True but as technology increases and improves the demand for knowledgeable technicians increases with an accompanying increase in cost of labor so they may be sacrificing short-term gains for long-term losses.
It’s already known that salaries are so meager at ESPN HQ that many employees cannot afford cars or long public transportation commutes - they live in quasi-company housing nearby the ESPN campus and ride company buses to work. A microcosm of the socialist dream.
On-air presenters are almost certainly still required to join AFTRA but I’m not sure if off-camera people are members of various unions the way the Big Three network people are. Union rules are one reason golf tournaments often go off the air even if players are still on the course - overtime is very expensive. Given ESPN’s bloody guillotine the odds are that there is no union protection of jobs there.
ESPN’s once-ballyhood college football nerve center in Charlotte - radio/TV - has been all but shuttered. It’s basically a single TV studio and a single radio studio now. Most of the pre- and post-production jobs have been jerked back to Bristol CT. Nervous podcasters and on-air hosts joke about penny-pinching eg flying dodgy airlines, carpooling and cheap motels but there is obviously a grain of truth in all of it.
“salaries are so meager at ESPN HQ that many employees cannot afford cars ...”
These people must really love working in the entertainment industry. I know a former reporterette who quit that job and got another paper pushing job that paid about twice as much.