I wouldn't be surprised if former ESPN President George Bodenheimer is asked to return for a short stint to clean up the mess at ESPN and return it to its former glory. For one thing, because ESPN does sports programming for ABC, Bodenheimer will put the College Football Playoff and Championship games back on over-air ABC, and may negotiate a deal to bring Monday Night Football back to ABC with more attractive matchups.
I agree with you; I think Skipper winds up getting fired over this debacle, and it’s not entirely his fault. Millions of viewers are tired of paying outrageous cable bills for “tiers” of channels they don’t watch. So, they cut the cord and pay for what they want, and that movement is only accelerating.
At the same time, Disney is leaning heavily on ESPN to deliver an even bigger chunk of it profits. There has been some heavy cost-cutting in Bristol over the past 18 months; the sports channel was ordered to cut more than $200 million in expenses to meet revenue and profit projections. But that becomes almost impossible when you’re hemorrhaging subscribers—remember, cable operators pay ESPN $6 per subscriber per month—highest fee in the industry, and that’s a big part of the network’s bottom line.
Not sure Bodenheimer can turn it around, but toning down the PC on-air product might slow the bleeding. Moving MNF back to ABC also makes sense, since that network is also losing viewers by the boatload. The need some sort of program that people will actually tune into.