Is ESPN committing suicide?

they also paid $750 million for cawkfighting

it’s all further downhill from here
 
Fugazy said:
The Dan LeBatard show is fucking great.

His TV show Highly Questionable is blech.

PTI is still great but once Tony and Wilbon retire it's all over.

Get Up! Is hot bullshit as is everything else on that network aside from NFL live.

Actually some 30 for 30s are good though.
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LeBatard's radio show might be the best in the country and I don't even like him that much.

Highly Questionable is ok to me. Him and Bomani were a nice touch.

PTI is still the best show they have even though I don't watch it as much as I used to.

Around the Horn was great until they started letting that Sarah Spain chick on it.

Get Up IS straight up bullshit. Greenberg is a weenie and Beadle is a straight up hater.

30 for 30s can be a hit or miss.

I actually like First Take at times. Lot of people don't like Stephen A Smith but he is hands down the biggest 'star' they have on ESPN.

But ESPN has been a failing network especially since they turned into WokeCenter.
 
MoparOrNoCar said:
It used to be sports with a dash of comedy thrown in. Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Stuart Scott, Rich Eisen and Kenny Mayne. Throw in some NFL Primetime with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson and I used to be pumped to watch the highlights from the day.

They would show the highlights and add in commentary that made them funny and more interesting. Then at the end of the highlight they would show the box score with the stat lines from about 5 players on each team. After that, it was on to the next game. The plays of the week and Sunday conversation were about the only breaks from that formula.

Fast forward to these days and it's a bunch of analysis and conversations about social justice topics. When they do highlights, it's basically only for ESPN's favorites (Lebron, Golden State and any team from LA, New York and Boston) and maybe a few other of the good teams. A game between lets say the Spurs and the Raptors gets an abbreviated highlight with a box score showing two abbreviated stat lines. After that, it's on to a segment about who wore the best shoes that week or two guys pretending to be arguing about sports.
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I suppose some people hate 20 minutes of baseball highlights with Dan Patrick throwing in "The Whiff", "Gone", "En Fuego" (Also for Basketball)..
Or
Olbermann - "From Way Downtown... BANG!!" He should have trademark that Bang.

But I loved it. Actually, I hated when they showed interviews or did extended analysis. I just wanted them to get on to the highlights of the next game. If had it on DVR, I'd immediately fast forward through that shit.

Monday mornings (or Sunday Evenings) during the NFL season was the best.

For the life of me, I can't understand how NFL executives thought it was great idea to fire Dan Patrick. Sure, he wanted to do a radio show (which is now Epic BTW). But they could have kept him around part time like Bermin to do NFL Sundays or whatever... So stupid.

Finally... Their broadcast of Monday Night Football is so fucking lame and awful. They look like amateurs compared to the Sunday Night Broadcast.
 
Scerpi said:
I suppose some people hate 20 minutes of baseball highlights with Dan Patrick throwing in "The Whiff", "Gone", "En Fuego" (Also for Basketball)..
Or
Olbermann - "From Way Downtown... BANG!!" He should have trademark that Bang.

But I loved it. Actually, I hated when they showed interviews or did extended analysis. I just wanted them to get on to the highlights of the next game. If had it on DVR, I'd immediately fast forward through that shit.

Monday mornings (or Sunday Evenings) during the NFL season was the best.

For the life of me, I can't understand how NFL executives thought it was great idea to fire Dan Patrick. Sure, he wanted to do a radio show (which is now Epic BTW). But they could have kept him around part time like Bermin to do NFL Sundays or whatever... So stupid.

Finally... Their broadcast of Monday Night Football is so fucking lame and awful. They look like amateurs compared to the Sunday Night Broadcast.
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Same here. I always hated the Sunday Conversation. I was like just get back to the "Boo-yahs" and "En fuegos".

The worst is when they start the season with two Monday night games and the second game always has two people that have never worked together or done anything this big in their lives. Last year it was Rex Ryan and some lady and while she had no business doing MNF, she did the best she could. Meanwhile Rex was just dead air for half the game. Not saying a word after half the plays and not responding when she would set him up for analysis. Was amateur hour out there.
 
Scerpi said:
I suppose some people hate 20 minutes of baseball highlights with Dan Patrick throwing in "The Whiff", "Gone", "En Fuego" (Also for Basketball)..
Or
Olbermann - "From Way Downtown... BANG!!" He should have trademark that Bang.

But I loved it. Actually, I hated when they showed interviews or did extended analysis. I just wanted them to get on to the highlights of the next game. If had it on DVR, I'd immediately fast forward through that shit.

Monday mornings (or Sunday Evenings) during the NFL season was the best.

