ESPN Is Pathetic
- Thread starter Lose Remerswaal
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Former ESPN President John Skipper Allegedly Out Drinking With Dan LeBatard In North Carolina
https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/former-espn-president-john-skipper-allegedly-drinking-dan-lebatard-north-carolina/
https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/former-espn-president-john-skipper-allegedly-drinking-dan-lebatard-north-carolina/
That article is so bad that I question the veracity of the claims within. He talks about a story he had, that Skipper was actually fired for sexual harassment, that he spiked as a Christmas Gift to ESPN?
WTF?
WTF?
That they’re covering a story people are talking about despite constantly saying they’re not interested in it while still talking and following it?
ESPN analysis this morning: Pats get all the calls, the hit on Gronk was a good football hit.
Max Kellerman: The Jags were robbed by the refs. Max butchering the rules on the DPI call and refs gave the Pats a make up for the Gronk hit. That call changed the whole game. Jacksonville got robbed.
Max Kellerman: The Jags were robbed by the refs. Max butchering the rules on the DPI call and refs gave the Pats a make up for the Gronk hit. That call changed the whole game. Jacksonville got robbed.
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Aren't gift calls supposed to be in favor of the team that was the victim of a botched call?
If the Gronk hit was a botched call, why would the Refs give The Patriots a gift?
Whatever, he's obviously playing an angle and rolling but it's notably stupid.
If the Gronk hit was a botched call, why would the Refs give The Patriots a gift?
Whatever, he's obviously playing an angle and rolling but it's notably stupid.
Everyone else called him out, at least. That’s his role to play on the show, though. I actually wish they’d bring Bayless back so the two could pit fight to death over the Pats.
Kellerman really is the worst; he's ruined HBO boxing for me too. The only way I could respect him less is if he hit his girlfriend. Oh wait....
I don't know what ESPN analysts you're citing, but Riddick and Clark both said it was correctly called a penalty
edit: Clark this morning said he hates the position it puts d-backs in, but that as the rule is written it's a penalty
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This kind of nonsense is just so irresponsible and pathetic. "I'm not saying these conspiracy theories about the refs favoring the Patriots are true, but here's an extensive recapping of them."
Lots of crossover now. Spots on SportsCenter and on the .com.
Coachman doesn't work for ESPN anymore, but he seemed to have a lot to do with the coverage (at least on air).
There's a 6 pm sportscenter? I guess I'm not paying attention to the TV in a bar or the gym at that time of night, so I never noticed.
Jemele asked for the reassignment and explained that “the heart wants what it wants.” I don’t think many will be surprised, and her departure is not controversial. Or shouldn’t be.
Happy they at least tried something new. Better than doing the same thing over and over. Don’t particularly care if ESPN succeed or fails, just want to be entertained. Still do a good job from 4:30-6.
I’m guessing here to some degree, but reports have her making $1M/yr, under contract. How does one finesse its employer into leaving a role slotted at 1M to go work in a part of the company where the writers likely make less than $75K/year. How does that work exactly? I’d like to be paid 10+ the salary my position is slotted for because “the heart wants what it wants”. It only works if your employer wants that and is non-controversial enough to let your first story in your new role be your press release on your reassignment.
She was reassigned because they couldn’t figure out how to fire her and survive the political fallout that would come. If you think I’m wrong, check back with me the day after her contract expires. We’ll see what her heart wants then.
If true, we should be upset about that?
If she has a contract at $1 million a year, ESPN has to honor it if they fire her. She could have said, go ahead and fire me; she would have all the leverage, as there is no basis for a for-cause dismissal. And we know that because when she issued her controversial tweets, they choose to give her a time out rather than fire her, and she has done nothing even arguably wrongful since.
If she has a contract at $1 million a year, ESPN has to honor it if they fire her. She could have said, go ahead and fire me; she would have all the leverage, as there is no basis for a for-cause dismissal. And we know that because when she issued her controversial tweets, they choose to give her a time out rather than fire her, and she has done nothing even arguably wrongful since.
Espn has fired dozens of on air talent in the last 18 months, many of whom make as much ch or more than Hill and are still being paid. As was stated above, espn didn’t want to deal with the media fallout of firing her, so her heart will go on randomly on shows no one watches until her contract runs out.
We don't know they didn't have cause, we just know that they didn't choose to fire her for cause even if the grounds existed. I think either way, with/without cause, they didn't want to deal with any media fallout.
Plus, we don't know the details of what was going on behind the scenes of SC6, but some reports indicate that Hill was clashing with producers who were trying to define a vision for the show when the initial 3-6 month ratings weren't different from the Lindsay Czarniak version. Was anything going on that would give rise to "for cause" firing, who knows? But I would think her calling on a boycott of advertisers of Jerry Jones might have come close. Facts are they invested a ton in this show based on two personalities they thought would draw viewers and it didn't translate. I'm curious to see if the other shoe drops. Maybe they'll let Michael Smith give it a shot solo to see if removing Hill has any real effect on ratings. I'd think his future role with the network will be larger than hers.
