ESPN Losses Hurts Disney Income, Network Continues Decline (new rules against liberal rants)

Brietbart ^ | 11/23/16 | by DYLAN GWINN

[drewh]

SPN’s well-publicized hemorrhaging of subscribers peaked in recent months, greatly hindering the Bristol-based giant’s all-important ability to purchase sports rights. Now, subscriber loss reached such a level that ESPN has become a financial drain on its parent-company Disney.

Other Disney TV properties have also taken hits, but ESPN’s subscription face-plant, highlighted by the earth-shattering loss of 621,000 subscribers in October, has Disney most concerned, considering that ESPN accounts for a huge portion Disney’s operating income.

By some estimates, ESPN accounts for as much as 30% of Disney’s operating income, and the sports powerhouse has shed 10 million subscribers in the past five years.

The long-term bills for ESPN’s sports rights have skyrocketed in the past few years, due in part to renewed competition from Fox Sports and NBC Sports. That has set up a perfect storm of rising costs, softening ratings, and falling affiliate revenue.

To say that ESPN suffers from its own success is certainly one way of looking at it. The other way is that ESPN suffers because it has become insufferable. Not to totally dismiss the subscriber costs and cord-cutting that has plagued ESPN, but if those market factors fully explained the loss in subscribers then why, just two weeks ago, did ESPN Ombudsman Jim Brady write a voluminous mea culpa admitting that ESPN had lurched way too far to the left, thus alienating many of its viewers?

Not only that, Brady also outlined new rules regarding on-air and social media conduct for ESPN personalities that prevent them from going off on prolonged, leftist political rants. If what ails ESPN can simply be chalked-up as conspiring market forces in the greater war on cable television then such a lengthy, and surely painful admission from the “four-letter network” would prove unnecessary.

[Steve_Seattle]

The national guys on ESPN radio are complete bores. My local sports radio has some entertaining people. They're liberals, but they don't do much pontificating, and they do goofy things and have fun.

But the national ESPN guys will be droning on about LeBron James in the middle of July.

[Stanwood_Dave]

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I live out in the country side, and have only DSL, but compared to dial-up, its heaven on earth. Might get fiber optics in about another say 50 years or so. :-(

Don't ask me how; but a lot of the commercials are for State of Arkansas, that's the only if you will down side.

[otness_e]

I wouldn’t go as far as to wish it goes under. There is still a chance we can make it the great company it used to be.

That being said, we definitely need to make sure that there’s a whole lot of cleaning house at the House of Mouse, including rehiring all those IT guys Iger fired to bring in foreign workers, firing some people who do not take storytelling seriously and have openly admitted it, and in some cases tried to use their credentials to push a social/political agenda at the cost of the story (I’m looking specifically at Linda Woolverton and Don Hahn), and for subsidiaries, either make various rules that force them to abstain from making any overt political/social references over the air waves, whether they be liberal or conservative, and make sure to place a bit more focus on the former knowing how they operated in the past, or otherwise cut them loose. And for that matter, also sell all the series they made into DVD boxed sets so that anyone who does want to watch them has the opportunity to watch them WITHOUT needing to watch Disney Channel to get access to them, and especially release Path to 9/11. We need to clean house of the influence Iger, Eisner, Katzenberg, and, yes, even Lasseter had on the company regarding politics. Oh yeah, and also get rid of Gay Days as well.

[petitfour]

We only watch Bama. Over and over and over until the next game. Then it’s over and over and over. And so on. Until the season is done. Then we watch a mishmash of games from the last ten years until September.

I wish I were kidding. Hahaha.