You got a source to back that up? I've always heard ESPN was losing them money.
ESPN layoffs have begun
- Thread starter cli-terminator
- Start date
And even though these two don't have their own show, they got out when the getting was good and assumed similar contributor roles as they did at ESPN.
He got fired so he had to get out. He should have had a fall guy. Terrible at his job also.
The Real Story Behind ESPN’s Wednesday Massacre
From poor financial decisions that are no longer paying off, to declining viewership, to an increased focus on left-wing politics, ESPN made its own mess.
By Sean Davis
ESPN, the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports, became the worldwide leader in sports layoffs on Wednesday morning after news leaked that the cable network was in the process of laying off 100 staffers, most of whom are reported to be on-air talent.
The layoff reports came as no surprise to those who have followed ESPN and its on- and off-air struggles to profitably provide the kind of content that most sports fans want to watch. Shortly after the mass layoff reports were confirmed, the Internet hot takes began. ESPN is failing because of cord-cutting, because it has too much politics, because it has too little politics, because sports fans are racists, you name it.
So what’s the real reason the network felt forced to slash its payroll overnight? There is no one reason. There are a number of factors, each of which has been multiplied by poor strategic decisions. ESPN would have you believe that the network is a victim of circumstances, caught up in an industry whirlwind over which it has no control. Maybe, but that’s hardly the whole story. The real reasons aren’t all that complicated, but they’re not as simple as much of the social media hand-wringing would have you believe.
ESPN isn’t struggling because of one thing. It’s struggling because of a bunch of different things happening simultaneously. Some are outside of its control, and some are not. Here are the big reasons for these mass layoffs.
1) ESPN Overpaid for Broadcast Rights
In a nutshell, ESPN committed to paying massive long-term fixed costs for the right to air professional sports events, namely NFL and NBA games. Sports reporter Clay Travis of Outkick has been banging the drum on this score for quite some time, much to ESPN’s chagrin (Just last month Travis predicted Wednesday’s mass layoffs only to have ESPN sic its PR hounds on him and accuse him of making it all up).
In accounting terms, the network committed to high long-term fixed costs (broadcast rights) in exchange for declining variable revenues (cable subscription fees and advertising dollars). You don’t have to be a mathematician to see the problems with this formula for success. Even if ESPN is making decent money right now, the music is eventually going to stop, people are going to stop dancing, and somebody’s going to be stuck without a chair.
Here’s how Travis sums up the problem:
The simple truth of the matter is this — ESPN spent way too much on sports rights just as its cable and satellite subscriptions began to collapse. On track for $8 billion in programming costs in 2017, ESPN will rack up its 15 millionth lost subscriber since 2011. Every single day so far in 2017 over 10,000 people have left ESPN. The numbers are astonishing and the collapse is rapid. All those lost subscribers add up to big money — that’s over $1.3 billion a year in money that comes off ESPN’s books every year. And ESPN is on the hook for billions and billions a year for all the years ahead. That’s guaranteed payments to leagues that ESPN can’t escape no matter how many employees it fires.
As I’ve written before, if the current subscriber loss trajectory keeps up ESPN will begin losing money by 2021. And if the subscriber losses accelerate it will happen even sooner than that.
Rising fixed costs and risky, declining revenues are the root of all of ESPN’s problems. Overpriced broadcast rights are certainly the biggest piece in that financial puzzle, but they’re not the only one. Salaries are also a pretty heavy fixed cost, and one the network decided to slash. Will that decision improve the financial picture, at least on the costs side? Maybe. But ESPN could fire every single person on staff and still not make the numbers work. When your ship is sinking, tossing a few deck chairs over the side isn’t going to accomplish much.
We’ve identified and addressed ESPN’s main cost problem. But what about its revenue problems? What is causing those?
2) Cable Cord-Cutting
ESPN is hemorrhaging subscribers. There is no debate about this fact. In just the last six years, the Connecticut-based sports network has lost 12 million subscribers. At roughly $7 paid out monthly to ESPN per subscriber, that’s nearly $100 million in lost revenue each month going forward for eternity. The big question is: Why are those viewers no longer choosing to pay for cable, and by extension choosing to pay Disney for the privilege of having ESPN on their cable box? Is it because they’re tired of paying for cable, or because they’re tired of paying for ESPN?
ESPN and Disney executives will tell you it’s obviously the former and has nothing whatsoever to do with ESPN. The Internet has changed things, they’ll say, and services like Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix have made cable, and its exorbitant monthly fees, less necessary.
There’s clearly some truth to this. Cord-cutting is a sweeping dynamic, and ESPN just happens to be the biggest chunk getting pushed into the dustpan. But ESPN’s public rhetoric about cord-cutting having nothing to do with ESPN completely contradicts the corporation’s rhetoric about negotiating fees from and services to cable providers.
That’s because Disney, ESPN’s parent, uses the popularity of ESPN’s live sports programming to force cable companies into carrying and paying for a large swath of less popular Disney-owned networks. The message? If you want ESPN, then you’re not only going to pay Disney for it, you’re also going to pay for A&E and Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network and History and Freeform and Disney Junior and Disney XD and Vice. It doesn’t matter if you don’t plan to watch a second of any of those networks: if you want to watch college football for three months in the fall, you’re going to pay for the unrelated also-ran networks whether you like it or not.
