cable or satellite TV subscription until a la carte is a thing. Nor will I sign up for any online service which doesn't either offer a la carte options, or which focuses solely on programming *I* am interested in. The likes of YouTube TV et al. which simply carry over these awful deals into the internet age hold no interest for me.

Re:The key quote in the summary...

[pj2541]

Dude, buy a calculator! 18 years times twelve months times 7 dollars a month is $1,512. Where did you get $6,700? Did you think they were charging by the week?

Re:The key quote in the summary...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck, that 7 bux is one of the biggest reasons I don't get cable TV at all.

Why the hell do I want to subsidize programming I have no interest in and will never watch?

For that matter, I'd partially blame ESPN's business model for the decline of sports popularity in general. As a steward of sports broadcasting, ESPN is failing the community in general.

Re:The key quote in the summary...

[gweilo8888]

Yes, brain fart and I typed it into the calculator as weeks because my mind was somewhere else. Thanks for the correction.

Ahhh yes, when business forgets it's core.

[ai4px]

Let's see.... MTV used to play music videos, then got into reality tv. The weather channel used to have a person standing in front of a radar map, not you have to watch 10 minutes of "storm stories" to get your local weather. And ESPN forgot it was a sports network. In another industry, McDonalds seems to have forgotten it's core customer as well.... people wanting FAST food. If we wanted GOOD food, we wouldn't be here. Long gone are the days of walking into McD's and seeing what was on the line and getting that and getting out. They prefer just in time production model which makes we wait for a cheese burger behind the person who wanted a cheese burger w/o cheese and extra mustard. Like so many maturing companies, they have lost their direction.

Re:Ahhh yes, when business forgets it's core.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Next you would be wistfully recalling the good old days on the Penna Turnpike with Howard Johnson burgers...

Re:Ahhh yes, when business forgets it's core.

[painandgreed]

Let's see.... MTV used to play music videos, then got into reality tv.

Thing is, in this example and probably the most, that their change ends up making them more money. Reality TV had less costs and brought in more viewers and money for MTV than playing music videos even if they were a juggernaut in the music industry. In many cases, providing easily digestible media content to the general population pays better than their core business of niche media.

If ESPN went OTT then systems can move it sports

[Joe_Dragon]

If ESPN went OTT then all systems then get the right to move it to sports packs / hbo like pack / drop it on the spot. If they lose being forced into basic then they will lose subs big time.

Blew it like...

[__aaclcg7560]

Microsoft giving tablets to the NFL and the broadcasters kept calling them iPads throughout the games?

ESPN blew it because of reliance on bundling

[QuietLagoon]

Technology had little to do with it. ESPN blew it for business reasons. They relied upon the forced bundling of ESPN with the other Disney channels to assure that ESPN would get its $9 per subscriber fee, even if the subscriber did not want ESPN. Without the forced bundling of ESPN with Disney and ABC (you want Disney channel, well then you also need to carry ESPN), ESPN cannot survive because of the expensive content contracts that ESPN has on the books.

.
The forced bundling made ESPN complacent about costs, and now ESPN is the most expensive cable channel, by a long shot. Many people no longer want to pay for ESPN. Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs... that is ESPN's problem. Pure business greed,.

Didn't embrace users

[Anonymous Coward]

ESPN should have been in that mix, but they're in Bristol. They should have had a place in Silicon Valley.

No, no, no. Nothing against Silicon Valley, but they don't need to be there. Nobody really does, except maybe some infrastructure people.

ESPN rejected tech because they were rejecting basic ideas like fairness and customers' desires. They were getting paid by non-users, so why should they think about the users? So they didn't. Their entire outlook on sales is to score bundling deals, to avoid the market while still getting paid by it.

Until they think of viewers as the customers, and become customer-oriented, you should expect them to be well behind everything else.

