I wanted to vent off here about this because it's way overdue. ESPN was once a great sports media back when guys like Stuart Scott, Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen and Kenny Mayne were doing their nightly casts. Or even before that when Bob Ley had just started Outside the Lines. Their main attraction was the iconic Monday Night Countdown with Chris Berman and Tom Jackson. They also aired the very successful NHL 2Night on ESPN2 with John Buccigross and Barry Melrose.
Today, ESPN is heralded by woke trash like Stephen A Smith. Their only great anchor is Mike Greenberg. They got rid of the only watchable football anchor in Trey Wingo. What really annoys me most though is their sports app. Every single time you click on the box score it shows the entire team lineup as if they designed it only for NBA games.:-) [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca: Once again the woke stuff has nothing to do with why their station isn't good anymore. Being owned by Disney it was pretty obvious they were gonna go down that path.
They have been courting the younger audience for what seems like 2 decades now and have yet to really get any return on it. They get out of the NFL what they can like every other network. There's a reason NFL live runs 365 days a year.
But they made the decision to really stake their flagship to the NBA, ESPN is all things NBA all the time. The Jump is on everyday, the NBA gets prime coverage on sportscenter, they show games etc. Meanwhile they moved away from the NHL basically completely and the MLB is still shown but has been drastically downsized.
They basically have done nothing but chase younger viewers that really don't care while alienating older fans who like things like MLB in the process.
I’m going to stop you right there.
1. This is a matter of opinion.
2. It’s not just the woke stuff, but it’s obviously part of it. It’s only made it worse.
3. It doesn’t surprise me that you’d say this considering you are always defending woke bs. [Reply]
the best work ESPN has done in the past 5 years was 18 months ago during the height of the quarantine, where no sports were happening, and they played repeats of dog competitions, lumberjack competitions, bowling, etc. etc.
The Ocho content has always been the best! [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mecca:
They were shitty long before that, it would be like saying your cold really sucks when you have MS.
They were shitty, yes. But i still tuned in for highlights, until it became political. Personally sports are my escape, or were. I support players right to demonstrate, however when i tune in for sports updates i dont want any agenda pushed on me plain and simple. [Reply]
ESPN prioritizing the NBA is the biggest problem. It's the most woke league and darling of Twitter but in real life with sports fans it's not. MLB is a shit ton more popular but everyone just follows their own team. [Reply]
I haven't watched ESPN regularly in a decade+. Rich Eisen and Stuart Scott was the last great team there. Stan Verrett and Neil Everett were pretty good. I may be in the minority, but I don't mind Scott Van Pelt, even if he tries too hard most of the time.
Look at it like this - it's kind of how Star Wars was shat upon by Disney - how do you screw up a franchise like that? Same with ESPN. You have to work hard to mess up sure things, but they pulled it off. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ChiefsCountry:
ESPN prioritizing the NBA is the biggest problem. It's the most woke league and darling of Twitter but in real life with sports fans it's not. MLB is a shit ton more popular but everyone just follows their own team.
All they see with MLB is the average fan age is like 57, that isn't the crowd they want. [Reply]
Espn was probably one of the early ones in trolling for clicks. Dan Patrick said he was incentivized for throwing words like Tebow in to his commentary. That's probably the start of everything. They realized that woke accusations from Stephen a. and jemele generate clicks. Idiot trolls like skip get clicks for idiotic takes. Espn has generated so much traffic the past decade from people who can't resist feeding trolls. Thats a pretty bad business model for a sports network to feed more off of haters than actual fans. [Reply]
Originally Posted by staylor26:
Love how you’re dancing around the race aspect of NBA vs. MLB/NHL.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence and has nothing to do with their woke ideology.
I don't think it's some wild coincidence that they support all of the woke things when the 2 sports they spend 90% of their time on heavily feature black players. But they were trending to the NFL and NBA before BLM and wokeness became the platform.
I think those things go hand in hand but I don't think they chose them because of wokeness, they chose them before all that. [Reply]