ESPN knows people will pay for cable just to get ESPN, hence its near-extortion of cable companies into carrying myriad other Disney-owned channels. Given this fact, how can ESPN claim that cord-cutting has nothing to do with ESPN? If people are plugging the cord in just to get ESPN, then you can pretty much guarantee ESPN is very much a part of the cord-cutting conversation. ESPN can’t have it both ways.
Is a ton of cord-cutting happening regardless of what ESPN’s doing? Absolutely. Is the network a mere blameless bystander in the cord-cutting? Not at all. If ESPN wants to claim responsibility for bringing people into the cable fold, then it must also take responsibility when a diehard sports fan finally decides that ESPN’s just not worth the cost of cable anymore. This brings us to the next cause of these revenue problems.
3) Declining ESPN Ratings
ESPN isn’t just losing millions of cable subscribers, many of whom probably never even watched the network despite paying for it. It’s also losing viewers. According to Broadcast & Cable, a TV industry trade publication, ESPN’s ratings are down 7 percent this year, and ESPN2’s ratings are down a whopping 34 percent. What gives?
If you talk to sports fans and to people who have watched ESPN religiously for most of their lives, they’ll tell you the problem is the lack of sports and a surplus of shows featuring people screaming at each other. The near-universal sentiment of former ESPN addicts I’ve spoken to is that the content provider sidelined actual sports in favor of carnival barkers. Sure, you clicked over to ESPN to watch sports, but what you’re actually going to get are “Crossfire”-esque segments of non-athletes making dumb arguments about topics you don’t care about.
One industry insider told me that it’s as if network executives looked at the popularity of local and regional sports talk radio and decided that ESPN needed to replicate that model on television to be successful. If that’s what they actually thought, they were wrong.
Passively listening to a radio show while you’re at work or in your car and unable to watch a live game is a very different thing than wanting to watch some game highlights during the whopping 30 minutes of free time you have to do nothing at home each night. The two aren’t perfect substitutes for each other, yet ESPN’s programming decisions suggest the network thinks talking heads are as big a draw as actual athletes competing on the field. And all this after spending $8 billion to get the rights to air those competitions?
It’s madness. ESPN went from the worldwide leader in sports to yet another expensive network of dumb people yelling dumb things at other dumb people, all the while forgetting that the most popular entertainment form of people yelling about sports stuff for several hours a day — sports talk radio — is free. This brings us to the final major reason for ESPN’s current predicament.
4) Politics
With all this in mind, it’s not at all surprising that ESPN decided to retreat into the fever swamp of leftist politics to save itself. An obsession with politics didn’t doom ESPN, but it’s going to make it extremely difficult for ESPN to dig itself out.
An obsession with politics didn’t doom ESPN, but it’s going to make it extremely difficult for ESPN to dig itself out.
The industry insider I spoke to said the focus on politics was a symptom, rather than a root cause, of all these current issues. According to this insider, ESPN executives saw the writing on the wall — higher costs, subscriber losses, lower ratings — and decided that it needed a bigger content pie to attract more content consumers. Sports is too small, so why not try for a real mass audience by broadening the network’s focus to include news and politics? If X number of people like sports, and Y number of people like politics, then surely combining sports and politics will lead to a much bigger audience, thereby solving the company’s financial dilemma.
This view, of course, ignores how people consume political news. The diehards who love political news don’t turn on the TV or open the laptop and navigate to sites with zero bias that just play it straight. Why? Because those kinds of political news and commentary providers don’t exist. Because that’s not what political junkies want. Liberals want news from liberals, and conservatives want news from conservatives. The Balkanization of political news and commentary didn’t happen by accident. People in this business know you have to pick a side. That works in political news. It doesn’t work if you have a bipartisan mass media audience.
Instead of expanding its pie by combining two types of mass media content, ESPN ended up communicating to half its audience that it didn’t respect them. How? By committing itself entirely not to political news, but to unceasing left-wing political commentary.
Instead of expanding its pie by combining two types of mass media content, ESPN ended up communicating to half its audience that it didn’t respect them.
You want to watch the Lakers game? Okay, but first you’re going to hear about Caitlyn Jenner. Want some NFL highlights? We’ll get to those eventually, but coming up next will be a discussion about how North Carolina is run by racist, homophobic bigots.
You want to see the box scores of today’s baseball games? You can watch those at the bottom of the hour, but right now some D-list network talent would like to lecture you about gun control. After that we’ll have a panel discussion about how much courage it takes to turn your back on the American flag.The most interesting aspect of the mass layoffs on Wednesday isn’t that they happened, it’s who the network targeted. Not the high-priced carnival barkers and the know-nothing loudmouths doing their best to make Rachel Maddow proud. Nope. ESPN targeted sports reporters. In an effort to cut some fat from its bottom line, ESPN exchanged a scalpel for a chainsaw, skipped the fat entirely, and went straight to cutting out muscle.
