ESPN is learning the hard way that it's not 1996 anymore.
Back in 1996 sports fans watched ESPN a fair amount of time, mostly because it was the most convenient way to get our sports news and scores. Sure, the internet existed in 1996 but it wasn't really that popular. You could either wait for the newspaper or hope that CNN covered late night baseball game scores. ESPN was a Godsend. Sure the anchors were obnoxious, self important are fascinated by their own snarky comments-but after all, it's television so we could learn to ignore that. Just give us sports and analysis and we can plow through the rest.
ESPN, like many companies, never really understood that 2017 is a totally different time than the 90's. Or even the early 2000s. Or even 2008. Now, if I want sports news I can get it from many other sources. ESPN is becoming irrelevant. They still have live sports, and I think that is the only thing keeping them in business. While I'm not a prophet I think that in the future even live sports will become "a la carte". Instead of relying on what ESPN serves you, you'll be able to watch whatever team you want in whatever sport you want, for a fee. If that ever happens, than ESPN will no longer worry about layoffs-they'll be out of business.
A lot of the discussion I've seen about this revolves around cable-cutting. ESPN pays millions (billions?) for sports broadcasting contracts. That cost gets passed on to cable customers, who are ditching cable at an increasing rate.
ReplyDeleteThat's an excellent point, and one I missed. I'm a Dish guy (I accept your pity and thank you for it) so I don't think of cable. Totally agree with you. 100%.
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