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.
What a business model! Customers are running away in droves, so insult your market some more. Double down on virtual signaling, which has been driving away business to begin with. Is that what y’all learned in MBA school?
Geniuses!
ESPN, please do the marketplace a favor. Get it over with and DIE!
I just want my pets to pay me,,,dang it!
I do so much for them!!
I started using Jock Itch for brains a couple of weeks ago whenever some freepers tried to play down our boycott and its impact. They often rant on about how our boycott was not working and how we were losing the battle.
We see the same with some of same people defending Franken instead working to get him out of the senate.
They also defend the Clintons and never back our side nor ever seem to want to win against the liberals.
going to some sort of online streaming service that carries ESPN (e.g. Sling TV)?
Or like many of us using Sling Blue which does not carry any ESPN, Disney or ABC!
Also, we are seeing a lot people, who after cutting their cables, get the free channels with regular outside or inside tv antennae and pay nothing for what they watch.
No Satellite or Cable. I get everything I want and or need off the interweb. No Subsidies.
Oh but this is having no effect...
LOL
BOYCOTT THE NFL!!!
Good you see it too.
You’ll notice virtually no one ever mentions Comcast nor Disney as the primary facilitators of iniquity in media. I suppose the radio jocks depend on their affiliates.
And now we have AT&T fighting to retain CNN.
ESPN started as a great idea, but now it is a liberal media company.
and we are not supposed to be upset about this insanity?...
okay, we watched the curling championships the other night...
HS sports are entertaining, both girls and boys...and we follow our local college womens' bb team as well as other college teams...
I will avoid espn as much as possible...maybe soon, we'll get rid of cable completely...
listening to sports on the radio is interesting...you’re mind is working faster because you have to envision whats going on....
and it looks HORRIBLE on tv...just horrible...
they want to present this BIG GAME with all this excitement and then you see the empty seats...
My analogy for ESPN is it started as a beautiful and alluring teenage girl.
Today it is a screeching ugly witch—strung out on meth—limping her way to the grave while pointing her scraggly fingers at everyone else and howling how ugly they look!
I no longer pay for cable. Does little loser van pelt know there are other sources of entertainment in this world besides books read by candle light?
Typical, hateful liberal. Let espn burn.
JoMa
Not only that, but dish and cable have competition. I have Roku TV, which is cheap because many channels have no charge, and others I can choose to subscribe and pay for individually, unlike Cable where I pay for the whole set whether or not I watch all of it.
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