For the life of me, I can't understand how NFL executives thought it was great idea to fire Dan Patrick. Sure, he wanted to do a radio show (which is now Epic BTW). But they could have kept him around part time like Bermin to do NFL Sundays or whatever... So stupid.

Finally... Their broadcast of Monday Night Football is so fucking lame and awful. They look like amateurs compared to the Sunday Night Broadcast.
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Losing Dan Patrick was the beginning of ESPN's downfall. Skip Bayless was a cad at times but he was still a huge star on the network and they lost him to FS1. Same as Colin Cowherd.
 
had a real gripe with Sunday Night Beisbol too.
when they brought in Jessica Mendoza and A-Roid and after
Dan Shulman retired, it's unrecognizable as a BB broadcast.
 
i see people mention guys like dan patrick, etc and how losing them was the beginning of the end. actually, i think patrick is a big part of why they began to decline. we all had fun with patrick, olbermann, etc at the beginning. they changed the dry delivery highlights and made them fun. unfortunately, as they became more popular, they began to focus more on themselves than the highlights. now THEY were the real stars.

then people like stuart scott (rip) come along and take it to new levels. it wasnt "let me show you this highlight in a fun way," it was "look at me say funny stuff! oh, and here is a highlight, btw."

then it completely fell apart and we got morons like skip bayless who were 100% about themselves, and the sports were an afterthought. He had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't matter because all he cared about was pissing off the viewer.

Basically, they were a victim of their own success. i loved berman when he first started his act (Bert "Be Home" Blyleven was hilarious). but it grew tired and the last 10 years i couldnt watch anything he was a part of. patrick, while not nearly that bad is still miserable to me. wayyyy to douchey.
 
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ProBoxingInsidr said:
i see people mention guys like dan patrick, etc and how losing them was the beginning of the end. actually, i think patrick is a big part of why they began to decline. we all had fun with patrick, olbermann, etc at the beginning. they changed the dry delivery highlights and made them fun. unfortunately, as they became more popular, they began to focus more on themselves than the highlights. now THEY were the real stars.

then people like stuart scott (rip) come along and take it to new levels. it wasnt "let me show you this highlight in a fun way," it was "look at me say funny stuff! oh, and here is a highlight, btw."

then it completely fell apart and we got morons like skip bayless who were 100% about themselves, and the sports were an afterthought. He had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't matter because all he cared about was pissing off the viewer.

Basically, they were a victim of their own success. i loved berman when he first started his act (Bert "Be Home" Blyleven was hilarious). but it grew tired and the last 10 years i couldnt watch anything he was a part of. patrick, while not nearly that bad is still miserable to me. wayyyy to douchey.
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I think you're kind of wrong. Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen, Stuart Scott got popular because they were great and made the show entertaining. But they did it in a way that still FOCUSed on the sporting events.

Rumors are that there were certain executives who felt these guys were TOO popular and didn't like that they did things their own way against the corporate structure. Especially Olberman and Patrick. For years in the 90's when they did the late show, no one in corporate was hardly even paying attention, because they were on at 11pm (Eastern). Then the shows got rerun in the early morning with updates for the late West Coast games. The ratings for the late show started getting better than the early shows with Bob Ley and Berman.

Dan and Keith were always taking jabs at corporate. They came up with the "The Big Show" as a joke and corporate didn't like it... So they kept using it.

Keith also came up with "This is Sportscenter" because they kept demanding he stop referring to it as "The Big Show". He said that way to piss them off.... but somehow it caught on they've been makeing "This is Sports Center" commercials for years since.

It's like corporate didn't know what they had in Keith and Dan and that the harder they tried to rein them in, they more the rebelled and audiences loved it. But corporate was dumb and ended up firing both of them.

All the rest has been rehashed on the this thread before. ESPN decided that the personalities were bigger than the sports and athletes themselves. And that we'd enjoy listen to them prattle on endlessly with their opinions, analysis and worst of all... HOT TAKES! Fuck these clowns.

Speaking of great shows on ESPN. Does anyone remember Ron Jaworski and Merrill Hoge's NFL Match Up they would do early Sunday mornings before NFL Games?


I could watch this shit all day.

Right before Jaws was fired, he provided an AMAZING quote on sports shows that the Corporate Fucks at ESPN should have paid attention to.

****
“The Matchup show was on the air before I started at ESPN. If I do it or not in the future, it will still be a great show. There were times people said ‘The fans don’t care about those Xs and Os.’ That is bull! People care about football. We have so many shows on, uh, all television networks, that do nothing but have a bunch of guys throwing words out there. We use the video, we use the coaches’ tape on the matchup show. There’s a reason it’s the longest-running studio show on television, because of that. It’s unique, it’s different. People at the league, people at the network said it would fail, but here it is, the longest-running show on television, because people want more.”

