Yep. Of course, I remember when MTV actually played music, too. :D

They're shitting all over the main group of people who might actually watch their TV shows because they actually still watch TV.

Lotsa truth in that second part... everyone wants the young demographic, but kids are into 1001 other things and barely watch their shows at all no matter how "with the times" they try to be

Its why I hate SNL now, Lorne Michaels the old fool thinks he is staying relevant by going hard left SJW... but twenty-somethings arent watching that ****ing show

I'd think with sports, especially... that bubble will burst eventually.

Same reason NFL viewership is down. The damned agenda-pushing is just ridiculous. Prior to last year, unless it was a playoff game or close to Veteran's Day, they never showed the National Anthem before a game. They did it last year and kept panning the sidelines looking for players who would kneel, hoping to stir controversy. It was obvious and pathetic. I just want to watch the damn game. I'm also sick to death of the hot pink accessories the players are forced to wear for a full month - yeah, I know it's a cancer awareness thing, but I also believe there are people at the top who just think it's funny to make a bunch of alpha males parade around wearing hot pink clothing and shove it down our throats. And then, of course, at the end of the season, the same goddamn teams with the same goddamn goldenboys win the championship year after year after year.

Stop preaching, stop glorifying the assholes who hate America, write a check to the National Cancer Society for all the money you spend on the pink shit, and maybe, just maybe, allow somebody not named Brady, Manning or Roethlisburger to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl for once.

It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with cord-cutting and ala carte TV packages. This is happening to every cable network.

During basketball season they show too much basketball. Huh, weird.

Mainstream America is left.

You know what ESPN shows a lot of? Good teams, and teams with large fanbases. Since both tend to overlap, you tend to get a lot of coverage of those teams. Yeah, it sucks, but did you ever hear them talk about the Warriors before 2014? Have they systematically ignored the Spurs despite them winning five NBA titles?

Did they suddenly start talking about Carolina and Seattle when they were dominant NFC teams? Is there also a marked absence of Seattle Mariners baseball and the Denver Nuggets, despite the other teams in those metros receiving a ton of coverage? Why might that be?

The Steelers were great for years and they got coverage. The Pirates weren't and they didn't. Both exist in the same market. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. The Packers get a ton of publicity despite being smack in the middle of America while they never talk about the Brewers anymore.

It isn't some conspiracy against flyover country.

Right. That's why Hillary Clinton was elected president.

The even bigger issue is rights fees. The politics don't make a lick of difference, and the loss of the cord cutters definitely hurts... but ESPN charges a ton of money to cable companies.

A big problem is they are paying billions for the rights to broadcast these sports. $2 billion for the NFL, over a billion for the NBA. Nearly a billion for baseball. And that doesn't include half a billion for the College Football Playoff and hundreds of millions with all these individual conferences they broadcast in both football and basketball. They've been shedding talent for a while now. I'm really interested to see what they do when some of these TV contracts expire. Will they stop broadcasting quite as many sports as they do now?

Definitely!

There are so many things out there they could show instead of two douchebag's arguing with each other.


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Bingo.

I was able to cut my cord in late 15' and was able to save up to 50+ dollars a month. Just got a Roku box with Netflix and Hulu and bought a HD OTA antenna for football and live network stuff. Since I don't watch cable that much anymore and just spend more time online, it made sense.

Youtube is coming out with a TV package in the next few weeks and it's going to have all these channels for 35$ a month.

Cable in the traditional sense is a dodo at this point.

https://assets.pcmag.com/media/image...740&height=375

This times 100.

I think everyone knows that the rights fees was a bubble that was eventually going to burst. IMO, it was a desperate move by companies to keep people on cable/satellite roles, b/c if you maintain your subscriber base you can pump up your profits in the short-term.

None of these properties are worth what ESPN, Viacom, etc. paid for them.

Holy shit, that's awesome.