If ESPN wants to once again be the worldwide leader in sports, it should refocus on covering sports, which used to be a refuge from politics and the news. America is politicized enough already, and if its citizens want political news, several cable outlets do political news far better than ESPN ever could. Instead of doing sports and politics poorly, perhaps the network could return to the thing that it used to do better than everyone else in the world: cover live sports.
Yes, even though Chris Carter and Broussard were let go, they almost immediately bounced back up on Fox. Adam Schefter also was either let go or left earlier than the layoffs and popped up on Fox.
I think that is my main concern. All the faces popping up at Fox, it's starting to look like ESPN 4 years ago
Damn 3.5 million a year, dude getting paid.
Schefter is still with ESPN
When was this? Schefter never worked for Fox and he's still with ESPN. They would be foolish to let him go. He used to work for NFL Network.
Broussard left on his own. He didn't get fired.
The Real Story Behind ESPN’s Wednesday Massacre
From poor financial decisions that are no longer paying off, to declining viewership, to an increased focus on left-wing politics, ESPN made its own mess.
By Sean Davis
ESPN, the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports, became the worldwide leader in sports layoffs on Wednesday morning after news leaked that the cable network was in the process of laying off 100 staffers, most of whom are reported to be on-air talent.
The layoff reports came as no surprise to those who have followed ESPN and its on- and off-air struggles to profitably provide the kind of content that most sports fans want to watch. Shortly after the mass layoff reports were confirmed, the Internet hot takes began. ESPN is failing because of cord-cutting, because it has too much politics, because it has too little politics, because sports fans are racists, you name it.
So what’s the real reason the network felt forced to slash its payroll overnight? There is no one reason. There are a number of factors, each of which has been multiplied by poor strategic decisions. ESPN would have you believe that the network is a victim of circumstances, caught up in an industry whirlwind over which it has no control. Maybe, but that’s hardly the whole story. The real reasons aren’t all that complicated, but they’re not as simple as much of the social media hand-wringing would have you believe.
ESPN isn’t struggling because of one thing. It’s struggling because of a bunch of different things happening simultaneously. Some are outside of its control, and some are not. Here are the big reasons for these mass layoffs.
1) ESPN Overpaid for Broadcast Rights
In a nutshell, ESPN committed to paying massive long-term fixed costs for the right to air professional sports events, namely NFL and NBA games. Sports reporter Clay Travis of Outkick has been banging the drum on this score for quite some time, much to ESPN’s chagrin (Just last month Travis predicted Wednesday’s mass layoffs only to have ESPN sic its PR hounds on him and accuse him of making it all up).
In accounting terms, the network committed to high long-term fixed costs (broadcast rights) in exchange for declining variable revenues (cable subscription fees and advertising dollars). You don’t have to be a mathematician to see the problems with this formula for success. Even if ESPN is making decent money right now, the music is eventually going to stop, people are going to stop dancing, and somebody’s going to be stuck without a chair.
Here’s how Travis sums up the problem:
The simple truth of the matter is this — ESPN spent way too much on sports rights just as its cable and satellite subscriptions began to collapse. On track for $8 billion in programming costs in 2017, ESPN will rack up its 15 millionth lost subscriber since 2011. Every single day so far in 2017 over 10,000 people have left ESPN. The numbers are astonishing and the collapse is rapid. All those lost subscribers add up to big money — that’s over $1.3 billion a year in money that comes off ESPN’s books every year. And ESPN is on the hook for billions and billions a year for all the years ahead. That’s guaranteed payments to leagues that ESPN can’t escape no matter how many employees it fires.
As I’ve written before, if the current subscriber loss trajectory keeps up ESPN will begin losing money by 2021. And if the subscriber losses accelerate it will happen even sooner than that.
Rising fixed costs and risky, declining revenues are the root of all of ESPN’s problems. Overpriced broadcast rights are certainly the biggest piece in that financial puzzle, but they’re not the only one. Salaries are also a pretty heavy fixed cost, and one the network decided to slash. Will that decision improve the financial picture, at least on the costs side? Maybe. But ESPN could fire every single person on staff and still not make the numbers work. When your ship is sinking, tossing a few deck chairs over the side isn’t going to accomplish much.
We’ve identified and addressed ESPN’s main cost problem. But what about its revenue problems? What is causing those?
2) Cable Cord-Cutting
ESPN is hemorrhaging subscribers. There is no debate about this fact. In just the last six years, the Connecticut-based sports network has lost 12 million subscribers. At roughly $7 paid out monthly to ESPN per subscriber, that’s nearly $100 million in lost revenue each month going forward for eternity. The big question is: Why are those viewers no longer choosing to pay for cable, and by extension choosing to pay Disney for the privilege of having ESPN on their cable box? Is it because they’re tired of paying for cable, or because they’re tired of paying for ESPN?
ESPN and Disney executives will tell you it’s obviously the former and has nothing whatsoever to do with ESPN. The Internet has changed things, they’ll say, and services like Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix have made cable, and its exorbitant monthly fees, less necessary.
