OT: Disney stock hammered on earnings report, ESPN weakness to blame
tldr; the ESPN spigot is drying up, and they've cut a few of the 'personalities' (worthless talking heads) that shouldn't be making more than local radio people.
analysis - this will be a death by a thousand cuts - hopefully cord cutters continue into the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, quarter over quarter, year over year. Eventually we will move towards the European sports model, which Brian cited in a post a few weeks ago.
ESPN still makes up an insane percentage of Disney's total profit (40-something percent?)
Will be very interesting to see if the networks balk at Delany asking for more money in the upcoming contract talks. If I was Fox, I'd tell him you're getting the same amount that you were, because I don't see ESPN paying you any more than I am. Will be very interesting to see how this goes. In time, the golden goose that is the Big Ten Network will unfortunately be taken to the butcher for lack of golden egg output.
To show his little kids that they're not a "higher class of people."
ESPN, Uniformz, Nike/adidas & Cowherd. No mas por favor
I'm 54 years old. Obviously college football for me has changed dramatically over the years. It has gone to damn near a farm league for the NFL. ESPN televising high school football games and press conferences for high schoolers to announce where they are going to school? To me this has been created by the ESPN machine. ESPN brought many games to TV which is good for the fan, me included. To me, the stuff I previously mentioned is the bad side of it. College football to them has nothing to do with the educational side of why anyone goes to college in the first place. That's all just my opinion. I haven't gotten to the age of yelling "Get off my lawn!"
ESPN now televises so many games they lack announcers that you can listen to. Today's announcers talk too much, and you get too much dribbling information that has nothing to do with the game. I think some just like to hear themselves talk. They just can't seem to annouce the game. Let the game flow without all the extra bullshit that means nothing.
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August 5th, 2015 at 11:28 PM ^
Sheeeeeeeelt?
I almost would rather do a pay-per-view for college football games rather than subscribe to ESPN the whole year.
Live sports is the only reason I haven't cut the cord yet and I think I may just do it anyways, especially now that HBO is offered standalone.
is raising park admissions prices with impunity. Why?
Because they can. It'll be a $100 a person by 2016 to go on crap rides like Tomorrow Land.
Even Disney knows that human adults today have a high tolerance for pain, e.g. standing on the surface of the sun with screaming children and obnoxious teens in tow.
Meanwhile, Star Wars The Force Awakens is released in December. They are going to milk the crap out of that cow and make a megaton of profit from it (parks, rides, merchandise, toys, TV show spin offs, etc.).
As far as profits, it's going be borderline obscene. ESPN can just stand by and watch going "WTF just happened?"
It is already over $100 for a one day ticket to the Magic Kingdom...and the theme parks are reporing record attendance.
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Vacationing there is just awful, in my opinion, I keep pointing out to my better half that the cost is unsustainable and there are better things to do with the money and better ways to spend time on vacation, but she loves amusement parks so it's kind of a non-starter. What really sucks is I don't really like them that much and so I have to spend all day at a place I already think is dumb while my wallet continually bitch-slaps me.
It's okay to like #ESPNsucks, just don't tell others that find the network tedious, childish and TMZ-like that they're wrong.
I've posted before and will again, I too haven't watched anything outside of Live Games (other than 30-for-30, which are independently produced) in years. ESPN is doing the same thing MTV did years ago in straying away from coverage of it's main topic - sports - to dictating and creating content and deciding what to report.
It's not "hip" to hate ESPN because its the "Mother ship," a lot of folks simply cannot stand ESPN because it selects what to cover based exclusively on its producers decisions and target markets.
If you live in the "fly over states" or outside of truly major markets, good luck seeing your team on ESPN anymore ...even SportsCenter.
And fwiw, I called this when Disney bought ESPN. All the talent has long since fled and been replaced with cable TV anchors and general TV personalities.
I have almost no rooting interest in this since I cut the cord years ago, but I'm curious...
Are you saying that some folks are upset because ESPN features more popular teams and those from major markets, rather than giving everyone equal time?
I can understand someone wishing they saw more of certain teams (including their own favorites), but I'm personally glad the primetime game on Saturday night is not NM State Aggies @ Idaho Vandals.
is that ESPN has perverted sports, and that they manufacture story lines so that they can exploit it for their own benefit to the detriment of sports in general. ESPN is a greedy monster that will soon die off, and count me as someone who'll be cheering as it goes down (hopefully in a fiery explosion).
