Yet somehow infamous men hater Malika Andrews still has a job working on shows primarily directed to men. Please, someone make it make sense.
It's like ESPN had a meeting and the objective was 'how can we ensure we're the worst possible product next season?'
At least they were smart enough to fire Jemele Hill, who might be the dumbest, race-hustling woman on this this planet.
I haven’t watched ESPN programming for years. Even when I stay at hotels, I never tune into ESPN. i am a huge fan of Van Grumpy, but I will enjoy his clips on YouTube if I run a cross them. I enjoyed his commentary on ABC, and I am aware of Disney owning ESPN and ABC. My feeling is that I’m not going to pay extra to be spit on by extortion oriented ESPN, and their overpriced product. Loudmouths like Steven Smith, Skip Tasteless, etc that shriek and try to make sports more relative, make me cringe when I hear them. Hopefully Jeff Van Gundy can get a gig he likes, that man is solid for sports.
Skip has not been on ESPN for about a decade. He is on Fox. ESPN's problem is that they overpaid for college sports so now they are trying to recoup the money by firing on air talent. No one outside of the old Confederacy gives a rats butt about SEC football, or for that matter any college sports (maybe the BIG region, but those states have few people in them).
It's not just college sports. They're about to bid on the new NBA tv deal which will be worth billions and they're invested in the NFL, too. As long as we keep watching these games the networks are going to have to pay more and more for the rights to air them.
Skip has not been on ESPN for about a decade. He is on Fox. ESPN's problem is that they overpaid for college sports so now they are trying to recoup the money by firing on air talent. No one outside of the old Confederacy gives a rats butt about SEC football, or for that matter any college sports (maybe the BIG region, but those states have few people in them). If you compare the NBA deal to the amounts ESPN has spent on college sports, it is astounding. ESPN paid $1.4B for 10 years for the last NBA deal. So that is 140M/year. You know how much ESPN spends on college sports? About $8B/year. It is insane and not justifiable based on ratings. People think that companies, including media companies, sign deals based on current numbers. No, they sign deals based on projections. So, ESPN assumes that it can expect X amount of revenue from showing SEC, ACC, MAC, AAC, and Big 12 football, so they offer the leagues an amount below that, and keep the margin. However, the numbers are not holding up. Ad revenue is shrinking, streaming is stagnant, and cable carriers are balking at paying higher carriage fees to ESPN. That is why Bob Iger is looking to spinoff/sell ESPN; it is going to be a deadweight around Disney's neck.
All good points. It'll be interesting to see what they end up paying for the new NBA rights which, per SI/CNBC, might be between $2.6-8B per year.
