re: ESPN is the next Blockbuster Video

We can only hope so. When a sports programming network makes everything political, it's time for it to die.

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Spoiler, this isn't going to happen.

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Oh it's going to happen. 2021 to be exact. That's when ESPN loses their NFL contracts to a behemoth like Amazon because they can't afford it anymore.

And that will be that.

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TLC used to be The Learning Station and played educational shite. Now they play reality shows.

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Spoiler, this isn't going to happen

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wouldnt be so sure of this they lost half a million subscribers just last month

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puttfan56

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Clay, you trying to get viewers to your site..

Seriously, I like Clay Travis, but he gets into too much "drama". I understand he has to in order to make a name for himself and attract more readers, subscribers, etc, but he is actually a good writer so he could dial it back every now and then and showcase his talent instead of constantly hitting on the same few topics.

It is obvious ESPN is going to take a hit and I don't have to read his article to know that. People are cancelling cable at a faster rate than ever before. There are other options available and if you ever looked at a breakdown of what you actually pay per channel, ESPN is about twice as much as the 2nd most expensive channel.

Everyone who has cable pays for ESPN, whether they watch it or not. Now that more and more people are getting rid of cable and only subscribing to what they want to watch, it hurts ESPN especially considering the amount they charge.

I thought it was stupid when MNF went to ESPN. I want to say that even before people had more options to view what they like, there were more households in the US without cable than their were with cable. As popular as MNF was on network TV, ESPN probably figured that at least x amount of people would subscribe to cable in order to watch MNF.

The South east region of the US is the only part of the country in which CFB is more popular than the NFL so ESPN invested big into the SEC... Against, probably thinking that with all the die hard fans of each SEC team, there would be a lot of people willing to subscribe to cable just to watch the material they put out.

I like the fact that ESPN does provide a lot of CFB games on Saturday. There is ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, SEC Network and ESPNU. Five channels that provide at least two games on Saturday (usually 3, sometimes, during certain weekends there will be 1 or 2 of the channels that only has 2 games), but they shite quality content they provide during the week is killing them.. People might like to be able to see all different games, since they have ABC, Fox and CBS (Notre Dame on NBC) for free, they can still watch games and get the updates of other games while doing so. Or get an app like Score and keep up with the game play by play and see all the big plays that are posted there right after they happen.

ESPN overvalued the rights they bought and undervalued cables competition.

ESPN has had to adapt,and they've tried, but they just havent been able to hit.


But I love when people complain about them not playing highlights anymore. Guys its 2017, I can scroll through my twitter feed and see the best highlights of my favorite teams that I choose to follow. Or via facebook, youtube, and many other outlets, such as this board. There are specialty TV channels that focus just on football, baseball, and basketball. Streaming is available for any league that you want. There's an over exposure here that has made ESPN less relevant than ever.

ESPN may be doing failing, but its not because they took away highlights. They put all their eggs in these debate TV shows that were popular when they started, but no one cares anymore. They havent provided fresh content since then.

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wouldnt be so sure of this they lost half a million subscribers just last month

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If ESPN lost half a million subscribers, then so did every other major cable network.

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don't think they are Blockbuster. I think they are MTV. MTV couldn't adapt to the way people consumed music so they gradually cut their music programing in favor of cheap content.

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While espn and mtv were both similar in that they were pioneers in their industry, MTV was still the leader in ‘Music Television’ and had zero competition and weren’t losing subscribers when they changed their content. While mtv deserves criticism for moving away from music, shows like Real World were a first of a kind and kicked off the entire reality tv craze and MTv owns most of the shows they produce, where espn is just s giant rental business (hence blockbuster)

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His analogy is spot on.

ESPN doesn't actually produce anything of value. They are a useless middle man.

Technology is rendering them obsolete, just like it did to Blockbuster

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Hindsight is 20/20 and all, but Espn missed out years ago, they were the first to successfully stream hd sports online (espn3) that actually worked properly. They should’ve bought up every tech that had anything to do with video streaming back then, and made every sport (even if they didn’t have tv broadcasting rights) would have to license techs from them