ESPN = Everything (but) SPorts Network

[guy incognito]

Interesting Variety article on Bristol's increasing move away from the sports coverage it made its name on.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117924661?categoryid=1011&cs=1&s=h&p=0

[Mark The Shark]

Ah, the MTV model.

[estrepe1]

It works for MTV because their target audience is constantly changing.

ESPN's core audience will typically be male sports fans. The problem is that if they start going to the movies and stuff people will stop watching ESPN as much as they used to. Its to the point now where I only watch it when they have a baseball, basketball, or football game actually on.

[guy incognito]

The problem is that coverage of regular-season sporting events (apart from the Almighty NFL, and maybe NASCAR) doesn't get great ratings nationally. Most sports fans are very parochial, they follow their local team on local TV or RSN and that leaves ESPN with crummy ratings for, say, Wednesday night baseball or Thursday night NBA.

If you're an ESPN programmer, you've got to figure that if you're going to get mediocre ratings anyway, you're better off doing so with original programming or things like televised poker, which are cheaper to produce than event coverage and don't come attached with huge rights fees.

[shabba4detroit]

Originally posted by guy incognito
The problem is that coverage of regular-season sporting events (apart from the Almighty NFL, and maybe NASCAR) doesn't get great ratings nationally. Most sports fans are very parochial, they follow their local team on local TV or RSN and that leaves ESPN with crummy ratings for, say, Wednesday night baseball or Thursday night NBA.

If you're an ESPN programmer, you've got to figure that if you're going to get mediocre ratings anyway, you're better off doing so with original programming or things like televised poker, which are cheaper to produce than event coverage and don't come attached with huge rights fees.


This may be the right answer.

[estrepe1]

I didn't think of it that way. You are more than likely correct that cost considerations are the most important factor here and not pleasing their fan base.

[Amish Love Machine]

Originally posted by guy incognito
The problem is that coverage of regular-season sporting events (apart from the Almighty NFL, and maybe NASCAR) doesn't get great ratings nationally. Most sports fans are very parochial, they follow their local team on local TV or RSN and that leaves ESPN with crummy ratings for, say, Wednesday night baseball or Thursday night NBA.

If you're an ESPN programmer, you've got to figure that if you're going to get mediocre ratings anyway, you're better off doing so with original programming or things like televised poker, which are cheaper to produce than event coverage and don't come attached with huge rights fees.
I would think college football gets good ratings on ESPN, too. I know in the ALM family, Saturday in the fall is football day, regardless of who is playing.

[MelissaG915]

Or, as another sports analyst puts it: "Women may watch an episode of one of the series, but that doesn't mean they're going to abandon Lifetime to become devotees of the NFL and the NBA on ESPN."

:tired: Not every woman watches the "every woman's nightmare TV movie of the week" channel. Instead of branching out into more boring series, how about broadening the scope of the sports they cover? Speed skating? Equestrian? Lacrosse? Fencing? Expose more people to a diversified spectrum of sport. It doesn't always have to involve a puck, ball or deck of cards.

[estrepe1]

As long as they aren't showing Figure Skating.... :classic:

[Motor City Sonics]

Maybe they can make more great movies like A Season on The Brink.



What a piece of garbage.


They should just do what they really want to do and just change ESPN to Yanksox Broadcasting. They could talk all about the Yankees and Red Sox and show old games and run countless interviews with Yankees and Sox players and fans and management and then make another great movie where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck kidnap the ghost of Babe Ruth and torture him by making him watch the movie 61* until he breaks down crying and swears off booze and broads. Then they will show reruns of Seinfeld, but only the episodes where Steinbrenner was a character. "COSTANZA, I SMELL CALZONES, I SMELL 'EM, WHERE'S MY CALZONE, COSTANZA, WHERE'S MY CALZONE"

Then every night in the overnight they could show a contiuous loop of Pride Of The Yankees one night and then a continuous loop of Pudge Fisk's 1975 Game 6 12th inning foul-pole hugging home run that only delayed the Red Sox fans misery for one more night.

It could all be hosted by Billy Crystal and Denis Leary and then we can all go kill ourselfs by skydiving without parachutes into a field of barbed wire because, my freinds, that would be less painfull than what ESPN is becoming!

[RedRamage]

I think the stuff the need to do more off is the stuff like baseball tonight, showing recaps and clips while doing a brief discussion of the sports. Those are the shows that I would be interested in watching.