There’s clearly some truth to this. Cord-cutting is a sweeping dynamic, and ESPN just happens to be the biggest chunk getting pushed into the dustpan. But ESPN’s public rhetoric about cord-cutting having nothing to do with ESPN completely contradicts the corporation’s rhetoric about negotiating fees from and services to cable providers.
That’s because Disney, ESPN’s parent, uses the popularity of ESPN’s live sports programming to force cable companies into carrying and paying for a large swath of less popular Disney-owned networks. The message? If you want ESPN, then you’re not only going to pay Disney for it, you’re also going to pay for A&E and Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network and History and Freeform and Disney Junior and Disney XD and Vice. It doesn’t matter if you don’t plan to watch a second of any of those networks: if you want to watch college football for three months in the fall, you’re going to pay for the unrelated also-ran networks whether you like it or not.
ESPN knows people will pay for cable just to get ESPN, hence its near-extortion of cable companies into carrying myriad other Disney-owned channels. Given this fact, how can ESPN claim that cord-cutting has nothing to do with ESPN? If people are plugging the cord in just to get ESPN, then you can pretty much guarantee ESPN is very much a part of the cord-cutting conversation. ESPN can’t have it both ways.
Is a ton of cord-cutting happening regardless of what ESPN’s doing? Absolutely. Is the network a mere blameless bystander in the cord-cutting? Not at all. If ESPN wants to claim responsibility for bringing people into the cable fold, then it must also take responsibility when a diehard sports fan finally decides that ESPN’s just not worth the cost of cable anymore. This brings us to the next cause of these revenue problems.
3) Declining ESPN Ratings
ESPN isn’t just losing millions of cable subscribers, many of whom probably never even watched the network despite paying for it. It’s also losing viewers. According to Broadcast & Cable, a TV industry trade publication, ESPN’s ratings are down 7 percent this year, and ESPN2’s ratings are down a whopping 34 percent. What gives?
If you talk to sports fans and to people who have watched ESPN religiously for most of their lives, they’ll tell you the problem is the lack of sports and a surplus of shows featuring people screaming at each other. The near-universal sentiment of former ESPN addicts I’ve spoken to is that the content provider sidelined actual sports in favor of carnival barkers. Sure, you clicked over to ESPN to watch sports, but what you’re actually going to get are “Crossfire”-esque segments of non-athletes making dumb arguments about topics you don’t care about.
One industry insider told me that it’s as if network executives looked at the popularity of local and regional sports talk radio and decided that ESPN needed to replicate that model on television to be successful. If that’s what they actually thought, they were wrong.
Passively listening to a radio show while you’re at work or in your car and unable to watch a live game is a very different thing than wanting to watch some game highlights during the whopping 30 minutes of free time you have to do nothing at home each night. The two aren’t perfect substitutes for each other, yet ESPN’s programming decisions suggest the network thinks talking heads are as big a draw as actual athletes competing on the field. And all this after spending $8 billion to get the rights to air those competitions?
It’s madness. ESPN went from the worldwide leader in sports to yet another expensive network of dumb people yelling dumb things at other dumb people, all the while forgetting that the most popular entertainment form of people yelling about sports stuff for several hours a day — sports talk radio — is free. This brings us to the final major reason for ESPN’s current predicament.
4) Politics
With all this in mind, it’s not at all surprising that ESPN decided to retreat into the fever swamp of leftist politics to save itself. An obsession with politics didn’t doom ESPN, but it’s going to make it extremely difficult for ESPN to dig itself out.
An obsession with politics didn’t doom ESPN, but it’s going to make it extremely difficult for ESPN to dig itself out.
The industry insider I spoke to said the focus on politics was a symptom, rather than a root cause, of all these current issues. According to this insider, ESPN executives saw the writing on the wall — higher costs, subscriber losses, lower ratings — and decided that it needed a bigger content pie to attract more content consumers. Sports is too small, so why not try for a real mass audience by broadening the network’s focus to include news and politics? If X number of people like sports, and Y number of people like politics, then surely combining sports and politics will lead to a much bigger audience, thereby solving the company’s financial dilemma.
This view, of course, ignores how people consume political news. The diehards who love political news don’t turn on the TV or open the laptop and navigate to sites with zero bias that just play it straight. Why? Because those kinds of political news and commentary providers don’t exist. Because that’s not what political junkies want. Liberals want news from liberals, and conservatives want news from conservatives. The Balkanization of political news and commentary didn’t happen by accident. People in this business know you have to pick a side. That works in political news. It doesn’t work if you have a bipartisan mass media audience.
Instead of expanding its pie by combining two types of mass media content, ESPN ended up communicating to half its audience that it didn’t respect them. How? By committing itself entirely not to political news, but to unceasing left-wing political commentary.
Instead of expanding its pie by combining two types of mass media content, ESPN ended up communicating to half its audience that it didn’t respect them.
You want to watch the Lakers game? Okay, but first you’re going to hear about Caitlyn Jenner. Want some NFL highlights? We’ll get to those eventually, but coming up next will be a discussion about how North Carolina is run by racist, homophobic bigots.