Yes, more along these lines but also to say that ESPN will showcase the Red Sox and Yankees while both teams are out of contention to win the AL East in the fall as opposed to showing a game between the first place KC Royals and Oakland A's.
They will then justify this by saying the ratings for two shitty teams in Boston and NY is better than the ratings of KC and Oakland.
I don't dispute the business rationale for making some of these decisions, but I don't like it either. This is also why there has been such growth of regional networks who WILL cover the Royals for those in that region ...it's just ESPN doesn't bother.
As an anecdotal example ...about this time last year I was so starved for college football to start that I sat and watched an ESPN college football preview show. Only a few minutes into watching it and headed to commercial break, the "host" (it was that douche that won the reality show contest to become a SportsCenter anchor) says in teasing the upcoming segment after the break -
"You don't have to tell LEBRON JAMES how to deal with cramping, but wait until you see wha this Alabama player is doing..."
What the fuck does LeBron James have to do with college football aside from the fact that in some production meeting somewhere at ESPN, it was decided that every show must make mention of and include LeBron James.
It's almost as if comp is based upon usage of select references like LeBron ...Tebow ...Deflategate, etc.
I turned the channel.
(and the Alabama player apparently eats mustard to combat cramping)
I can see where you're coming from. It's a two-way street though...
That same bias to major teams and markets has kept our Wolverines on larger or full national broadcasts far more than we've deserved over the last 10 years.
It really has nothing to do with Disney owning ESPN. Its all simple supply and demand. Its not so much producers and whatnot electing to skip flyover states, its that no one cares about the teams or news in flyover states. The ratings just aren't there. So why create the content if no one is going to watch it? Make what the people want.
Know why a lot of restaurants have burgers on the menu? Its because people like burgers. Know why a lot don't have veal carpaccio? Because no one likes that.
It's actually not that simple, though your example is and as I already posted, I don't disagree with the rationale of giving people what they want...
There was a great article a few years ago that I'd have to stop and look to find, that detailed a lot of the changes at ESPN once they hired in new producers with backgrounds from 24-hour cable news networks. Instead of having shows with dedicated topics - NBA, NFL, NHL - the format became 5-6 topics - LeBron, Tebow, ARod, etc. - run all day long and across all shows.
So to your example, it would be a restaurant that advertises having a great menu for all people, only to actually only offer hamburgers ...because it's presumed everyone likes hamburgers and if they don't, enough hamburger eaters will offset those that go to other places to eat because they are sick of only hamburgers...
(Now I'm hungry)
As to the KC example, it's simply ESPN saying "fuck the best teams, all we care about is eyes for our advertisers" ...which is what TV is, but ESPN was not always like that when it came to programming.
"Instead of having shows with dedicated topics - NBA, NFL, NHL - the format became 5-6 topics - LeBron, Tebow, ARod, etc. - run all day long and across all shows."
What are you talking about? And how long ago are you talking about? The only sport specific show they killed was the NHL, and that was mostly because the NHL killed itself and ESPN didn't buy rights to it. They still have daily in-season shows for NBA, CFB, MLB, NFL Live is year-round, and there are multiple in-season NFL shows. So that part really couldn't be more wrong.
The things they did change was they added a lot of hours of live programming starting with doing live Sportscenters in the morning instead of just repeating the 1am SC over and over during the day. On ESPN2 they also added shows like First Take, Mike and Mike, Sportsnation, LeBatard, and so on (God knows if anyone remembers what they replaced because no one was watching whatever it was). They do talk about the types of things you mentioned, but guess what? That's what gets ratings. Turns out people are more interested in the latest with Tebow/Kobe/ARod/etc instead of the latest with the Royals, Kings, Wisconsin football, etc. Its the same reason you see so much Harbaugh news. People are tired of it, but it gets ratings.
As for the hiring people from 24-cable news networks, that's kind of how the TV business works. There's only so many places to work, so if you're adding a bunch of shows, and don't have talent in-house to produce them, there's really only one source for the people. And ESPN itself has been 24-hours for decades.
If I tell you what to care about by only showing you what I want you to care about, you begin to think that's all you care about.
Many on this board it would seem are not fond of being told what they should care about when it comes to sports. And while the programming all day includes different shows (though most are essentially the same format just with different personalities), it was not always the case that the same 5-6 topics were run all day long. It used to be the case that each show varied with its topics, but no longer. The influence of the media cable folks was a change at ESPN that replaced sports-minded producers with cable TV-minded producers, running off the assumptions that people are constantly changing the channel and need the news recycled often.