The not-seeing-things-coming aspect is particular silly. Even if it was true way back when, it's totally irrelevant by today. By 5 years ago they sure as hell must have seen that "cord cutting" was already here, whether they previously saw it coming or not. Had they reacted to this old news with the most basic common sense, once it was obvious and everyone had seen cord cutting, then you would be talking about their streaming offerings over the last 3 or 4 years.

Better to be content owner than delivery

[HockeyPuck]

Disney knows this. They've got a huge library of content, and love it when you consume it in different formats. They don't care if you buy it online, stream it, VHS, DVD, laser disc etc. Netflix and Amazon know this and adapted as demonstrated by their switch to original programming.

Notice how the VHS tape manufacturers are suffering or the companies that manufacture DVD discs? Technology changes and boom, nobody is buying VHS tapes any more.

BUT we're still watching disney films, and watching sports. ESPN should have fully embraced their ability to own content and then make that content (sports programming) on as many devices as possible. Sports are sports regardless of the platform i'm watching it on, just make it as easy as possible to watch it.

I'd much rather pay $15/month to get all of ESPN's programming than to have to buy season passes for NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL individually.

Bloat, Bloat, Bloat.

[blueshift_1]

Which is disappointing because ESPN started as seeing a niche that could be filled and exploited (lack of Sports programming for non-major events). It's just what happens when you become overly-bloated and complacent.

Re:Bloat, Bloat, Bloat.

[toonces33]

In the very early days, they didn't have much big-name stuff, so they tended to air the offbeat sports that were inexpensive to get the rights to. You could watch Australian Rules Football or Sumo wrestling, and it was kind of entertaining for a change of pace. But now it is all the big $$$ crap. And if there isn't a game on, you have a bunch of idiots bloviating about sports just to fill time until some game actually starts. It is probably the case that you could use AI to come up with a bot that just pontificates about sports all day long, and it would be about as informative as the knuckleheads that they currently have on. And have you ever noticed that the blowhards never talk about the sports that aren't on ESPN? My wife is a hockey fan, and she sure noticed.

The Internet is just a fad

[Anonymous Coward]

This Internet thing is just a fad.

Huh?

[NetNed]

Tech? What? ESPN blew it when they decided to push political propaganda on its audiences. I turn on sports to see sports, hear sports, and escape the pc garbage on most other channels. They were thinking they will dictate what the audiences will watch

ESPN Blew It for Many Reasons

[clonehappy]

Not the least of which was injecting political commentary every chance they got. Oh, and you know, not really showing "all-sports, all the time" anymore. Their base tuned out, and here they are. No sympathy from me, and no amount of tech can save you when you essentially give the middle finger to your bread and butter.

No, they blew it by overpaying for stuff..

[toonces33]

If you look at the average cable bill, a good chunk of it is just for the royalties for ESPN. And ESPN insists that it not be a premium channel - they want *everyone* to have it, and they want everyone to pay. And to top it off, they keep paying astronomical sums of money for the broadcast rights to all sorts of dumb things, and how do they make it back? By jacking the fees that the rest of us pay. If they want to take ESPN and make it a streaming service that you sign up for if you want it, I would be all for it. That's the direction that a lot of these things are going anyways,

Re:No, they blew it by overpaying for stuff..

[Anonymous Coward]

This. The day that jewtube became a thing ESPN should have seen the writing on the wall and started work on a sports streaming service. Hell, they should have done that when all those "pirated" football (aka soccer) streams started showing up all over the world.
And they should have realized that given a chance people will choose not to pay for something they don't want.
Not everyone likes sports. ESPN should make their money from people who like sports.

Pay $7

[VikingNation]

I would consider paying $7 a month to be able to stream ESPN channels over broadband. ESPN missed an opportunity and now they have been forced to cup personalities to address lost revenue due to cord cutting.

Damn

[campuscodi]

They cancelled Simmons' Any Given Wednesday. Damn, was actually a pretty good show when he had the correct guests.

