Espn. What happened? | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Espn. What happened?

JB75 said:
I agree , as a Sox fan, pains me to say it- but a rod is not bad. Only good announcer left in my opinion is jim nantz, and maybe Gus johnson( makes everything sound exciting ) and maybe joe buck. All the great ones are no longer. musburger , costas, enberg. Al Michaels good too. But not many left
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You had me until you said Joe Buck. He's the worst.
 
Yardigan said:
Yep. It's weird. I was there when Dempster drilled him and cheered my arse off at that with the rest of the Fenway faithful. (I think he ended up something like 3 for 4 with a gomer that night?)
Now, he's not only a good announcer, with a ton of knowledge, he doesn't even seem like a bad dude either.
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JB75 said:
Is it possible a rod seems likable? Dare I say ? Lol
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Arod is great because he’s obviously a former player who knows what he’s talking abut, but you can tell he’s a student of the game.

Some guys are just good at baseball, but don’t love it. He does.

Another example is a story about him and jeter.

One night after a game they went to Jeters apartment. While jeter was in the kitchen arod flipped on the tv. When he couldn’t find what he was looking for he asked jeter what channel the west coast games were on.

Jeter basically laughed it off saying he didn’t get the mlb extra package to see other mlb games.

Baseball was business to jeter.

For arod Baseball was so much more. He legitimately loves it. It’s realy hard for me to not like guys like that.
 
You can get scores and highlights on your phone. It makes little sense to put a full on TV production for something people stopped needing a decade ago.

Also, those clever catch phrase anchors who became popular got expansive. They went with cheaper talent on SC and made darn sure they didn't get too big.

Lastly, outrage drives eyeballs hence people like Steven A Smith and hour after hour of senseless issue debates on every show.
 
Stainmaster said:
The share of the population frustrated by ESPN's "politics" doesn't have demography on their side. They're overwhelmingly older, and as such will represent less and less of ESPN's potential customer base going forward.

I'm sorry that these people are upset, but they would do well to realize that any struggles ESPN faces going forward are environmental (cord-cutting) and structural (show lineup construction), rather then a response to their boycott campaign.
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Maybe I'm a statistical anomaly but me and alot of guys I know stopped watching ESPN because of politics. Not necessarily in the traditional sense of I'm boycotting ESPN because they are liberals but more so in the why on Earth is ESPN political in the first place. It's just unpleasant and uncomfortable to mix sports and politics. 22 by the way
 
August_West said:
This.

It’s all it is. Things change. The internet has changed the way information is consumed in such a huge and devastatingly fast changing way.

I lol at people who say “politics”

That’s a snowflakey excuse.
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Or just call it what it is: abysmal programming.

How did a hack like Beadle have a job to begin with?
 
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JB75 said:
I agree , as a Sox fan, pains me to say it- but a rod is not bad. Only good announcer left in my opinion is jim nantz, and maybe Gus johnson( makes everything sound exciting ) and maybe joe buck. All the great ones are no longer. musburger , costas, enberg. Al Michaels good too. But not many left
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I agree, and on the news side I miss Edward R.Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
 
whaler11 said:
Politics doesn’t do them any good - it might not drive away as many people as psychos on the internet claim but it certainly doesn’t add viewers.
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its silly that they do politics. But it has nothing to do with their decline.

ESPN is a victim of the same things that killed Blockbuster video, the DVD player , 24 Hour photo huts, Cassette tapes, and Newspapers. The way we consume media has entirely changed.

I was a voracious ESPN watcher in the 90's/early 2000's stopped watching years and years ago. Nothing they could do right or do wrong wouldve changed that. Ever. Progress is killing them. Hell, you know me Im a political junkie and I would imagine (just by scanning about who is complaining about "politics" in this thread alone) that ESPN probably aligns with me. Don't care. Still won't turn them on. Dont need to.

The only thing I ever watch on ESPN is 30 for 30's.
 
storrsroars said:
Anytime you allow yourself to think that, just replay this:

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Yeah he did some dumb things during his career. No question about that.
 
