OT: ESPN's not covering this one

[Carl Spackler]

Thank you.

That is exactly my point.

This entire X-Game concept is completely driven by ESPN. The level of coverage on ESPN and Sportscenter outweighs actually interest in the events simply because the news coverage is purely promotional by nature - Sportscenter viewers are not tuning in at 11 pm to find out who won the men's snowmobile flipping finals. (Not the first example of this - ESPN never included Euro soccer in the crawl or on the ESPN.com scoretab until ESPN had a contract to show those games.)

Now that one of their contrived sports has managed to put a kid on death's doorstep, ESPN essentially goes radio-silent. There is an excellent article on the front page of the Washington Post that covers some of the same concerns I have with the very nature of some of these 'sporting' events - flipping a snowmobile is not a sport, it's a stunt and stunts go wrong.

By my point, again, is that ESPN looks like they're trying to hide a body here.

The X-Games are the perfect microcosm of the fundamental issues wrong with ESPN. THey are producing an event, and promoting that event, with their own news reporting mechanisms, which means they get to pick and choose what they report on, for the same events that they produce and promote for profit. It's double dipping the marketing. While there's nothing illegal about it, the ethical issues are glaringly obvious. Sportscenter, is the epicenter of ESPN broadcasting, and having profit interests in producing actual live events of some kind, and then having control over the platform to report on those things. Sketchy.

I haven't finished the thread yet, but I assume that somebody's posted already that the young man had died.

 

[Northbound]

Oh good christ, Fishy wasn't making a commentary on the unfortunate death of Caleb Moore. Just how ESPN blurs the lines and make choices to suit their bottom line.

ESPN is NOT unique in this regard, it's more likely to be noticed when it's ESPN because they happen to be the 880 lbs. gorilla in the space. That line between the journalistic side of the business and the revenue generation/ad sales side of the business gets crossed all the time, it's not a surprise.