Posted on 11/19/2017 2:22:25 PM PST by drewh
In a Sports Illustrated "Off the Board" podcast, ESPN's Scott Van Pelt took several cheap shots at the network's critics, in the process demonstrating how horribly out of touch he is with financial realities at his network.
Van Pelt aimed particular venom at those who have decided that they didn't need to have cable TV any more when ESPN selected Caitlyn-formerly-Bruce Jenner as its 2015 annual Arthur Ashe Courage Award winner, calling them "so dumb that I can’t even pray for you because you’re beyond hope."
The podcast's interviewer was SI's Jimmy Traina, who did his part to smear those who claim they are avoiding ESPN as ignoramuses, hypocrites, or both.
In unexcerpted audio preceding the snippet which follows, Van Pelt contended that people who claim that they're boycotting ESPN are in a "make-believe world where everyone talks s–t."
The audio snip below (HT Mediaite) begins with Van Pelt telling Traina he has "never, not once" spoken with anyone who has harshly criticized his show or his network:
Transcript (bolds are mine throughout this post):
SCOTT VAN PELT, ESPN: Again, if that’s how people really felt, somewhere along the line, I would’ve intersected with someone that felt that way and came up and said, ‘Hey, I think your show sucks, I think ESPN sucks, and I think you guys are doomed. And, OK. Never. Not once. Van Pelt's own late-night Sports Center show is apparently doing well and experiencing ratings growth. So he's probably not going to hear much criticism of his show. But if he really hasn't had anyone tell him that the network has gone in the wrong direction during the past several years by engaging in political advocacy, he not only needs to get out more, he needs to talk to more of his coworkers.
One such coworker would be 25-year network veteran Linda Cohn, who in an April radio interview said that ESPN's insertion of politics into its sports coverage "is definitely a percentage of" the reason why it has had to lay off employees, and that "if anyone wants to ignore that fact, they’re blind." Cohn was quietly suspended for a weekend as a result of her frankness. An anonymous employee reacted to Cohn's suspension, accompanied by the lack of any visible consequences beyond the equivalent of a wrist slap when Jemele Hill called Donald Trump's administration a pack of white supremacists, as follows: "I’m tired of pretending this company is not full of sh*t."
Then Traina chimed in with his hypocrisy-ignorance shtick:
JIMMY TRAINA, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED: Yeah. And also, it is funny, because whenever I get into this topic on Twitter, I get people who say, "I don't watch ESPN any more. Nobody watches ESPN any more."
And I say, "OK, that means that you don't watch college football playoffs, Monday Night Football, the baseball playoffs, the NBA."
And then I get back, "Oh no, I just mean the talk shows. Well, that's what — ESPN's not just talk shows. It has a little bit of everything. So you haven't stopped watching ESPN.
And I also get a lot of — I remember during the NBA finals last year, people saying they don't watch ESPN any more. Oh you don't watch the NBA finals. "Oh, that's ABC." It's the same thing.
It's just — I think most people who are doing it just don't — you have those people who just don't know the business, and then you have maybe people in the business who want to see ESPN fail, and those are the ones who are putting out the narrative that ESPN is dying, when if every media company was dying the way ESPN is, we'd all be thrilled. Who does Jimmy Traina think he's kidding?
He must surely know, or should know, that ESPN has lost over 12 percent of its subscribers in the past six years, and that it is currently hemorrhaging 15,000 subscribers per day.
One would hope that Traina is smart enough to know that ABC and ESPN are separate profit centers for parent company Disney, and that people who watched the NBA finals on ABC weren't helping ESPN in any way, shape, or form.
Unless he's been in a cave for the past year, he must know that some of ESPN's live event broadcasts are not doing so well, either, especially Monday Night Football.
Finally, Traina certainly must know, since Sports Illustrated has covered it, that ESPN is currently in the midst of its third round of layoffs in the past two years.
I'd love to hear Jimmy Traina explain why any company with such a high level of fixed costs in the form of broadcast rights would be "thrilled" about a 12 percent shrinkage in its customer base.