The most interesting aspect of the mass layoffs on Wednesday isn’t that they happened, it’s who the network targeted. Not the high-priced carnival barkers and the know-nothing loudmouths doing their best to make Rachel Maddow proud. Nope. ESPN targeted sports reporters. In an effort to cut some fat from its bottom line, ESPN exchanged a scalpel for a chainsaw, skipped the fat entirely, and went straight to cutting out muscle.
If ESPN wants to once again be the worldwide leader in sports, it should refocus on covering sports, which used to be a refuge from politics and the news. America is politicized enough already, and if its citizens want political news, several cable outlets do political news far better than ESPN ever could. Instead of doing sports and politics poorly, perhaps the network could return to the thing that it used to do better than everyone else in the world: cover live sports.
These cacs keep trying to crowbar 'politics' (which really means not having a right-wing spin) as a reason for ESPN's decreasing popularity and that's complete bullshit.
ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh years back and these same folks had no objections to it. They've also had plenty of other extreme conservatives like Curt Schilling.
These folks don't mind having politics interjected into their sports, just as long as it's the politics they agree with.
ESPN didn't just start losing subscribers since the election.
Oh my bad,
thought I heard him on a Fox sports radio and assumed he did.
Can't keep up with all this. I even think that some of the "contract not picked up" equals fired in some cases too.
A whole lot.
And its been going on for awhile
I ain't no expert but I think they just had no VISION.
I still think taking MNF off free TV was a bad move.
Amd they paid WAY to much for those broadcast rights.
They saw all these colleges and conferences get their OWN networks...
Competition from FOX & NBC
Streaming and podcasts...
They just always seemed LATE.
They should have kept Bill Simmons...he predicted MOST of this...
Mike & Jemelle should have BEEN had a show...and BEGGED for it.
The ESPN app is great but they waited too long to get in the game and it STILL ain't what it SHOULD be.
PTI and Sports Nation re runs are essentially worthless. But imagine putting those vids on the app?
And just tell the leagues ya'll need to let us leave those highlights on there...the money they ALREADY paying. It should work out.
They need new younger smarter blacker execs.
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The conferences and schools getting their own networks really did them in. Almost all of Washingtons football/basketball games are on the Pac 12 network. Most college fans only watch their team, and their conference. ESPN getting in bed with 1 conference doesnt work for college sports because its still a regional thing, and fans of schools not in the SEC dont want to watch that love fest all season.
Fox and NBC got whatever was left, but whatever was left was actually enough. ESPN got greedy and wanted EVERYTHING. Issue with that is cost, and ads is how you get paid. But more games doesnt actually mean more eyeballs if you have all the games on different channels on your own network. You can have a game on ESPN, another on 2,U, and News. But your cannibalizing your own network, and making them less effective. You gotta show the big game on the ESPN, but no one is watching Marshall and Ball st on ESPN news, so you cant sell that ad space at a premium to justify the entire cost of all the games for all those years.
Their app needs work. The Undefeated programing wont let you download anything, and even streaming directly from The Undefeateds site is hit and miss. I myself think its because they wont let US get any message that doesnt include THEM out. But I could be reaching.
I bet if they had a young black execs The Undefeateds shit would work...
Damn right.
picture disney losing money or giving a fuck about losing money ...
wait ...i think rogue one & beauty n the beast just made another couple million while i typed this...
Not so much Disney, but probably the ESPN division , and its share holders, the mouse don't like his bread getting low....
I find that amazing.
She must have some melanin, twice removed, on her granddaddy's side.
Isn't she fucking the CEO?
I'm shocked they gave Andy Katz the boot and Britt McHenry
I wonder if this will factor in to the leagues and salaries when they contracts are up, because ESPN was bidding against itself for some stuff. They say they pay $8 bil for the rights to broadcast their sports.
This shit is a drop in the bucket and is just to look good to Disney
I wonder if this will factor in to the leagues and salaries when they contracts are up, because ESPN was bidding against itself for some stuff. They say they pay $8 bil for the rights to broadcast their sports.
This shit is a drop in the bucket and is just to look good to Disney
I still watch PTI on an internet stream but that is the only show on ESPN I've ever been interested din watching.
Damn, didn't know Andy Katz got the boot too.
IDK, but that would explain her staying power at ESPN. To my point, White women after 60 tend to look like old oatmeal, but she doesn't. Just a little surprised that she's not, shall we say...more frightening to look at.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-estimates-as-star-wars-boosts-film-division
It's not losing yet but profits are getting tighter and it is starting to cause Disney to miss profit estimates.
They are now in a little over 87 million households, which is down from almost 95 million two years ago and 101 million five years ago. This year, they've lost an average of 10,000 subscribers a day, so that's $1.3 billion a year gone with time. Consider that every subscriber averages them around $7.30 from subscriber fees from cable companies and they are paying $7.3 billion a year for rights they are hurting. They have to cut somewhere to stay profitable.
