sure you are

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In reply to 20ag07
Then why did they give a person an award for being a ******? How did that maximize shareholder value?


Untapped ****** market?



Since ****** is censored.

Jenner

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He had a history of drawing ratings. 21M people watched the Diane Sawyer interview about in on sister net ABC. So yeah, they were actually attempting to drive ratings up for the ESPY telecast with that.

to quote margin call

yes but at what cost

You tell me what cost? I highly doubt more people that were actually going to watch the ESPYs, but didn't because of that, comes anywhere near being measurable vs trying to grab a slice of the 21M who had watched his last interview. Most of the people complaining never would have watched the ESPYs anyway.

People aren't dropping their cable bc ESPN gave Jenner an award. They are dropping their entire cable package, which just includes ESPN due to cheaper options.

cone said:

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sure you are

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Butthurt.

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ESPN is a small part of Disney, and they can maintain adequate profitability just fine without it.

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Their cable business was $17B of $56B in total revenue last year. That's not small. At all. It's 30%. And most of the cable business is ESPN. And it's highly profitable. $7B of $16B total op income. Movies contributed less than half that.

So yeah, if profitability slides with ESPN, it will have be a much larger hit then you make it out to be.

hey man take a deep breath

Do you still watch sports on ESPN even though they have human interest/SJW stories on sports center?

Did you watch more sports center prior to the human interest/SJW stories?

Is it possible the SJW stories on sports center/espy increase ratings by another group more than the decrease by the hard core sports fan? Could SJW/human interest stories actually increase live sports viewership by non-traditional audiences because they for some attachment with a player in a particular game?

What impact does generating web clicks have to ESPNs bottom line? Does the SJW stories generate more clicks?

Bottom line, subscription revenue is unlikely being impacted by SJW stance and that revenue is being impacted by a market change away from everyone having a traditional cable subscription.

Advertising revenue may be impacted by ratings of individual shows, but I suspect sports center and the talking heads have better ratings that the alternative (reruns of sporting events).

It is entirely possible that the SJW stories actually financially benefit ESPN through increased ratings from non traditional viewers and increased web clicks, just not enough to offset the market headwinds due to cord cutting that have nothing to do with what ESPN talks about.

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It is entirely possible that the SJW stories actually financially benefit ESPN through increased ratings from non traditional viewers and increased web clicks, just not enough to offset the market headwinds due to cord cutting that have nothing to do with what ESPN talks about.

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We know this might be true because whenever we attend live sporting events or tailgate or go to sports bars the conversations we overhear are pretty much all SJW all the time.

I don't think you understood his point.

jja79 said:

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I don't think you understood his point.

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I understood it completely and even agree that it is possible.

Just altogether unconvincing.

He hard core fans who attend tailgates, live sporting events, and sports bars are not the target of the SJW stories. The hard core fan is going to watch the live events regardless of what espn puts on sports center.

Where things are going to matter is the casual fan or the not yet a fan. If ESPN can entice them into watching a game, then espn increases their ratings. But you will not be able to measure that group by polling tailgates, live sporting events, sports bars, and sites like texags.

well how do you measure that group in a way that helps stop the bleeding?

cone said:

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well how do you measure that group in a way that helps stop the bleeding?

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I would guess dig into the demographics info that Nelson collects rather than the aggregate data everyone else is looking at. I'm sure Disney and ESPN know exactly what those numbers are showing.

Also, I don't think it stops the bleeding, just reduces it some. Cord cutting is likely to be a bigger factor that any efforts to capture new markets. At some point, ESPN will flip the switch and offer ESPN NOW (or whatever they want to call it) when you pay hem directly for a WatchESPN subscription. but that doesn't make sense as long as there is still a lot of money to be had by the cable bundle model, because flipping that switch will likely crush their cable sub revenue.

the biggest factor moving ahead for ESPN is that young people increasingly don't watch live sports

and they get their highlights off twitter, almost instantly

so what use is the format?

trying to get young by getting woke is a crowded marketplace. good luck.

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ESPN has issued new political and election guidelines for its employees that, while allowing for political discussion on the network's platforms, recommend connecting those comments to sports whenever possible.

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http://www.espn.com/blog/ombudsman/post/_/id/816/new-espn-guidelines-recognize-connection-between-sports-politics

Yay...more of what we all dont want.

Just about anything, whether politics, religion or other that suggests how you should behave or what philosophy you should espouse, is a sure fire way to get people to lose interest.

Keep it up, ESPN. Not losing subscribers fast enough already? Problem solved.

20ag07 said:

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People aren't dropping their cable bc ESPN gave Jenner an award. They are dropping their entire cable package, which just includes ESPN due to cheaper options.

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And they aren't renewing ESPN, and some of that is because the political slant of their 'shows' other than sports broadcasts detracts from the product. It's funny how certain political persuasions choose never to learn this lesson, but it crops up over and over.

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Things like sports are for escaping things like politics.

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"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" doesn't make good sports viewing?

I still have espn. Just can't figure out a way to cut it. With college football, college basketball and MLB, I don't want to miss those games.

