CFP: Last week all-sports cable TV channel ESPN sent out pink slips to 100 employees, many of them on-air personalities. Profits have been declining since last year in large part because of the 12 million viewers who, since 2011, have dropped their subscriptions.
Yet even at this late date, there are those who insist this has nothing to do with the network’s pervasive left-wing bias, preferring to blame it on customers switching over to mobile viewing.
Among the usual suspects promoting this view is Kevin Draper of Deadspin.
ESPN’s liberal bent
Regarding ESPN’s liberal bent, he writes
This last is a point a lot of the network’s dumbest critics have pointed to as a reason for ESPN’s decline, and even levied as a charge of sorts. It’s true, of course, if not necessarily for the reasons those that are making it think it is. Former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent once titled a column “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?,” and answered the question in the first line: “Of course it is.” He would later regret his flippancy, but the basic argument was sound: The Times’ viewpoint was (and is) urban, northeast, and educated, and members of those groups generally skew liberal.
Draper’s breezy dismissal of liberal politics as a reason for ESPN’s declining subscriber base reminds me of the quick excuses pundits gave for the National Football League’s ratings drop last season: Well, ratings have been declining for a while, and there is a presidential election going on, and that explains the drop, not Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest. But shortly thereafter an independent survey showed that, yes, Kaepernick’s juvenile idiocy was one reason for the fall in viewership. read more
Damn fools for CEOs who just can’t figure out if they are there to run a company selling a product or service, or there to play Social Justice Warrior games at the expense of their investors! The leader of this professional Goon Squad should be the CEO of Target for being the all-time major asshole of the century for losing 25% of the value of the company due to his unparalleled ineptness!
Denial of reality: da nile is a river in eygpt.
I love my baseball served up with praise of immigration and how many more quban players there’d be if quba was a free country (actually heard that one a few years ago.)
Hey Kapernick is actually a role model for America (teaches kids to protest appropriately dontcha know!
Pig slop fed to other than pigs is still pig slop.
I watched zero San Fran games last year. The 4 who refused the White House trip this year had better play at 100%. Claiming they didn’t feel welcome in that house is unpatriotic. Robert Kraft is a businessman first and a patriot second.
Fools. So arrogant they’re convinced they can’t possibly be wrong. All their customers are wrong. They’d rather die as penniless fools than admit they are wrong. Doing my part to hasten their demise.
When the Colin Kapernick stupidy happened, every talking head on ESPN said the same line, almost word for word: “Well, you might disagree with the way he’s protesting, but you can’t deny what he’s saying is true, blacks have it really bad in America.”
I heard this over and over on Mike & Mike, by them and by their guests. Then, after Trump won the election, a Chicago Cub’s pitcher tweeted out that he would help any Hollywood celebrity move that wanted to. Mike & Mike went nuts on the air talking about how there was no place in sports for someone to talk like that, and that his manager or GM needed to set him down to explain how you don’t do things to divide a clubhouse. Guest after guest repeated that line.
That was my last day with Mike & Mike.
Extremely Scripted Prog Network.
Sports is an escape for Conservatives and Liberals. I willing to bet it wasn’t just conservatives that felt they lost their only escape from the bull shit and tuned out. I’d really like to meet the Rocket Surgeon that came up with that idea.
I stopped watching ESPN a long time ago, but they still get my money as it’s part of my cable bundle. 🙁
Watched the Sox/Cubs game last night. Announcers SUCKED – Schilling knows baseball. ESPN blew it big time. Their self-imposed downfall is quite deserving.
P.S. I paused the game, watched other stuff. That way I could skip commercials AND between-pitch “analysis.”
ESPN, the original name is Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Perhaps they *feel* the liberal bent-off-the-rails attitude is part of the Entertainment.
The upper echelons of the company are libtarded negroes… and it has become this wonder-negro SJW love-fest. They fucked up the demographic.
Phony-baloney libtard biased “news” is everywhere, sucking the joy out of everything.
Pro sports including the Superbowl, and even the Olympics have been ruined. (Though I will watch women’s figure skating and tennis. And curling…)
Multimillion dollar crybaby/racist/thug “role models” and SJW commentaters are part of the problem, also too many sports channels and not enough content to fill the available time.
I can get all the sports I need by watching about 6 minutes of weekly highlights.
All together now:
“The Left destroys everything it touches. ”
In a year or two, Kaepernick will die in some 3 AM parking lot shootout over drugs, or a hooker.
I read that 90 of the 100 fired were WHITE MALES.
You know, evil vile white males.
Oh yeah, that’s a cable channel isn’t it?