Gotta show me how to stream it cause I don't have cable anymore
It's all about Internet n firestick
Wow...I did NOT hear that one
http://nypost.com/2017/04/27/britt-mchenry-andy-katz-latest-talent-to-be-dumped-by-espn/
Britt McHenry, Andy Katz latest talent to be dumped by ESPN
By Jonathan Lehman
April 27, 2017 | 12:33pm | Updated
The proverbial bloodbath of ESPN layoffs that gripped the sports world Wednesday continue to trickle out Thursday.
Even more high-profile axes among on-air NFL and basketball talent have yet to be revealed, according to The Big Lead, as the so-called Worldwide Leader confronts its grim fiscal realities in a shifting sports media landscape.
One of the more infamous personas at ESPN, television reporter Britt McHenry, announced she would exit the network after covering the NFL Draft through Saturday.
McHenry was suspended by ESPN in 2015 following a nasty tirade against a parking-lot attendant, footage of which went viral and stunted a once-ascendant career trajectory.
“I’m in the news, sweetheart, I will f—–g sue this place,” McHenry ranted. “Do you feel good about your job? So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing? Why, cause I have a brain and you don’t? Maybe if I was missing some teeth they would hire me, huh? Oh like yours, ’cause they look so stunning … ‘Cause I’m on television and you’re in a f—–g trailer, honey.”
It is possible others attached to the three-day blitz of draft coverage could be on their final assignment.
Andy Katz, a longtime fixture of ESPN’s college basketball coverage, also is among the cuts, he said Wednesday.
ESPN’s studio baseball programming was hit particularly hard by the round of pink slips, as well.
MLB analysts Doug Glanville, Dallas Braden and Raul Ibanez are out — and ESPN announced plans to syndicate MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk,” featuring Chris Rose and Kevin Millar, weekdays from 4 to 5 on ESPN2 as part of “a new collaborative effo
oh NOW I remember her....
ESPN reporter Britt McHenry writes pity piece nobody wanted to hear
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/m...ry-writes-pity-piece-wanted-article-1.2908437
Next time, just say, "No comment."
Nobody needs to hear from you anymore, Britt McHenry. You still have your job, you still have your livelihood and you still have your car. That's a lot more than a lot of people have.
You got a one-week suspension from ESPN last year after you were caught being super-mean to a parking lot attendant and shaming someone named Gina, a single mother of three, for her bad teeth and her weight and her crappy job. In a perfect world, we'd all be smart and pretty and have nice jobs.
But it's not a perfect world, and I'm sorry you had to find that out the hard way over the last year. You truly had to deal with some crappy stuff. But so have a lot of other people in your line of work, people who have faced far worse for doing nothing except doing their jobs.
Britt McHenry returns to ESPN, asks for ‘second chance’
Reporters, male and female, have endured miles of hate and scorn and shame and ugly taunts on social media. And they never brought any of it on themselves. They probably read your piece with mild amusement, how you had to stick a needle in your eye because of the anxiety you brought on yourself.
But when Marie Claire magazine calls looking for you to contribute to a pity piece, a long screed about how your life's been impacted by that one-minute, edited video that went viral a year ago, just decline. Nobody needs to hear from you anymore.
Why in the world would you dredge any of this up after we've forgotten about you?
Britt McHenry still has her job, so why bring up an incident from 2015?
(NICK WASS/AP)
You said you were sorry last year and Advanced Towing said you were forgiven and you shouldn't lose your job for getting so mad. End of story, right?
Foul-mouthed Britt McHenry returns to ESPN this weekend
But you did the piece, which went online Monday, and your long, rambling journey through how hard it was for you and how you were wrong to say those things is 2,000 words of content we just didn't need. Maybe you needed to get it out, to tell the world how good of a person you really are and how decent your parents really are. But the rest of us? Come on.
Not now. Not today. But we'll get back to that.
"For me, the key has been to focus on the present and on how to make myself a better person every day," you said. "I know now that as soon as you feel an empowering moment of success, you can experience a moment of utter failure just as fast. It's what you do after those moments that defines you. None of us should be judged solely by our worst mistakes. And, when you get the opportunity, you should work as hard as you can to prove that."
So what have you done to make yourself a better person? That's not in the story. What are you doing to stop the objectification of women? What are you doing to make people realize body shaming is a real issue and a hurtful one, particularly in your own business?
ESPN's Britt McHenry urged kindness days before towing rant
None of that made it into your story.
Britt McHenry.
(ESPN)
You were mad that night when your car was towed. We've all been there. You were probably not the first or last irate customer Gina's had in her window. Getting your car towed or getting a ticket or having to go to traffic court sucks. It sucks for everybody. But the difference between you and most people, aside from being "in the news" is that we may be mad, we may have words with an attendant who gives us some attitude or pushes our buttons, but we don't act like you did.
You are a big television star, and to rub that in someone's face, to go after someone's appearance, her teeth, her weight, her education, well, that's the kind of stuff someone else we all know did.
Just for a refresher, here are some of the lowlights of that infamous night:
Britt McHenry invited to give anti-bullying speech to kids
"I'm in the news, sweetheart, and I will f--king sue this place."
"With no education, no skill set, just wanted to clarify that."
"So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing."
McHenry caught on tape in the middle of her irate rant.