Voting with their wallets

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people do not care about sports, for them to be forced to pay for ESPN et.al. in order to watch cable is becoming 'passe'. Expect costs for an internet only package to sharply increase as time goes by.

It's why I stopped watching ESPN

[mpercy]

There are enough venues for progressive (and conservative, for that matter, even though its not a factor in this instance) media to promote their agenda. I just want the ball-game score and the highlights. I don't want social commentary.

It's a reason that's been discussed on other forums. Pointing it out, even if orthogonal to the original article is still informative, because if it is true and the ESPN honchos continue to ignore it based on their internal echo-chamber idea of what they did wrong, they might fix the wrong thing. OTOH, the SJW-angle could be insignificant and they can save the network by making various technical adjustments and double down on the SJW content. They can hire Colin Kaepernick as a talk-show host.

Location doesn't matter

[acoustix]

Bristol, Silicon Valley, whatever....it doesn't matter. Yes, ESPN messed up and there is still time to correct the ship because they still are the leader in US sports broadcasting. But location doesn't matter when you're setting up an online presence.

oh, but they have!

[Hugh Jorgen]

Take a look at Tiger Wood's photochopped mug shot...They used the ever popular filter "hairPlugs b gone."

Things change

[rsilvergun]

Music dropped in popularity as home video, video games and 24/7 TV ate away at people's free time (longer work hours in bad economies didn't help). Folks had more places to get the weather and didn't need that guy and his radar map as much so ratings fell. Minimum wage went up (marginally, but up all the same) and the cost of food shot way up pushing McDonald's into the fast casual market whether they wanted to or not. ESPN's in the same boat as music: fighting for attention.

There's been a lot of changes in the last 20 years. Nearly all of them for the worse. These companies are trying to adapt best that can. Lots of them can't. Not won't. Can't. The thing they used to do has been made obsolete or just plain marginalized. The world doesn't stay the same. I don't understand why folks don't seem to get that. Seems like a basic thing that we get upset when stuff changes and try our damnedest to deny the change happened in the first place.

As ignorant as hillary with what happened.

[will_die]

ESPN can complain about whatever but the main thing is they are in trouble because people don't want to watch them and when you ask a large portion of those people they make comments along the line of having to suffer through the political garbage they keep bringing up.
For example and why the subject, ESPN was in the background at work and one of the show started to talk about hillarys speech from yesterday.

I used to love watching sports

[Anonymous Coward]

It's somehow lost the edge. Maybe focusing on kapernick? Maybe a 20 something bitching they only got $20m a year?

I stopped listening to sports talk radio, too.

And, along the way, I cut the cord. And found I missed nothing.

Still, I love my NFL, via Ota, but miss blathering talking heads? Not so much.

Maybe if they innovated an ad supported app?

My point? I'd posit I watched a bunch more sport ball than a lot of /. And I'd posit my reasons are similar to a lot of the ESPN viewers. Not any of the political issues. The ripple effect will be on athletes and owners, who've had salaries and profits supported by TV ad revenue. When that dries up, at the end of 5 year deals, it'll be interesting to watch how far boards allow their guys to take deals which don't make money.

ESPN's troubles started 2-3 years ago

[ayesnymous]

when they drastically changed their web site into one of those annoying infinite scrolling sites with stupid videos all over the place.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Norton Setup

[Anonymous Coward]

Norton spam? What year is this?

Let's count coup...

[Anonymous Coward]

ESPN: Global brand, owned by Disney, part of a complex of more-wealth-than-you'll-ever-see-let-alone-know. Whose 'dying' carcass, like Microsoft, will be around a long, LONG time for them to reinvent themselves and get in on the ground floor of that which replaces the Internet.

Simmons: Talking head with a great smile, whose attempt to go indie in 2015 with HBO then tanked in 2016. And now owns a website and thus has a vested interest (not to mention his survival) in pointing out how ESPN hasn't taken up full Internet glory.

Yeah. No biases there.