re: Whitlock: How a Gawker-Affiliated Website Made ESPN Politically Correct

I think the cord cutting thing is hurting them, but i think ratings are hurting them more, especially for live sporting events. And are these cord cutter numbers reflecting those that left cable, but still have ESPN through, Sling/Vue/DTVnow and now Hulu? I'm a cord cutter i guess, but i still pay for ESPN through Sling.

Monday Night Football was down a lot last year. Airing a football game where you expect to make millions on advertisements, and then have to give money back to the advertisers b/c the ratings were down play a very large part. Those huge contracts they gave the NFL and NBA are advertising driven. Their sportscenter and daytime crap has little to do with the money they through at those two leagues.
That's a simple fix. Quit starting the fricking games at 8 central time. 75% of the country lives in teh eastern and central time zone. We are all sleeping by halftime. Also, no one wants to watch the Bills and Texans play. So what if you piss off some guy from Florida or North Carolina or whereever, the Cowboys, rest of the NFC East, Packers, Seahawks, Patriots and any other hot topic team should be the teams playing on Monday night more often than not.

MLB ratings have always been somewhat low on ESPN.
The recent NBA ratings took their hit b/c of star players deciding not to play. Last year those saturday night games were great. This year they were terrible.


Biggest thing is they need to adapt and offer a streaming fee for WatchESPN and all of it's content. That can't be that difficult or expensive to do. By not doing it, you get zero dollars from it. Even if you just get it from some folks for college football season, is that not worth it? I'd drop sling and pay for it all year, simply b/c i watch LSU football, basketball and baseball.