(LIVELEAK)
"Maybe if I was missing some teeth, they would hire me, huh?"
Follow the Daily News Sports on Facebook. "Like" us here.
"Cause I'm on television and you're in a f--king trailer, honey."
"Lose some weight, baby girl."
If we didn't know you said that stuff, it could just as easily pass for remarks at a Donald Trump campaign rally, doesn't it?
A year later, what happened in that parking garage is important only for one thing. It represents the kind of language and behavior that's too widely accepted in America now. It doesn't keep you off the air and it sure as hell doesn't keep you out of the White House.
You got a week vacation a year ago for an embarrassing event that's going to follow you forever. So stop talking about it. Nobody cares. You have your job and your livelihood and you got your car back. As far as we can tell, you've done nothing to solve the problem.
So the next time someone wants you to tell your side of the story again, just say, "No comment."
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/m...ry-writes-pity-piece-wanted-article-1.2908437
Next time, just say, "No comment."
Nobody needs to hear from you anymore, Britt McHenry. You still have your job, you still have your livelihood and you still have your car. That's a lot more than a lot of people have.
You got a one-week suspension from ESPN last year after you were caught being super-mean to a parking lot attendant and shaming someone named Gina, a single mother of three, for her bad teeth and her weight and her crappy job. In a perfect world, we'd all be smart and pretty and have nice jobs.
But it's not a perfect world, and I'm sorry you had to find that out the hard way over the last year. You truly had to deal with some crappy stuff. But so have a lot of other people in your line of work, people who have faced far worse for doing nothing except doing their jobs.
Britt McHenry returns to ESPN, asks for ‘second chance’
Reporters, male and female, have endured miles of hate and scorn and shame and ugly taunts on social media. And they never brought any of it on themselves. They probably read your piece with mild amusement, how you had to stick a needle in your eye because of the anxiety you brought on yourself.
But when Marie Claire magazine calls looking for you to contribute to a pity piece, a long screed about how your life's been impacted by that one-minute, edited video that went viral a year ago, just decline. Nobody needs to hear from you anymore.
Why in the world would you dredge any of this up after we've forgotten about you?
Britt McHenry still has her job, so why bring up an incident from 2015?
(NICK WASS/AP)
You said you were sorry last year and Advanced Towing said you were forgiven and you shouldn't lose your job for getting so mad. End of story, right?
Foul-mouthed Britt McHenry returns to ESPN this weekend
But you did the piece, which went online Monday, and your long, rambling journey through how hard it was for you and how you were wrong to say those things is 2,000 words of content we just didn't need. Maybe you needed to get it out, to tell the world how good of a person you really are and how decent your parents really are. But the rest of us? Come on.
Not now. Not today. But we'll get back to that.
"For me, the key has been to focus on the present and on how to make myself a better person every day," you said. "I know now that as soon as you feel an empowering moment of success, you can experience a moment of utter failure just as fast. It's what you do after those moments that defines you. None of us should be judged solely by our worst mistakes. And, when you get the opportunity, you should work as hard as you can to prove that."
So what have you done to make yourself a better person? That's not in the story. What are you doing to stop the objectification of women? What are you doing to make people realize body shaming is a real issue and a hurtful one, particularly in your own business?
ESPN's Britt McHenry urged kindness days before towing rant
None of that made it into your story.
Britt McHenry.
(ESPN)
You were mad that night when your car was towed. We've all been there. You were probably not the first or last irate customer Gina's had in her window. Getting your car towed or getting a ticket or having to go to traffic court sucks. It sucks for everybody. But the difference between you and most people, aside from being "in the news" is that we may be mad, we may have words with an attendant who gives us some attitude or pushes our buttons, but we don't act like you did.
You are a big television star, and to rub that in someone's face, to go after someone's appearance, her teeth, her weight, her education, well, that's the kind of stuff someone else we all know did.
Just for a refresher, here are some of the lowlights of that infamous night:
Britt McHenry invited to give anti-bullying speech to kids
"I'm in the news, sweetheart, and I will f--king sue this place."
"With no education, no skill set, just wanted to clarify that."
"So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing."
McHenry caught on tape in the middle of her irate rant.
(LIVELEAK)
"Maybe if I was missing some teeth, they would hire me, huh?"
Follow the Daily News Sports on Facebook. "Like" us here.
"Cause I'm on television and you're in a f--king trailer, honey."
"Lose some weight, baby girl."
If we didn't know you said that stuff, it could just as easily pass for remarks at a Donald Trump campaign rally, doesn't it?
A year later, what happened in that parking garage is important only for one thing. It represents the kind of language and behavior that's too widely accepted in America now. It doesn't keep you off the air and it sure as hell doesn't keep you out of the White House.
You got a week vacation a year ago for an embarrassing event that's going to follow you forever. So stop talking about it. Nobody cares. You have your job and your livelihood and you got your car back. As far as we can tell, you've done nothing to solve the problem.
So the next time someone wants you to tell your side of the story again, just say, "No comment."
