Heretic;1849884 wrote:I think the main problem with ESPN is a mix of a few issues.
1. Costs a shit-ton to buy rights for various pro/college leagues. Adding to that, a lot of conferences are exploring their own networks. Like, I saw a decent few of the guys being let go are NHL people (ESPN doesn't have their rights) and people covering the B1G (has their own station).
2. Leading to a lot of programming being more "entertainment" and less sports. Tons of highlight shows, tons of HOT TAEK shows and so on. Sort of like how MTV went away from music videos and into reality shows and other shit, ESPN went away from broadcasting sports and put more of a focus on their anchors and commentators being entertaining, either with catch-phrases and one-liners (SC) or with loud, crazy opinions (every fucking hot taek show).
3. And also way too much "dead air" to the casual viewer. Constant re-running of SportsCenter (which they've always done, to be fair) and a lot of niche stuff like spelling bees and so on, which might have value to some people, but none whatsoever to me.
Like, for example, this is baseball season. So what does ESPN have? Wednesday night, Sunday night and Monday night. One national game each night, usually focused around the same handful of markets (I've seen my Pirates twice...both times against the Cubs, so I think we can all guess what team they were there for). Hell, their next three games (counting tonight) are all games in Boston. Then, the next three all feature the Yankees as one of the two teams involved. Unless you're a fan of one of the big-market teams they focus their coverage around, they have next-to-no value as far as baseball goes, because you can get any info you can glean from any of their countless highlight shows from the Internet.
Took this post from the politics forum. I think #2 can attribute to 90% of the reason they are failing. Sadly, the competing stations think this is what the viewers want as well.
It used to be a solid formula, because it was a "fresh" take on sports coverage. Viewers have grown tired of it. The Lebron departure was the culmination of ESPN's hot taek douchniess, and I think they have been on a decline since that day.