August_West said:
its silly that they do politics. But it has nothing to do with their decline.

ESPN is a victim of the same things that killed Blockbuster video, the DVD player and Cassette tapes and Newspapers. The way we consume media has entirely changed.

I was a voracious ESPN watcher in the 90's/early 2000's stopped watching years and years ago. Nothing they could do right or do wrong wouldve changed that. Ever. Progress is killing them. Hell, you know me Im a political junkie and I would imagine (just by scanning about who is complaining about "politics" in this thread alone) that ESPN probably aligns with me. Don't care. Still won't turn them on. Dont need to.

The only thing I ever watch on ESPN is 30 for 30's.
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I used to really like pardon the interruption. Way back in it’s OG days.

But even that I don’t care about anymore. No question they need some more original content.
 
August_West said:
its silly that they do politics. But it has nothing to do with their decline.

ESPN is a victim of the same things that killed Blockbuster video, the DVD player , 24 Hour photo huts, Cassette tapes, and Newspapers. The way we consume media has entirely changed.

I was a voracious ESPN watcher in the 90's/early 2000's stopped watching years and years ago. Nothing they could do right or do wrong wouldve changed that. Ever. Progress is killing them. Hell, you know me Im a political junkie and I would imagine (just by scanning about who is complaining about "politics" in this thread alone) that ESPN probably aligns with me. Don't care. Still won't turn them on. Dont need to.

The only thing I ever watch on ESPN is 30 for 30's.
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If I’m home on Saturday mornings I’ll have Gameday on while I handicap the games. That’s about it.

There just isn’t a market for a general interest highlight show across multiple sports.
 
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whaler11 said:
If I’m home on Saturday mornings I’ll have Gameday on while I handicap the games. That’s about it.

There just isn’t a market for a general interest highlight show across multiple sports.
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Hence the rise of nfl network and mlb network (which is absolutely amazing btw)
 
pj said:
Cord-cutting takes away cable subscribers from all cable networks. It doesn't explain why ESPN subscribers are down 12% in a period when other sports networks increased subscribers:
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Gee FS1 went from showing whatever crap aired on the Speed network to showing MLB playoffs and CFB and their ratings are up? Quelle soiprise!
Ditto for NBC SN.
 
JB75 said:
So basically espn is like tmz now. They are Just trying to put everyone’s business on blast for the quick easy viewership. It’s funny because I’m pretty sure the younger audience (under 25) doesn’t really watch SportsCenter and I know damn well my demographic(ages 30-50) Is sick of the “new” espn, and people over 60 didn’t really care about ESPN as much as my generation did- so why wouldn’t they stick with their bread and butter and cater to their main age group? Dumb.
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There is a good sportscenter on snap chat which I've seen twice.
 
ESPN has been deteriorating since the 90s.
Root cause -- the evil mouse.
Disney.
 
I don't understand why people care so much other than espn funded hating on the Huskies. Olberman & Patrick aren't walking thru that door and if they did they'd be gray and old.
ESPN is a TV station that has games on it sometimes, I check it to see what freakin' channel a game is on, the end.
 
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Dogdeacon said:
I don't understand why people care so much other than espn funded hating on the Huskies. Olberman & Patrick aren't walking thru that door and if they did they'd be gray and old.
ESPN is a TV station that has games on it sometimes, I check it to see what freakin' channel a game is on, the end.
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LOL. The anger about everything here is unreal. I used to consume things one way, now I consume them another. If anything, there is MORE of everything I want and definitely way more than what I need. Can't possibly consume everything that is out there. Plenty to choose from. Maybe its a little more difficult to figure out what you like, but hardly a catastrophe.
 
Politics in Sports?

Thanks a lot, Miracle on Ice. :rolleyes:
 
OkaForPrez said:
It's exactly like MTV in that when you have access to the internet to watch your music video or your sports highlights you don't have to wait through all the content you don't care about. The internet killed ESPN and MTV both.
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MTV killed MTV. ESPN killed ESPN. Both suffered from some of the same problems, and alienated the core fans they had in reaching out to new ones.
 