Disney reported disappointing first-quarter fiscal results back in February, primarily because of weak performance by ESPN and the company's media networks. Advertising revenue declined 7 percent compared to the first quarter last year while programming costs increased, including a new NBA deal that costs the network $1.4 billion a year, a 143 percent increase over its previous contract with the league.
ESPN also continues to lose subscribers because of the trend of cord-cutting. According to Nielsen, the network had 88.4 million subscribers in December 2016, down from 100 million in February 2011, though ESPN disagrees with Nielsen’s numbers. ESPN earns about $6.50 per subscriber per month.
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/nfl_draft/ESPN-Britt-McHenry-layoff-NFL-Draft.html
ESPN also continues to lose subscribers because of the trend of cord-cutting. According to Nielsen, the network had 88.4 million subscribers in December 2016, down from 100 million in February 2011, though ESPN disagrees with Nielsen’s numbers. ESPN earns about $6.50 per subscriber per month.
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/nfl_draft/ESPN-Britt-McHenry-layoff-NFL-Draft.html
During Wednesday night’s broadcast of Baseball Tonight, the crew announced that two of their analysts also lost their jobs in the cuts — former Phillies outfielder Raul Ibanez and former Oakland Athletics pitcher Dallas Braden. Later in the broadcast, hosts Jon Sciambi and Rick Sutcliffe anounced that another former Phillies outfielder, baseball analyst Doug Glanville, was also among the cuts.
As layoffs loom for ESPN, insider dishes on who may be on the chopping block
ESPN personalities Mike Golif (left), John Buccigross (center) and Stephen A. Smith (right).
(SCOTT ROTH/AP/PR NEWSWIRE/JOHN SALANGSANG/INVISION/AP)
DAN GUNDERMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, March 31, 2017, 9:58 AM
Pink slips are coming at ESPN, and one “insider” says even popular on-air personalities could get the ax.
On Thursday, Jim Miller, who authored the 2011 book “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” discussed the upcoming cuts on a Sports Illustrated Media podcast.
Miller indicated that ESPN may lay off 40 to 50 employees, including well-known TV personalities. It has been reported that the Disney subsidiary is looking to cut its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, Miller said.
The author and insider then speculated on who he believes is safe, and who may soon be looking for a new gig.
Miller believes that “SportsCenter” anchors Neil Everett, Stan Verrett and Scott Van Pelt are safe, along with radio host Mike Greenberg and “First Take’s” Stephen A. Smith. He also suggested that anchors Jemele Hill and Michael Smith may be safe, along with personalities from “Around the Horn” and “Pardon the Interruption.”
Conversely, Miller said longtime radio host Mike Golic may be limited to radio after “Mike and Mike” comes to an end after its 18-year run. Greenberg is headed for morning TV.
Trey Wingo and Mike Golic, Jr. are contenders to replace Greenberg.
Miller said that those outside of the commitments ESPN has already made may be on the hot seat.
“That’s not to say everyone else is gone, but I think those are the people that should take a deep breath, and those are the people that should feel immune.”
John Buccigross, who has been at the network since 1996, has a contract ending with the network on July 1.
Buccigross recently told SportingNews that he would like to stay in Bristol, Conn., but said that he is “not stressed” about the larger situation.
In recent years, competition has stiffened for the network, but as Miller made clear, many personalities fans know and love at least appear to be safe.
ESPN personalities Mike Golif (left), John Buccigross (center) and Stephen A. Smith (right).
(SCOTT ROTH/AP/PR NEWSWIRE/JOHN SALANGSANG/INVISION/AP)
DAN GUNDERMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, March 31, 2017, 9:58 AM
Pink slips are coming at ESPN, and one “insider” says even popular on-air personalities could get the ax.
On Thursday, Jim Miller, who authored the 2011 book “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” discussed the upcoming cuts on a Sports Illustrated Media podcast.
Miller indicated that ESPN may lay off 40 to 50 employees, including well-known TV personalities. It has been reported that the Disney subsidiary is looking to cut its budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, Miller said.
The author and insider then speculated on who he believes is safe, and who may soon be looking for a new gig.
Miller believes that “SportsCenter” anchors Neil Everett, Stan Verrett and Scott Van Pelt are safe, along with radio host Mike Greenberg and “First Take’s” Stephen A. Smith. He also suggested that anchors Jemele Hill and Michael Smith may be safe, along with personalities from “Around the Horn” and “Pardon the Interruption.”
Conversely, Miller said longtime radio host Mike Golic may be limited to radio after “Mike and Mike” comes to an end after its 18-year run. Greenberg is headed for morning TV.
Trey Wingo and Mike Golic, Jr. are contenders to replace Greenberg.
Miller said that those outside of the commitments ESPN has already made may be on the hot seat.
“That’s not to say everyone else is gone, but I think those are the people that should take a deep breath, and those are the people that should feel immune.”
John Buccigross, who has been at the network since 1996, has a contract ending with the network on July 1.
Buccigross recently told SportingNews that he would like to stay in Bristol, Conn., but said that he is “not stressed” about the larger situation.
In recent years, competition has stiffened for the network, but as Miller made clear, many personalities fans know and love at least appear to be safe.
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