I'm not sure Sportscenter at 6pm is really is a good model anymore. Games haven't been played yet and by 6pm everyday, Twitter has already updated me to any breaking sports news.
Wait, so what am I missing here? You can already watch ESPN channels on the WatchESPN app if you have a cable subscription, but the app is free. Why would I pay $5/month for ESPN+? Just to watch 30 for 30 and some niche sports that they don't wanna put on TV? I don't get it.
It's basically for live sports. So you can watch most live sports (excluding the NCAA tourney and Monday Night Football) on ESPN+ and only pay $5 a month. Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox and thus the Fox Sports Networks probably helps bolster their live sports content.
My assumption is that a great deal of the content on WatchESPN (basically anything not airing on the cable channels) makes its way behind the ESPN+ paywall. ESPN+ is going to be like HBOGo or other subscription-based apps for cord-cutters who don't have cable.
What about Sunday/Wednesday night baseball? If everything that airs on ESPN and ESPN2 is off limits to ESPN+, then like I said, it feels like it'll just be for niche sports. And if it also dilutes WatchESPN, then the whole thing just sucks. For instance, currently, you can watch every single TV court during the tennis grand slams with WatchESPN, which is nice because sometimes the matches they decide to show on TV are the worst ones. Does that go away and become ESPN+ only?
Except ESPN+ won't include any of the regular ESPN content. So people who only have ESPN+ wont be able to watch MNF for example.
My guess is that ESPN+ is basically replacing ESPN3, in other words they are charging for all the online only content that we used to get included in our subscription.
If true, that's awful, and it seems to be a terrible idea. ESPN+ will be relatively shitty without a cable sub, but people with a cable sub are losing stuff they already had and now are expected to pay $5/month for it? And they still haven't found a way to deliver all of their live sports to cord cutters?
There aren't nearly enough details to say whether it will be good or not. Everything I've read is very light on what will and will not be on it. The only things I've read that won't be on it are the actual channel, MNF, and the NCAA tournament.
That article is a hard read. It says in one sentence you will be able to access live espn and espn2 then later states you went be able to access those channels unless you're a paid subscriber from traditional methods. And it also says you will only see love events on those channels that normally aren't seen. It lost me there
I imagine there will be considerable appeal for the competitive sex league content, although since it will almost certainly be limited to 'the mainstream' I won't be all that interested...
Here’s another article saying that it won’t include the regular ESPN channels: http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/07/media/espn-plus-disney/index.html
Just a guess:
- ESPN is about to acquire a very powerful family of regional sports networks
- As the rights deals to those networks lapse ESPN will negotiate new deals that include streaming rights
- But those deals are staggered across many years
- So you launch ESPN+ now as a place to offer those regionalized rights as they become available
- Everyone who looks at what will likely be anemic sub numbers for ESPN+ in the first few years and declares it a bust will be missing the point
- And then ten years from now you'll look up and they'll have a ton of local MLB/NBA/NHL rights in their offering and they'll be making a shitload of money in OTT sports subscriptions
So don't be too quick to call it a mistake.
- ESPN is about to acquire a very powerful family of regional sports networks
- As the rights deals to those networks lapse ESPN will negotiate new deals that include streaming rights
- But those deals are staggered across many years
- So you launch ESPN+ now as a place to offer those regionalized rights as they become available
- Everyone who looks at what will likely be anemic sub numbers for ESPN+ in the first few years and declares it a bust will be missing the point
- And then ten years from now you'll look up and they'll have a ton of local MLB/NBA/NHL rights in their offering and they'll be making a shitload of money in OTT sports subscriptions
So don't be too quick to call it a mistake.
They still have to find a way to incorporate their TV content into the app, though. I know my cord cutter dad would love to have this, but he'd be expecting to watch Sunday Night Baseball. I guess if they have a good number of other games on it could still work, but wake me up when you can watch ESPN on their app without a cable sub.
That doesn't make sense under the current model in which they operate. ESPN currently gets about $8 a month from cable companies and $5 a month for this. There has to be a pretty significant loss of customers and/or downward pricing pressure for them to do that. I imagine they eventually will have something along those lines but pretty much no major TV content provider is providing unfettered, 24/7 live streaming of its network in a standalone app, so this is a step in that direction so they're not caught with their pants down as they have been in the last couple of years.
I think they eventually will have all their live content on the app, but it will be a while before some of their existing deals can be re-worked to include the streaming rights for a paid app. Just using Sunday Night Baseball as the example, I don't think MLB would think much of them moving the game to the paid app since they themselves have a paid app for streaming that at the moment doesn't include the SNB game because it is available for free on WatchESPN. But something will probably be negotiated in the future to allow it.
I don't know if this is the right place but did they just kill ESPN Boston? There has been no content added for 3 days yet there have been Boston related articles since on the main page