Van Pelt then lowered the boom on cord-cutters and boycotters:
VAN PELT: Sure. Of course. I mean, right. Everything you said is true, I'm going to boycott this — And for the folks, if you truly wanna boycott the NFL or if you wanna boycott ESPN, the notion that some guy sitting out there, or gal, and they decide, "You know what, I’m gonna go ahead and cut my entire cable package because ESPN gave an award on a made-up show in July because there’s no sports to a woman who used to be a man, so I’m now not gonna have any cable TV at all, and I’m gonna sit around at night and read books by candlelight like olden times because of that." That’s just, that's not happening.
And if you did that, then you’re so dumb that I can’t even pray for you because you’re beyond hope. If that was your reaction to this — was to deny yourself the ability to watch television — I mean that just hasn’t happened and didn’t happen.
Van Pelt, in contending that cable TV cord-cutters have no alternative but to "sit around at night and read books by candlelight like olden times," has apparently never heard of the following long but still incomplete list of entertainment and news alternatives: Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Fox Sports, the various broadcast networks' subscription services, or the news rebroadcasts provided online by so many local TV stations.
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DONATE As a result of its ongoing insertion of politics into its sports coverage, many people who never realized it before and would never have investigated such things have learned that they're paying $80 or more per year in their cable packages for ESPN alone, and deciding that they'd rather not have cable at all than continue to involuntarily fund "MSESPN." I would contend that cord-cutting is happening at a faster rate than it otherwise would have.
Finally, Van Pelt's statement that "there's no sports" in July is an insult to fans of baseball, NASCAR, and other summer sports ensured that he left virtually no one uninsulted.
Is he that Skeletor guy?
Has this guy ever heard of a TV antenna? I get 38 channels on mine and all for free! As far as ESPN in concerned I never have watched it in my life and never will.
Anyone have any hard data that shows those people unsubscribing are really turning OFF ESPN rather than just cutting the cable TV cord and going to some sort of online streaming service that carries ESPN (e.g. Sling TV)?
From a man who pets paid to talk s**t for living. If SVP wants to go full SJW, he should quit and join the protestors.
The NBA? Who the heck watches the NBA?
NFL is inching to my avoidance forever also even if my team never gets the Super Bowl.
Haven’t watched ESPN in decades. Apparently, I haven’t missed much.
No NBA, no NFL and no ESPN. None. This is the second season of not watching the last two and it’s been well over a decade since I watched my last NBA game. Done with thuggery and the endorsement of it.
If ESPN is available in your TV lineup, you subsidize ESPN whether you watch it or not.
My wife watches maybe 20 hours of TV a week so sometimes when I’m in the room I kind of see it. When I’m on the road and stay at a hotel I don’t bother to turn it on, there’s no point in doing so.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Hell no!
ESPN ... that was a claymation video on 1980’s MTV, right?
There are a variety of ways, in which businesses judge whether they’re having a successful business day. However, if you’re losing over 15,000 customers a day, that is generally frowned upon.
No doubt, there are many frowns being worn on the faces of ESPN executives after reviewing the October Cable Coverage Estimates. ESPN lost over 15,000 subscribers for every day ending in “y,” during the month of October.
To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of losing Sacramento, California, the 35th largest city in the country, in a month. While many would welcome the loss of Sacramento, for a variety of reasons, when discussing losing a city of that size in a ratings context, it’s horrifying.
Excerpt:http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2017/10/31/espn-lost-480000-subscribers-october/
“Disney Corp is an insult to the Country and decency.”,
Disney owns ESPN, ABC and Disney.
We cut our cable this past June to save money and to eliminate ESPN, ABC and Disney.
One of our SIL’s told us to go to Sling Blue as our main streaming site.
Why?
Sling Blue does not carry any ESPN, Disney or ABC channels.
So, the maggot infected gays, who control ESPN, Disney and ABC get 0$’s bucks from us.
Scott Van Pelt can insult those of us, who have cut our cable and use Sling Blue all he wants to. We can’t hear, nor see him, nor do we care! He reminds us of the insane Hilliarily voters screaming at the moon recently.
Great pictures.
How long will it be before some NFL loving Freepers with Jock Itch for brains, tells you and us, those empty seats don’t really hurt the National Felon League.
I don’t even bother with cable or dish.
I wish my pets paid me.....: )
pets... gets... what’s the difference?!
What’s ESPN?
;)
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