Zackly. I'm old enough to remember baseball games on the radio. I'm not a sports fan but honestly, is there anything more boring than having to watch baseball on TV? OK, golf, but other than that? Yet at it's peak 100 million households had access to ESPN. Not only has ESPN become a propaganda outlet for leftists (which that kind of reach how could then not?) - but if you look at obesity and diabetes trends you'll find they were flat from 1960-1980 and then started climbing like someone hit a switch.
Which they did of course - you couldn't get ESPN without subscribing to cable or satellite TV, which meant you also got CNN and the rest of the crap. Now the number of subscribers is dropping because people are cutting the cord and finding other ways to get the same content, but the behavior patterns of being sedentary and unhealthy foods are impacting our healthcare systems.
Want to improve public health? Get away from the screens, get a portable radio and listen to the ballgame while walking or exercising.
RE: ESPN
TL;DR: The mouse must die.
When the news broadcasts quit being as effective, ESPN became one of many outfits that started spreading the gospel of woke.
ESPN had already been using the popularity of sports to advertise other entertainment. With streaming, they got more power, because athletic events were the only thing that would draw people to view events live, rather than streaming them. The rabidity of the sports fan was their leverage. They knew sports fans would put up with a lot of garbage to get to see sports. They used the deep Disney pockets to functionally take over sports. When ESPN covers a game, they pretty much take over the stadium. Screw the fans. The colleges don't even know when their teams will kick off until ESPN tells them. The kneeling for the pledge, work messages on the jerseys, etc, isn't just allowed by ESPN, it's facilitated and promoted.
Here's where it gets interesting, though. Because of the huge sports contracts, ESPN was a money drain on Disney. That wasn't as big a deal when Disney had the Marvel Universe going and the parks and cruises were full.
Going into last year Disney acquired FOX in a 71 BILLION dollar deal. The parks closed, and just at Disney World Orlando, that means 30,000 hotel rooms are sitting empty, no million visitors a week spending an average of five grand per family. No new movies. No cruises. How much are they spending per day to maintain the parks, cruise ships, and hotels? How much did they eat when the NBA season was cancelled? How much will they eat from a reduced college football schedule? How much did going "woke" on Star Wars cost them? How much will Marvel phase 4 with Brie Larsen as the face of the franchise cost them? How much will they eat by not being able to release Mulan in China?
BTW, the DOJ has been investigating the CCP officers that work for Disney at their Shanghai and Hong Kong parks. If Disney purges the CCP officers, China will grab the parks. If they don't the DOJ will intervene. If they try to sell the parks, they'll take a HUGE loss, cause they're in China.
I also suspect Disney fudged the numbers on Captain Marvel. Disney keeps almost all the profits for the first two weeks of theater release. Numerous theater owners reported an average of 25 no shows (bought tickets online, didn't attend the screening) during the first two weeks of Captain Marvel. So, hypothetical, why not buy massive numbers of online tickets to boost attendance numbers when the money comes back into your pocket anyway? Cheap way to create buzz.
That's why the media is going crazy, now. They're throwing everything, and I don't care how deep the pockets, Disney can't sustain these kinds of losses for a lot longer.
The House of Mouse is a house of cards. The kneeling for the anthem has alienated a lot of loyal fans, and the woke mob doesn't attend sporting events.