Posted on 07/22/2015 1:00:39 AM PDT by iowamark
Sports-TV powerhouse ESPN, a profit machine that has long towered over the media landscape, is showing signs of stress as the pay-TV industry goes through an unprecedented period of upheaval.
A decline in subscribers as customers trim their cable bills, coupled with rising content costs and increased competition, has ESPN in belt-tightening mode, people familiar with the situation say.
The company, majority owned by Walt Disney Co., has lost 3.2 million subscribers in a little over a year, according to Nielsen data, as people have “cut the cord” by dropping their cable-TV subscriptions or downgraded to cheaper, slimmed-down TV packages devoid of expensive sports channels like ESPN.
At the same time, the prices ESPN pays for the rights to show games are ballooning. Rivals including 21st Century Fox Inc. ’s Fox Sports and Comcast Corp. ’s NBC are aggressively pursuing sports properties to feed their own outlets, which is also driving up prices. (Fox and News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, were part of the same company until 2013.)
Last year, ESPN agreed as part of a renewal deal with the National Basketball Association to triple its average annual fees from $485 million to about $1.47 billion, people familiar with the deal said.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The lack of hurricanes has really hurt the Weather Channel. I haven’t seen Castore in years ;)
Boo-hoo. ESPN made their bed.
Who cares.
Their routine expressions of contempt for conservatives probably don’t help their cause either. Same goes for Apple and their leftist CEO Tim Cook. I’m very pleased to see Apple stock tanking—I wonder if anyone in the board room dares to ask if Tim Cook should keep his politics in his pants for the sake of the company.
Good news as far as I’m concerned.
They’ve gone so over the top PC is unbearable. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that way.
I would venture a guess that Netflixs, Hulu and Amazon Prime are responsible for a lot of this.
Services like those allow you to watch what you want and not pay for the other stuff
ESPN is rapidly morphing into the 365x24 NBA network. One, isn't there already an NBA network? Two, who gives a damn about the NBA? And three, maybe ESPN's championing of Jenner and other liberal causes is driving viewers away.
Their strength is covering the college sports. They should primarily focus on that, and let ABC itself host their NFL pre-game shows.
They crowned a mentally-unstable Olympic swimmer with fake breasts as someone brave and worthy of praise. Last year they gave it to a man dying of cancer. I’m thinking they pissed off a large portion of their audience with their recent shenanigans. I don’t watch their channel outside of college football, and I might be hanging that up this year too. Cable just isn’t worth the money anymore.
If people were wise...(sigh)....they would literally throw out their TV, esp. if they had children in the house. Reading is so much more edifying as is a million other activities. The irrational, evil, and vile behaviors that they glorify now, esp. on the Sports channels with the Jenner junk, is appalling.
Had an aunt that thought it was evil back in the early 1970’s.
If she were still alive, she’d faint at what’s happening.
We are in the Last Days. The evil is rampant all over America.
Our culture is soaked in it, thanks to Hollywood, especially.
I wish it were not so.
“They crowned a mentally-unstable Olympic swimmer with fake breasts as someone brave and worthy of praise”
WHO?
How the mighty have fallen!
Last year they gave it to a sodomite football player.
They’ve gone so over the top PC is unbearable. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that way.
Actually, last year they gave it to a gay football player.
I do not have children and I still limit my tv use. Mostly it is FoxNews I watch.
I enjoy sports still somehow I have always disliked ESPN and have rarely watched it.
ESPN is a politically correct indoctrination channel posing as a sports channel. People are leaving because of that.
I agree. I like the work of Mike Reiss, very straightforward, non-political, and very workmanlike.
But the rest of ESPN can rot in Hell as far as I am concerned.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.