ESPN's 32% ratings crash - layoffs happening
 

I watch it quite a bit because I love college basketball and watch the MLB during the summer. Also I think the 30-For-30 movies are all quite good. So I'm watching more than I ever have, but apparently nobody else is:



http://deadspin.com/espns-ratings-ar...atte-722030528

Their coverage sucks.

I'm not impressed with the NFLN but it's still all NFL all the time...

Maybe they should quit sucking? :shrug:

How are they sucking?

This calls for MORE TEBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW

Pretty much everything other than their live sporting events and some of the 30 for 30s is crap.

;)

I rarely watch ESPN, other than live games. I tried to watch Baseball Tonight the other day after the Royals beat the Yankees, but Curt Schilling is unbearable.

They're horrible

I cannot WAIT for the home-run hitting contest Monday night!

BACKBACKBACKBACK

Chris ****ing Berman represents everything I hate.

I pretty much only watch football games on ESPN. I do usually record and mostly fast forward through their NFL pregame show (3 hours now!) but I think that's mostly through habit.

If I started a station and just talked about a 3rd string, wannabe quarterback then my ratings would probably suck too.

Only bars watch Sportcenter.

NFL Primetime or whatever? I didn't have cable last season but a couple years ago I used to love the show with Berman, Ditka, Irvin and Tom Jackson. That was my favorite pre-game show.

I seem to be in the minority, but I actually like Chris Berman.

Hate their coverage. They live in an east coast bubble.

****, I can't wait for football season. I miss those pre-game shows.

It's the TMZ of sports, and even when they have a chance at decent content (NFL countdown, college gameday) and not just the same old crap rehashed in different formats (PTI, Around the Horn, SportsCenter, etc) , they spread it out over 2 or 3 hours with 50% commercials.

I watch live sports, some football pregame if I pause it long enough to skip commercials, and should probably watch 30 for 30.

Yeah, that one - except that they have added Cris Carter and Keyshawn Johnson to the mix and dropped Irvin. It can get pretty intolerable. I mostly watch it for the news rather than the previews of the games.

Yeah, setting aside their obvious player and team biases, their video highlights leave a lot to be desired.

I mean, they have access to hundreds of hours of footage every week and I get the same ****ing 6 plays looped from each game? That's horseshit. They'd be doing themselves a big favor to expand their highlight coverage.

This

Hey Herm, um Ray Farmer wants to see you...


He says bring your play book.

ESPN ratings are down and on August 16, Fox is rolling out a brand new sports network.

Confession time - CBS' pregame is my favorite, even with Sharpe on there. The mix of personalities is entertaining.

Can't stand the Fox pregame and won't watch it.

Ah, yeah yeah yeah. I've seen Key and Cris on there; Key and Irvin are like the same dude in my mind so I had forgotten about him.

I like that show. Definitely better than Shannon Sharpe, Bill Cowher and Michael Strahan, that's for sure. I do like James Brown, Boomer, Marino, and Bradshaw though so I'll tune into CBS and FOX from time to time.

That one isn't bad. That's with the black dude, Sharpe, Marino, Cowher, and Boomer, right?

And the other one is James Brown, Bradshaw, Strahan, Howie and some other dude I'm forgetting?

I always get them mixed up.

I also love the fact that they are the most expensive cable channel by far.

I prefer the ESPN pre-game the most but on commercials or during bullshit ass segments I don't want to watch I'll often flip between the other two.

Truthfully, I enjoy them all. I just use them to pass the time until the football starts anyway so I just need something that isn't completely annoying.

FOX's new sports network is going to compete with ESPN big time. They have the content and the their SportsCenter type show will challenge them.

I have a hard time watching a female lead speaking with a female field reporter and trying to take the conversation very seriously.

30 for 30 is a fantastic series, one of the best.

I think there are several factors hurting viewership;

• So many people use their phones and iPads for sport updates
• They have too many channels and have saturated all the sports
• Most of their broadcasters suck

I like Kornheiser and Wilbon but not much more. Some of their MLB coverage is decent but no Tony Kubek, Joe Garagiola, or Curt Gowdy types

I think their NFL coverage has gotten worse the last 10 years or so.

