Posted on 02/08/2017 5:21:46 AM PST by davikkm
I love the fact that with Sling on the Roku... I get all the hockey I want for $25/mo.... and not one dime goes to ESPN.
If you're going to make an error, it's better to be off to the right.
Makes me feel bad for the decent people who work at ESPN.
All five of them.
Good post. I think TV as we know it will disappear within a few years. There will be no scheduled programming outside of live events (like sports), and everything will be on-demand streaming of shows that were recorded weeks or months (or years, in the case of movies) in advance.
You’re missing a bunch of zeros... even after accounting for the comma.
7*12*12,000,000 = 1,008,000,000
It’s a Billion Dollar a year hole in their budget.
Totally unexpected.
Who would have guessed that ESPN/NFL’s new strategy would fail? I mean, (1) shouldn’t allowing politics to intrude on a break from the real world attract viewers, and (2) is there any better way to start an open conversation than by insulting the symbol of our country? What’s not to like?
ESPN went political and certainly cast a group of commentators who did not represent the real demography of the USA.
Go figger!!
Exactly.
I've cancelled most of my scientific magazines over the global warming BS spouted by them.
The latest example of cancellations:
Why I Am Cancelling Two Subscriptions to Smithsonian (Vanity)
I refuse to fund these leftist SOB's!
I did boycott the NFL this year because of Kapperdick. Caveat: I watched the first Bucs game of the year and went to the Bucs & Bears game in Tampa. (family thing) Other than those two, I watched zero NFL this year, including the Super Bowl.
That’s what happens when you go political.
Concur. This idea that people are forced to subsidize MTV, LOGO, MSNBC, CNN, and other channels is an anathema to many. In my opinion, the cord-cutting movement really started as Conservatives worked to eliminate subsidizing these wastoids. When Millenials and Xers lost most of their income to Obama, this increased the demand for alternative devices.
This all started with the VCR and time shifting, then as programing continued to get ugly, and commercials became ever intrusive, people began to exploit time shifting into something much more, namely extreme selectivity and avoidance.
In their effort to be PC they keep putting people into no-win situations.
For example, Jessica Mendoza, the young woman they replaced Curt Schilling with as a commentator on Sunday Night Baseball. She seems like a nice young woman, and appears to have worked very hard to develop as a broadcaster.
But she has NEVER PLAYED MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL!! Therefore, as a color analyst there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY she can compete with men who have.
But her employer keeps throwing her to the wolves week after week.
You need a new “Gif” or do you have a strange obsession with this girl?
I’ll admit she is nice looking, but common man come up with a new Gif.
I used to live eat and sleep football from the first of August to the first of February. Could count on me being in front of a TV from around noon on Sunday, to midnight on Monday. Didn't matter the team or the time, I wanted to watch.
Then Sunday night football came along. No biggie, I was generally parked in front of the TV anyway.
Then Thursday night (not Turkey day) football came along....now, that started cutting into my regular routine. Extra games would show up on the calendar - a late Monday night one here, a Saturday night one there. I stopped paying as much attention.
Bob Costas started lecturing me about my politics on Sunday night football, and Obama's ugly mug protruded even more onto my screen to harangue me further. ESPN became "All racial politics, all the time". I started tuning out, ESPN used to be a staple in my house, now I can't remember the last time it was turned on.
I used to have a half dozen shirts, hats, etc for my favorite team. They were worn darn near every weekend, sometimes proudly, sometimes with a sad shake of the head. There are still a couple of old ones in my closet, but I've not bought any gear for a few years.
The sport got slower. Every big play has a penalty flag, or a video review stoppage, attached to it. Then Colin Kapernick started in with his nonsense this season. The sport went from, "Annoying, occasionally" to "Intentionally Offensive". I turned the TV off. Can count on one hand the number of games I watched this season. Strangely, I didn't miss it.
I still root for my team, they didn't get bit by the political nonsense bug that afflicted so many others this year. First time *that* happens, though, I'm through.
Sad, really. The sport, and my team, have brought me a bunch of happiness, good memories, and fun over the decades. But, I didn't turn my back on them, the NFL walked away from me.
That's a good point, but there's something else that may have played a bigger role.
The development of cable and satellite TV added literally hundreds of new channels to the 5-6 that had been available in most areas on terrestrial TV. This proliferation of new options spread TV audiences so thin that very view channels could generate enough viewers to justify spending money on quality content. The decline in quality started the downward spiral of the industry.
ESPN/Disney is pricing itself out of the market. Hard core sports fans/gamblers will pay whatever it takes, but lots of folks have gotten tired of paying the ESPN tax for sports in which they have no interest.
The business model is failing.
And it needs to happen to all the other companies who have made themselves political.
Probably the closest thing to that is ROOT Sports, but they only show the games not on ESPN.
The message against playing politics, at least in college basketball, has gotten through IMO. Roy Williams griped last week about the bathroom bill in NC, i.e. no tournament games in NC.
The rest of the country cried crocodile tears...lol.
[No child should be allowed to watch Disney channel.]
Or, go to their Theme Parks.
I had developed a habit of sitting down and doing some research on Fridays, then submitting my weekly picks for the weekend's games on either Friday or Saturday. Monday night games worked well in our pool because we used the combined score of that game as one of our tiebreakers for the weekend's jackpot.
The introduction of Thursday night football threw my whole schedule out of alignment, and I stopped participating right then and there.
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