ESPN used to be the crown jewel in the Disney Corporation’s portfolio. It was thought to be the network cable subscribers couldn't - and wouldn't - live without, so it was a perennial cash-cow. Even if the movies, toys, and theme parks underperformed, ESPN could be counted on to generate mountains of Mouse-moolah.
Maybe that's why Keith Olbermann's twice-former network thought infusing sports coverage with ever-increasing levels of left-wing political content was a good move. After all, if the ratings are bulletproof, why not let the biased, poorly-informed, political opinions fly?
Enter cord-cutting.
Here in the future, many of us have dumped cable altogether. Personally, I haven't paid for a cable TV subscription in over three years. The news nets are generally awful, the bias is as blatant as it is consistently liberal, as most of the content I want is available online.
After a few years of declining numbers, a combination of cord-cutting and viewer dissatisfaction have forced ESPN to admit its ratings weren't quiet as "bulletproof" as they'd assumed. To give you an idea of how bad things have been, consider this: Over the course of the last two years, ESPN has lost around 300,000 subscribers - per month.
Couple that with increased licensing fees for NBA programming and the former giant slowly became millstone around Disney's stock prices. Now, to right the sinking ship, there's going to be a bloodbath over at the MSNBC of sports:
ESPN will cut more than 100 employees today, Yahoo Finance has learned.
That number is much bigger than the 40-50 that was initially reported. ESPN aims to notify all of the people today, if it can do so.
It has been widely reported for weeks that big cuts are coming to ESPN—so widely reported, and dissected, and gossiped about, in fact, that ESPN moved up its schedule and is notifying people earlier than it originally planned.
The 100 people getting cut are all “on-air talent,” a label ESPN uses for TV personalities, radio hosts, and writers who regularly appear on TV and radio. (ESPN says it has 1,000 such people, prior to these cuts.)
In addition to those 100, a “limited number of other positions will also be affected,” according to a note sent to all employees on Wednesday morning from ESPN president John Skipper.
First of all, a thousand on-air employees? That's a staggering number, and it should give you some idea of just how indestructible they once believed themselves to be.
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Hackneyed political ramblings that have horned-in on the sports coverage
Second, I'm not sure who was behind the "more politics" plan, but before the other 100 get their pink slips, he should get his. I yet to meet a single person who hasn't noticed - and despised - the hackneyed political ramblings that have horned-in on the sports coverage.
We live in a world where, for the left-wingers in charge of most media, it's "agenda uber alles." That means ESPN probably won't tone down the bias. However, if they expect people to tune back in, they'd be well served to return their focus solely to sports. If people want to pay for political opinions, they will.
....And ESPN won't be their first, second, or third choice.