I watch it much less than I did

James Brown is "the black dude".

Curt Menefee instead of Brown and Jimmy Johnson is they dude you are forgetting.

I'll give 'em a shot. ESPN's act is tired.

Trying to do too much...
Sports enter is solid, if unspectacular. Bob Ley's show is decent. Obviously live sports are great. But the talk shows are ridiculous, and I can't imagine anyone watches them (though I assume they do, as they keep rolling out more).
That said, they are becoming the victim of the same thing every other traditional news outlet is. I can get my news in a more personally tailored, and efficient manner at the touch of my fingers. I can hear discussions I actually want to hear about by more discriminantly choosing podcasts. I can listen to local sports radio, even if I don't live in the locale I want to hear about. And now there is a stand alone network for the four major US sports.
I think their knee jerk reactions to this has been to try more and more to bring in "casual" fans with comedy and talk. Add to that, running home to the "mama" of preaching nearly exclusively to the New York audience.
What I (humbly) think they SHOULD do, is go back to their roots. Run those third tier sports more. Replay games. Pick up a patchwork of niches, rather than trying to be vanilla and get everything. I find myself watching rugby on the NBC sports network. I find myself watching NBA D-league and summer games. I truly wish there was more access to NHL, like there used to be. Hell, I don't even mind watching poker now and again. Just stop trying to be MTV. Be a sports network. Show more actual sports, rather than more people making sports jokes.

Here are the guys that Fox hired to do their SportsCenter
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/LiIZpGZIKGM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

To be honest, outside of watching some college basketball and NFL games I almost never even tune into ESPN. I've gotten to the point that I pretty much just watch the teams I like, and since none of them are on the East coast I don't have to turn to ESPN very often. I get all of my sports news from here and the web.

Man, I remember when ESPN first came out. There was no programming. They literally had shows of Strongest Man Competition where dudes would roll massive tires down the street. Roy Firestone would give his tear-inducing interviews wearing that blue-ish blazer. They'd have replays of "Home Run Derby" from the 1950s in black & white.


The product really changed when they landed MLB in the later part of the 1980s. Now they have MNF obviously. I can't believe people think the new format sucks when you should've seen the old!

I haven't watched sports center in months. Their coverage will always be there but the news portion of ESPN is not great.

Talent gets expensive and ESPN lets them go. Not sure that's their problem but I can't think it helps.

Yeah but there was nothing like sitting at a bar at 1:00 AM, drunk off your rear, watching The World's Strongest Man!! Good times.

Useless network nowadays. Used to watch it quite a bit. Now it's well down the list and only when I can't find anything else to watch.

Hey PB they just went through a big layoff.

**** ESPN.

They created their bed now they can go die in it.

Live sports - Awesome

30 for 30 - Awesome

College Gameday - Good

Everything else including all other pre/post-game coverage - Absolute garbage

The End.

They can stick First Take up their ass.

I'd rather watch flies ****

I used to watch the old home run derby shows when I was in grade school. Those were cool.

+1

It really started to go downhill when Lou Palmer left.

They keep making up stories and/or reporting on stories that have no merit.

I used to watch a lot hoping to get any news about the Chiefs. Thanks to the intrawebs I dont have to sit through 59 min of shit to get 1 min of Chiefs. Other than the occasional game, I never watch

I almost never watch it. Seems like the entire network is geared toward young urban punks - you know, the ones who generally get their news from twitter and don't watch ESPN, either.

Plus they getting rid of all the hot babes on espn and leaving us crap like first take and pti and stuff it's got so bad they rehired max kellerman. i hate herm and hate collin cowherd. I hate that they don't show aussie rule football and show tennis and golf. Espn for the most part is dead to me.

I hadn't watched ESPN in probably 4-5 months. Then when the Royals beat the Yankees on Monday I flipped to Sportscenter for the butthurt. They did the highlight and couldn't even pronounce the Royals players names correctly.

"Bobby Buttner with the long fly ..."

They still have Lindsay Czarniak, Sage Steele, Cassidy Hubbarth, and Sara Walsh.