Robertelamin said:
Things I love about ESPN:

1. ESPY’s
2. X-Games
3. LeBron James breaking news.

Things I hate about ESPN:

1. Sports - Boring!
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I'm giving you a like for the sheer audacity of not using a sarcasm font or emoticon to denote such.
 
I think I’ve only seen this mentioned once, and it’s insane that that’s the case.

ESPN over-payed for NBA and NFL contracts that didn’t pan out and they took huge losses. Thus, they couldn’t keep their talent around who was the real reason anyone watched in the first place. It’s going to be a weird analogy, but when YouTube exploded in popularity in the late 00s, there were dozens and dozens of successful gaming channels. Nearing a decade later, there are very few. The ones who have sustained success, outlasting the presence of a massive pool of options, did so through their engaging personality. Any dope can upload a gaming video of them kicking ass at Call of Duty, but over time as the market was saturated, channels maintained their followings because of their personalities and charisma.

Anyone on tv or the internet can upload highlights and stats; but this saturation of the market wasn’t ESPN’s undoing. It was their inability to keep personalities and segments like Primetime around, which set them apart from other reporting services. There wasn’t anything particularly special about Primetime, to stick with that example. It was Berman, TJ, and their chemistry. Besides the entertainment factor, ESPN couldn’t even keep around their best analysts, another thing that set them apart. Now, it’s half highlights by some no-name, and/or drama reporting
 
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I find it hard to believe that there is not a market fir the older way espn used to do things. Maybe my friends are a bit older(early 30s -early 50s) but everyone I know: a) misses the highlights b) hates the way espn is now and c) doesn’t want to watch highlights on thier phone computer or tablet. We just want a basic sports highlight show where after a long day wherever - I can sit down at 11pm and watch Kenny mayn’t and Stu scott(rip) deliver the plays of the day. I don’t want to have to search for it or watch it on my I phone 6 +. Is that so hard for espn to fathom? My age range drives espn. They shud be catering to us because like I said before , anyone under 25 doesn’t cars about espn and anyone over 55 doesn’t care about it as much because they grew up with highlights about local teams coming from their local news. I get technology shifting things but don’t get this one.
 
You know one person right now young or old who loves the new ESPN in the direction it’s going? I work with kids all day and they don’t seem to care... again , ESPN use your brains and target your core (30-50) or you ll soon be as irrelevant as blockbuster, dvds or mtv
 
ESPN died a dozen years ago. With the rise of the Internet, highlights became immediate and accessible; there was no need to watch SC anymore. ESPN had to turn somewhere to attract viewers so they went all-in on the TMZ/Hot Takes nonsense. I don't think it's entirely due to politics. Tim Tebow was one of the first really egregious cases. All Tebow, all the time. No matter the season or whatever other big event happened that night, you were going to get a healthy dose of Tebow talk on ESPN. Anecdotally it turned off a ton of viewers, the more hardcore sports fans.

Like many others around here, I grew up watching SportsCenter religiously in the 80s and 90s. It was a big part of my childhood. I don't think I've watched a full episode of it since 2004 or 2005.
 
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Lefty2one said:
ESPN died a dozen years ago. With the rise of the Internet, highlights became immediate and accessible; there was no need to watch SC anymore. ESPN had to turn somewhere to attract viewers so they went all-in on the TMZ/Hot Takes nonsense.

Like many others around here, I grew up watching SportsCenter religiously in the 80s and 90s. It was a big part of my childhood. I don't think I've watched a full episode of it since 2004 or 2005.
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Yeah, that last bit is huge.

But I wish Baseball tonight was on more often. That was always the best show on ESPN.
 
Baseball tonight was great. Nfl prime time tho was the best. Remember “big Monday” on espn? They d have a great 7pm big east game, followed by a 9pm big 12(big 8) game then 11pm sportscenter followed by crazy late west coast game. Ahhhh the good ole days. Must suck to grow up nowadays. Lol.
 
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