Having said that, that's all I watch on there besides PTI. Everything else is worthless.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-nfl-sign-50-million-streaming-deal-for-thursday-games-2017-04-04

hockeyag said:

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That LHN investment looks more and more like a luxury. Certainly not creating value.

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It's really an insignificant cost based on their total pool of 7.3 billion in contracts for a year. 20 million is around .0027 or around 1/4 of a % of the total. It always was an experiment for them. At a relatively low cost. The point being to see if they could parlay that into more channels at more universities. They obviously want it to do better but not for tu but as another source of income at multiple schools.

At least that's what they wanted when they originally did the deal. The situations have changed since then.

2thFixinAg said:

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hockeyag said:

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That LHN investment looks more and more like a luxury. Certainly not creating value.

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It's really an insignificant cost based on their total pool of 7.3 billion in contracts for a year. 20 million is around .0027 or around 1/4 of a % of the total. It always was an experiment for them. At a relatively low cost. The point being to see if they could parlay that into more channels at more universities. They obviously want it to do better but not for tu but as another source of income at multiple schools.

At least that's what they wanted when they originally did the deal. The situations have changed since then.

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It also prevented the start of the superconference era of college football which would have forced renegotiation of a lot of deals

ham98 said:

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2thFixinAg said:

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hockeyag said:

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That LHN investment looks more and more like a luxury. Certainly not creating value.

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It's really an insignificant cost based on their total pool of 7.3 billion in contracts for a year. 20 million is around .0027 or around 1/4 of a % of the total. It always was an experiment for them. At a relatively low cost. The point being to see if they could parlay that into more channels at more universities. They obviously want it to do better but not for tu but as another source of income at multiple schools.

At least that's what they wanted when they originally did the deal. The situations have changed since then.

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It also prevented the start of the superconference era of college football which would have forced renegotiation of a lot of deals

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This is correct. It also prevented the Big 12 from starting their own conference network. Which also saved ESPN quite a bit of money (if they had "won" the rights to the network) or lost inventory (if they had lost it to Fox or FS1).

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It also prevented the start of the superconference era of college football which would have forced renegotiation of a lot of deals

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What era do you think we are in right now? If you are thinking about some alignment of four conferences composed of 16 teams, that's never happening.

The reason there was a lot of talk about realignment (and a number of moves) around 2010 is that every conference (save and except the SEC, which had just signed a new deal in 2008) had significant media rights deals coming up for renewal. We will see something similar happen around 2023. But, with the sips under contract to ESPN for the LHN until 2031, that tends to indicate that the Big XII will survive beyond that date, as long as ESPN and/or Fox are willing to throw them enough money to keep the lights on.

We cut the cord nearly 3 years ago. It was a great decision. I listen to PTI on podcast. I have multiple log-ins from family at the ready as necessary (NBA playoffs) for the app. I see enough beyond that at the gym, and it's terrible ("The 6" - they went full SJW).

ESPN can get bent.

https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/espn-president-brought-down-by-cocaine-extortion-plot/

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

pepe the dog said:

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Nixter said:

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ESPN needs more talking heads and political activism.

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ESPN is going the way of the newspaper.......self inflicted death.

People not buying what they have been saying.

I don't feel sorry about the death of newspapers, ESPN or network television.

They did it to themselves.

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The war isn't over yet. They're going to offer ESPN Plus, which is sports and nothing else, as a streaming service. Which means no need for a cable subscription to access their content. Mix it in with one of the other services Hulu, DirectTV Now, Sling or YouTube TV) and put it on an Apple TV, which does most of the annoying sign-on crap for you on network web sites), and voila.

No one will want the Lonely Hearts Network anyway.

The Global Flagship said:

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pepe the dog said:

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Nixter said:

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ESPN needs more talking heads and political activism.

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ESPN is going the way of the newspaper.......self inflicted death.

People not buying what they have been saying.

I don't feel sorry about the death of newspapers, ESPN or network television.

They did it to themselves.

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The war isn't over yet. They're going to offer ESPN Plus, which is sports and nothing else, as a streaming service. Which means no need for a cable subscription to access their content. Mix it in with one of the other services Hulu, DirectTV Now, Sling or YouTube TV) and put it on an Apple TV, which does most of the annoying sign-on crap for you on network web sites), and voila.

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ESPN makes it's money on the people who don't watch their content... not the ones who do watch their content.

They get what... $6 for every cable provider whether they watch sports or not?! There are what... 80Million subscribers for Cable\Dish? Most ESPN broadcasts are well below 3-4M viewers.

80M X $6 = $480M
To reach that same amount for say 10M direct subscribers, you are looking at $48/mo. Are you willing to pay $48/Mo for months like February (outside Super Bowl)... June and July (outside of MLB)?

If you are not willing to pay $120/mo for cable\dish... you are not likely to spend $48/mo just for ESPN.

Nixter said:

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ESPN needs more talking heads and political activism. Maybe produce a few film length documentaries on the bravery of Colin Kapaernick and a women's rights show hosted by Jim Brown and Art Briles. That will do the trick.

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What's Fox's excuse? FS1 is an inferior product, so I guess there is that part.

If I'm being totally honest here, I don't like that I was strongarmed into carrying the POS Longhorn Network.