re: The downfall of ESPN (An Opinion)

I don’t mind First Take, but the second they start on the racist takes I turn the channel….which is a daily occurrence

It started going down hill when they started only promoting the sports they had contracts on…it continued when they decided that people arguing about stupid made up shite was good television…
It got worse when their TV content was just to provide segments for their radio content and vice versa
It continued its downward slide when they decided that 3/4th of their program should be on the NFL regardless of the time of year.
The nail in the coffin was the woke stuff and having a female/minority be the deciding factor on who gets air time vs expertise, professionalism and the ability to be compelling.
I watch live games and SVP once every blue moon…the rest is unwatchable garbage that I absolutely don’t care about.

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I don’t know of the old model works anymore, but as a teen I would watch the same sports center on repeat in the mornings

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YouTube killed this format.

Even if you cut out all the woke social justice shite that has no place in sports, espn just does too much shite, which is fine when it’s a slow, off season time, but when for example it’s the College baseball World Series and games get bumped around or dumped on some shite channel in order to show some basketweaving bullshite there’s some very wrong.

Another example, after the Tigers win in the BB Championship game, those espn assholes switched the postgame celebration to its stupid pay channel espn+. Real shitty move there. ESPN sucks at reading the room.

The downfall is no different than the downfall of print media. Once Al Gore gave us the internet and social media became prevalent, ESPN's business model outside of live games became obsolete.

I don't have to watch Sportscenter to get highlights. I can do a Google search for them...literally while the game is being played. Also, anyone with a twitter account and information can be a "breaking news journalist". No longer do you have to wait for someone employed by ESPN to deliver news. Leagues can now also deliver content directly to the consumer via streaming services. No need to go through the ESPN middle-man.

Given that, outside of live games, ESPN is left with trying to create original content in a world where anyone with a phone and the ability to post a video to youtube can create original content. I'm sure, in part, that is why the chose to have shows that create "controversy" and "hot takes". They don't care if the audience agrees or disagrees with the opinion of the media personalities...as long as the public is tuning in to watch.

Where they went awry is misunderstanding that most sports fans don't really want non-sport (often political) opinions/discussions interjected into sports. Sports is/was one of the few areas of society that could bring together people from very opposite ends of the societal spectrum. A baseball fan from rural Mississippi could probably get along fine with a baseball fan from San Francisco as long as the conversation and focus was strictly on baseball. Or, you could go to a Saints game and see a really wealthy white person from the Northshore get along fine with a not-so-wealthy black man from Nola East because of their shared common bond of being Saints fans. Sadly, ESPN and their contemporaries have destroyed that commonality by interjecting politics into sports at a level higher than ever before. Thus, you are seeing people simply avoid the conversation on ESPN altogether.

Think about how powerful you have to be to destroy sports, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. Not an easy accomplishment but Disney is touched with the retard.

THANK YOU!!!

When you have women giving their women views changes the whole dynamic.

And sadly it's not just ESPN but it's invaded most male sports these days.

I find it grating to have a female commentator during a game.

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I wished they would just play games with ambient crowd and field noise.

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I would pay extra for this.