Jaworski then continued with a shot at screaming personalities.

“And I wish executives at all the networks would realize that. People want more. They don’t want a bunch of people on TV screaming at each other, ‘You’re right’ and ‘You’re wrong,’ they want intellectual conversation, and they want to see why teams win and why teams lose. And the tape shows that, and networks and producers don’t use enough of that.”
****

Then they fired him, probably because he didn't want to play ball... Genius...

Yeah... I'm a little triggered. ESPN and Sportscenter was such a huge part of my life for almost 20 years, these fucks ruined it.

However, the demise of ESPN gave me the courage to cut the cord to cable two years ago since ESPN was the only reason I kept cable around.
 
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Scerpi said:
I think you're kind of wrong. Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen, Stuart Scott got popular because they were great and made the show entertaining. But they did it in a way that still FOCUSed on the sporting events.

Rumors are that there were certain executives who felt these guys were TOO popular and didn't like that they did things their own way against the corporate structure. Especially Olberman and Patrick. For years in the 90's when they did the late show, no one in corporate was hardly even paying attention, because they were on at 11pm (Eastern). Then the shows got rerun in the early morning with updates for the late West Coast games. The ratings for the late show started getting better than the early shows with Bob Ley and Berman.

Dan and Keith were always taking jabs at corporate. They came up with the "The Big Show" as a joke and corporate didn't like it... So they kept using it.

Keith also came up with "This is Sportscenter" because they kept demanding he stop referring to it as "The Big Show". He said that way to piss them off.... but somehow it caught on they've been makeing "This is Sports Center" commercials for years since.
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they definitely were great at the beginning. and corporate may not like it, but thatquickly changed. like i said, i think it coincided right around with the arrival of stuart scott. so that was a few years later. patrick and olbermann still respected the game. as i said in an earlier post, their success was a blessing AND a curse as the following anchors just tried to one up each other. the later talents just tried to make themselves stars.

olbermann is an obnoxious and horrible human being. he has been fired from job after job after job, so i can see how they fired him. when he is talking sports, he is incredible. any other time he talks he is a total piece of trash.
 
The only sports shows I listen to are PTI and the Kornheiser podcast.
 
ESPN is so out of touch they just put completely irrelevant derrick rose at #36 of the most influential athletes today. Are they on effin drugs over there?
 
yea but what about those epic Cornhole Tourney's they broadcast?
so epically epic
 
ESPN is now like CNN with a bit of sports on the side.
 
They just bought the rights to UFC Fight Night.

If they're serious about making inroads into our demographic, and profiting from it, they're going to really have to triple down on their current trend of de-politicizing the network.
 
need more random shit on their like when they would always have strongman/outdoor games on espn2 instead of the show that just ran on espn a halfhour beforehand
 
"We're doing the best we can here at ESPN.."
giphy.gif

"but I understand your concerns."
 
I gave up on ESPN when they dropped the NHL, excommunicated the NFL last year when the protests began, don’t shop at Dick’s when they changed their firearm policy. When are business’s going to learn that people have sports and hobbies as a safe place from politics and world problems. When they drag politics into the equation they alienate a portion of the target audience, and in this circumstance it seems to be the patriotic viewership that’s willing to make changes when you call traditional values and freedoms into question. It’s unfortunate that this is what has needed to happen for these corporations to take notice, sadly IMO this is only the beginning of major life changes for modern Americans.
 
There is a reason ESPN is called MSNBC with footballs. I use to watch sportscenter a few times a day and especially prime time. I now despise ESPN and the garbage political network they have become. It's obvious which way the lean in politics for sure even board members of Disney have asked about this a few time because of all the money being lost. People are bitter because we miss the good ole days and they could stop with these stupid opinionated shows with fake arguments and drama. PTI was cool and around the horn they mostly kept politics out at first now it's disgusting. Maybe some day someone will make a non spin news/sports network that covers both 24x7 with BS opinions just facts and things nothing being taken out of context and showing 100's of tweets a day.
 
Gregolian said:
Dave Rubin a political podcast guy was on Rogan's podcast around the last presidential election and noted people are pissed at ESPN and other sports shit cause every time you turn it on they're blabbing about politics.

That's what's killing ESPN.
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Disney's doing this with everything. ESPN, the Star Wars movies, Marvel comics, Jimmy Kimmel went full political after being known as the Man Show guy, Modern Family had on a transexual 10 year old (which is pretty extreme compared to their gay characters who are pretty sitcom-y and safe), etc.
 
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