That is why you don't see much in the way of depth on any given day on any given story on ESPN and why shows in the past that would have been dedicated to one topic or another are now relegated to ESPN2/U/etc.
There is a reason why so many have chosen to leave ESPN (not referring to Simmons or Olbermann).
Look, I'm going to guess that you don't work at ESPN and therefore have no idea what you're talking about. I'm going to go out on a lumb here and say I'm a far bigger expert on what's happening inside ESPN than you are -- would love to elaborate on that, but I can't. Your argument is just flat out ignoring the basic rules of any media distribution -- give the people what they want (and guess what, they want things like all LeBron, all the time!).
There was no influx of cable TV minded producers that had some sort of coup over the sports-minded producers. They may have hired a couple from outside ESPN, but not enough to change the mentality. Any of that focus change came from far higher up, and it came from a desire to improve ratings, which in turn allows you to charge more for ads.
Which, you know, is kind of how TV works.
Its a national cable network, and its goal should be providing content that interests the largest audience possible. Now as the TV landscape changes over the next decade or so, and we might move into a world where you don't need to fill 24 hours a day with programming, you might see that change. Its already happening with the web content -- specialized team specific video -- but guess what, just because you can produce a video on the Royals or Jaguars doesn't mean anyone is going to watch it. And surprise, surprise, the metrics for online videos show that people don't give a shit there either.
How to shoot yourself in the foot:
1. Charge people who have no other current choice way too much; get greedy.
2. Flood the market with product and then pile on more.
ESPN has done both with their exhorbitant carriage fees that providers just ream subsribers with, and plethora of water-down ancillary networks, with their associated JV-wannabe announcers.
Marvel is doing the same thing with their Action Hero movies. Seriously, there is no way an "Ant Man" movie makes that splintered franchise in any way better.
Neg away, but this is me with these posts.
How is the breaking news on earnings "beating a dead horse?"
it's okay if you like Skip Bayless ...
I don't think this is bad for the Big Ten Network. It could be quite the opposite actually.
Once TV moves to a direct to consumer model, why would the Big Ten, SEC, NFL, or any other sports league need a national network like ESPN, Fox, NBC, or CBS? Rather than outsourcing the work to those networks and letting them take a chunk of the profits, why not just produce all the games yourself (like the Big Ten Network is currently doing) and sell them directly to the consumer?
I think when the TV landscape does shift, its going to look a whole lot different than people think. Instead of paying ESPN $10-30 a month for TV, you'll probably eventually see a shift where you'll sign up for all Big Ten calendar year sports for something like $300-400/year, or just the football season for like $150-200.
And shit will never, ever be cheaper. People will find a way to make just as much money -- if not more -- than before.
I'm buying a Roku and signing up for SlingTV here shortly...specifically for ESPN and football season. Once all the bowl games are done I probably will cancel until next fall.
Thanks for the review.
How is the quality of the ESPN stream? This is going on a 60" plasma so I'm hoping it's HD!
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Good to hear.
I learned a long time ago about trying to wireless stream. I have a Cat5 ethernet cable run between my router and the home theater.
Don't suppose it is transmitted in Dolby 5.1? OTA broadcasts are Dolby 5.1 and my home theater sounds like you're in the actual stadium.
Sportscenter is a terrible show. It is 90 percent NFL and NBA. No college sports or NHL which are my favorites. I like college gameday but that may be just because it gets me excited to see people out on the diag at 9 am.
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Its both the parks and ESPN, but its mostly the cable side that has investors worried. They are still making (lots) of money, but instead of having like 8-9% growth like they forecasted, they are having like 4-5% growth.
I legit wonder how much longer Wall Street is going to be expecting 10% growth from companies and stop getting all freaked out when they still make a profit, but not the magical double-digit growth. You can only squeeze so much blood out of the rock.
The cable TV area is hugely interesting to me, and there'll be a ton of change in the next 10 years.
Most of ESPN programming now is garbage.
The future of sports, and maybe TV should be a plethora of options. You should be able to buy channels individually, or maybe small blocks of channels together, you should be able to buy days of channels, an event (PPV style for $3-4 for a sporting event), and things should be time independant. That is, at 3 pm you should be able to buy the 1 pm game that already started, and be able to pick it up from the beginning (a bit like a DVR).
In short, TV should fit into people's lives, not vice versa.
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They get a quarter every time my little cousin asks me, "do you want to build a snowman?"
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