If you are one of the dirtbags reveling in ESPN's layoffs, … go to *#&# you pathetic piece of garbage. — Mike Freeman, columnist.
Well, which is it — dirtbag or garbage? Either way, I’m owning up to it. I am not reveling in the layoffs — our newspaper survived a similarly painful purge a few years ago — but I am enjoying the demise of haughty, smug, defiant, overly politicized ESPN.
By now you’ve heard that ESPN laid off about 100 on-air employees last week in a drastic cost-cutting move that was mostly a message for investors. No amount of firings is going to make even a small dent in ESPN’s financial problems, but as usual, journalists — even good ones like Andy Katz — paid the price.
ESPN’s troubles are deep — they vastly overspent to secure broadcasting rights for sports events, subscribers are abandoning them, ratings are in steep decline. ESPN signed a $15.2 billion extension with the NFL a few years ago, a $7.3 billion contract for the college football playoffs, and a $12 billion deal with the NBA, and on and on it goes.
ESPN is heavily dependent on its steep subscriber fees to make those commitments work, and they’ve been losing 10,000 customers a day this year, according to Clay Travis of outkickthecoverage.com. Sean Davis, a reporter for the Federalist, expects that later this year the Disney-owned cable giant will lose its 15-millionth customer since 2011. As Davis explained it, “That’s nearly $100 million in lost revenue each month going forward for eternity.” Oh, and by the way, ratings are down 16 percent since last year.
Why the exodus of customers and viewers? Maybe it’s the direction ESPN has taken — less sports and highlights and more shoutfest talk shows led by abrasive, angry personalities such as Stephen A. Smith. It’s become the male version of "The View." Lots of sitting around a table talking or yelling about sports.
But there’s another factor in ESPN’s death spiral. If you’ve watched the network you know that it serves up leftist politics with its sports reporting.
People who turn to ESPN for sports are instead fed a steady diet of glowing stories about Michael Sam or Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest or Caitlin/Bruce Jenner, the winner of the network’s 2015 Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Jenner, whose athletic career ended 37 years ago, was chosen over many more deserving (and relevant) athletes, such as Lauren Hill, the basketball player who died of cancer.
ESPN — Excruciating Sports and Politics Network — has misjudged its audience as badly as the media misjudged Americans in the presidential election. They have no clue how middle America really feels, or they don’t care, and you can decide which is worse. Perhaps seeing trouble ahead in its business model, ESPN tried to expand its audience by mixing politics with sports. As Davis wrote, “Instead of expanding its pie by combining two types of mass media content, ESPN ended up communicating to half its audience that it didn’t respect them. How? By committing itself entirely not to political news, but to unceasing left-wing political commentary.”
So you’re a dirtbag if you enjoy ESPN’s comeuppance? This is the network that ridiculed North Carolina's bathroom law and fired baseball analyst Curt Schilling for siding with the state.
The culture at ESPN has become so rotten that the day before the layoffs the network posted a poetry tribute to Assata Shakur, a cop killer who escaped prison and fled the country.
ESPN has tried to downplay the role of their obnoxious political posturing in their current troubles, but almost everyone with common sense agrees it is a major factor. Davis sums it up this way: “ESPN made the mistake of trying to make liberal social media losers happy and as a result lost millions of viewers.”
ESPN has fired on-air employees for expressing conservative views while allowing their colleagues free expression of liberal politics. ESPN anchor Bob Ley said there is no “diversity of thought” at the network and noted, “If you’re a Republican or Conservative, you feel the need to talk in whispers.” Another ESPN anchor, Linda Cohn, says ESPN turned off its “core” viewers with its political campaign.
Not that any of this will change anything. ESPN ombudsman Jim Brady doubled down by tweeting, “Like it or not, ESPN has made it clear: It’s not sticking to sports.”
OK, but will anybody be watching?