quote:
ESPN was once thought of as cord-cutting-proof. It is perfectly logical to suggest that this was a last reason for many people to keep cable, since it used to represent, on a per-channel basis, double the price of the next channel. Thus, the marginal effect of this SJW phenomenon, while subtle on the surface, can certainly have an outsized incremental impact.

ESPN was thought to "cord cutting proof" because of live sports, not because of their other programming. Live are harder to "steal" and it's not something you can typically watch "later" like other shows.

For those of you hung up on the ratings, there are 2 separate issues. The shows and other non live sporting event programming and the games. The games themselves do not have much, if any, political content and the games are the ratings that matter. I seriously doubt that the hard core Trump supporting SEC fans cut cable and quit watching SEC games because they are on ESPN because they gave an ESPY to Catlin Jenner. Their overall ratings for non live sports may be down and maybe that's due to the decision to go hard left politics but that has minimal effect on the bottom line. Ratings for the NFL were overall down last year, not just on ESPN. I know the CFB Playoff took a dive from 14 to 15 but was that because ESPN was too left or because the games were on NYE instead of Jan 1? The ratings for the NCG this year were down from last year. Was that because of SJWs in ESPN or because it was a rematch of 2 teams from the South and the rest of the country didn't care?

By far the biggest problem from ESPNs model is that the owe billions for broadcast live sports and their biggest source of revenue is cable fees (not advertising) and more and more people are cutting cable. If their ratings were down while other networks weren't there might be some credibility to the argument that their politics are killing them, but since ratings were down on other networks as well.