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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.
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.
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.
In the past, I wanted cable tv without ESPN.
Now I want internet service without cable tv.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
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.
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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,.
Anything that doesn't conform to rigid conservative dogma gets excommunicated and called "progressive". It's really that simple.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Sure, if it was some nameless exec VP. But Simmons was talent, not management.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!