The fact they dropped the ball on manti te'o's girlfriend was pretty bad.

no1curr

Trying to please the "hot babes" viewers is exactly why stations like this turn to shit.

OMG TEBOWTEBOWTEBOW
OMG LEBRONLEBRONLEBRON
OMG TEAMS FROM NEW YORK OR BOSTON

That's how they suck.

This, a 1000 times this. :cuss:

I had that all ****ed up. Thank you.

It's easy for us to say they're East Coast bubble but there are 10x as many New Yorkers as Kansas Citians. Let's be real: nobody around the country gives a rat's ass about either of our bad sports franchises. If you lived in Washington DC, would you want to hear about the 2-14 Chiefs (no playoff wins in 19 years) or the horrible Royals (none in 28 years).

I don't mind them sticking to more national stories, they can't really compete with local sports coverage anyway. Everytime they do give a little token coverage to the Chiefs or Royals I find myself embarrassed by how little they know. That being said, they still have cover national sports stories with some actual substance.

It seems like they don't understand their audience. I don't care what clothes NBA players are wearing before the game, and the kind of people who do care probably aren't watching ESPN.

I imagine there have been many meetings at ESPN that ended with this same sentiment. How has that worked out for them?

The problem is people turn to the internet for news. If there would have been one save our chiefs update i would have supported the shit out of them. But the fact is they only cover big stupid east coast shit. Its on 24 hours a day thats enough time to cover all the little stuff in the small media markets is it not? Shit it doesnt even have to be super interesting put some reporter wannabe college girls on them let them read the script.

Not true. Not all fans of teams live in that teams local area. I'm just saying that it would be nice to cover all teams, not just the few media darlings. The east coast bias is sickening and disgusting and turns a lot of people (myself included) off.

1.) I don't live in KC

2.) The rest of the country has way way way more people than New York.

3.) Apparently people DO care because ESPNs ratings are going down the toilet

Well, clearly their market analysts know best.

How many of you care what's going on with the Charlotte Bobcats or the Washington Wizards? What about the Arizona Cardinals, anyone dying to hear the latest?

Right, because talking about the KC teams will surely spark a ratings bonanza.

This is the truth.

I'm so glad they're getting serious competition here in a month or so. Maybe it will force them to put some interesting shows on air and push out some of these hack broadcaster/journalists I'm sick to death of seeing.

No, but not looping the exact same SportsCenter for 7 hours a day might help.

Hard to call it "competition" when they aren't going to have any major sports to broadcast. Hard to imagine what they'll put on there. Maybe old re-runs of the "Strongman Competitions"

Their ratings are cooling like the other side of the pillow.

+1

I tune into national sports media to hear about all the teams. Not just my team. I get that hot teams and hot stories will get more airtime. But when ESPN shoves yankees and red sox downs our throats even when they don't matter, this what happens.

So congrats to ESPN for targeting all those east coast viewers. They just did it at the expense of 30+% of their ratings.

The America's Cup. That used to be on all day long after the Sportscenters. Also pro-wrestling.

So what if those markets are bigger. It's a 24-hour sports network. They only generate enough content for about 2 hours of programming. Then they repackage it and talk it into the ground for the next 22 hours, then repeat.

There are 32 NFL teams, if each team had a half hour show once a week it wouldn't even take up a whole day of programming. Hell, if they just had a half hour show for each division, I might be interested in watching.

Of course their ratings are down...MLB, NFL and NBA all have their own networks. I watch MLB Network constantly during baseball season. Around the Horn and PTI are good...but what's the point of watching SportsCenter when MLB Network is all baseball, all the time and that's the only major sport in play right now? I don't get my football update from Herm freaking Edwards on NFL Countdown every day...I have the internet for that.

Newsflash: ESPN down 32% in ratings

Apparently, I'm not alone....

The total focus on NY or LA is only part of it. They have gone the MTV route – appealing to the lowest common denominator and being more “entertainment” than “news”. They pick their little pets (Lakers, Lebron, Tebow, Yankees) and center the entire station around them.

Not to mention propping up trolls like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith.

...and with the dumbass government banning online poker...they can't even whore out the WSOP this time of year for cheap ratings grabs because no one cares anymore since we can't play anymore