How does Danny Kannell get fired but Joey Galloway gets to stay?

Jessie Palmer made the cut??

I don't think they're through yet. It's gonna get worse. They'd never admit it, but their support of NFL players disrespecting our vets pissed of a LOT of viewers. Their ratings plummeted but they're doubling down on the policy as they are laying off hundreds.

I frankly hope the entire industry collapses and takes Disney with it.

They've lost millions of viewers. They need to stick to sports and not worry about gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, giving Bruce Jenner an award, talking so much about the flag protests, police brutality, etc

I strongly agree. They're still making billions, but they definitely lost a few million with some dumb decisions. The great thing about sports WAS that it's not political.

Yup, People watch Sports to get away from social and Political issues...ESPN only gets watched her during select college football games and maybe a Monday Night Football game.

It's about money, not politics although the latter played a role in the last couple of years. But it's more about their broken business model, sinking billions into live sports events and losing even more billions as the current younger generation -- typically the ESPN target audience, teens through 30-year-olds -- are cutting the cord from network and watching more videos, going to Netflix-Roku-etc., and not sticking around with the old TV.

Compare it to newspaper business model from 10 years ago, if you will. Newspapers didn't increase prices, gave away their content online, didn't have a diversity of voices (in many cases), presumed to know what to tell their audience, and failed magnanimously in realizing how the internet would affect their classified and retail advertising as well as diluting the news. TV stations did the same.

Now, ESPN is seeing the chickens come home to roost. They have incredibly high salaries although the network is famous for "Here's what we are offering, take it or leave it" and not negotiating. I know that first-hand. It's a big pot of problems, but money -- losing it, in huge amounts -- is the crux. Pissing off the older (age 30+) viewers with the politicizing isn't the main reason but it darn sure didn't help.

Sadly, many of the ones they are cutting are legit, smart, veteran reporters with experience, depth and good instincts. The ones they're keeping are the yelling opinion-screamers.

Some good background:

http://deadspin.com/espn-is-hemorrhaging-subscribers-and-pretending-it-does-1788618362

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/09/espn-isnt-the-only-cable-network-that-suffered-this-year.html

http://fortune.com/2016/10/31/espn-subscribers/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/espn-lost-million-subscribers_us_583ef00be4b04fcaa4d5f2a8

http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-another-555-000-subscribers-per-nielsen-112916


This has some solid numbers on the billions paid out in rights fees vs. estimated billions in revenue minus estimated expenses. They're still making money. Just not as much as in the past, and the losses are enough to drag down stock prices and cause huge concern.

http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-l...-history-102916

Good info Clem.Be nice to know just how much Nfl&college football are worth dollarwise pretty sure Goodell&conference commishs know.

I'm know there are some, and i'll admit, I haven't researched it. But of the 15 names I've seen in articles...none were black.

Thinking too...how much did espn pay for the sec network? Have they built a acc or were they in the process of building one? Seems they may have over extended a bit also.

I hope they fire em all

Lot of the names - many recognizable - that are known are people who announced publicly they'd been let go. Because they probably will be picked up by someone else -- websites, possibly FOX, maybe even newspaper "media groups" looking to expand (doubtful, but possible) -- and because they have a social media following, they announced they'd been let go.

But with upwards of 70-100 being cut loose, reportedly, we may not know who exactly is gone until new faces appear or don't appear on shows, sidelines, at games, etc.

I don't watch ESPN like I did in the '80s and early 90s pre-internet. We had NFL Network because our son enjoyed the games and Red Zone. So I don't really care what their business is doing or even know much about what shows are on or such.

But I've been through work upheaval, as have many of y'all, and it's not fun to get that call or find out you're hanging by a thread or could be whacked in six or nine months after more quarterly earnings come out. Top it off with all the "fake news!" and ignorant hatred from fans-viewers, and it's not enjoyable for the people or their families. Part of life, though.

WTF??? I would gladly give up Monday Night Football for $21.50 per month.

Taken from the Outkick The Coverage posted above:

ESPN presently pays $1.9 billion a year for Monday Night Football. (This is a wild stat, but did you know that every cable and satellite subscriber who has ESPN is paying $21.50 a year just for Monday Night Football games? That's whether you ever watch those games or not. That's the NFL tax that ESPN passes along to consumers.)

See? That's one thing about cable few folks realize. ESPN had the highest carriage subscriber fees to the outlets like Comcast, Time-Warner, others. Back before the internet if you wanted to watch sports 24/7, you wanted ESPN. They knew that. So they could tell the cable companies, "Our fee is X, take it or leave it."

Few left it. Who wanted to be the cable provider that didn't offer ESPN in even its Basic package? And they grew, and the numbers grew, and their revenue exploded, and the next year or two later they went to the cable provider and said, "Our new rate is not X anymore, it's Y. Take it or leave it." And even though it might have been incremental -- 10 cents, 22 cents, whatever -- that added up with 100brazillion subscribers.

They kept that model for years. When Netflix and the other a la carte providers came along, ESPN had shelled out billions for live events rights fees. Then the cord-cutters didn't just trickle in, they began shedding cable in droves and quicker than ESPN realized or planned for. And ESPN got hammered and still is getting hammered, financially.

Throw in all the opinion-screamers who aren't journalists along with the politics to combine with the financial losses and they stepped into a pile of quicksand.

Clem is spot on.

But I'll add to it a little. Once ESPN realized it was hemorrhaging subscribers, a foothold of Progressives were in charge. Now Progressive only think they are smart...so they upped all the social drama and politics while Obama was in office and even went further to stop Trump. They danced on the edge of the cliff on purpose and haughtily thought they'd be fine. Wrong.

Sports isn't the appealing place for social and political justice programming. Leave that to news and opinion coverage. People want sports. People also enjoy deep sporting stories like 30 for 30 and documentaries if they are done in a compelling way. But the base is sports.

They let some of they're best talent leave in recent years but let Stephen A smith/Jamele Hill/Joey Galloway spout their racist opinions. I'm fine with ESPN folding up totally,somebody will always cover college football.

They tried to glorify the overpaid liberal ass quarterback in San Francisco and it has bit them in the ass. I hope the essobee never plays another down of football, too bad he probably has money stacked up in a vault. As far as those overpaid liberal ass sports people, tuff, now you aren't overpaid.

True, and Skinny touched on this earlier, too.

Fans want sports. They don't want Jamelle Hill spouting off crap about Congress or Roger Clemens yammering about Trump. EVEN if they agree with what's being said, for the most part 99.999999 percent of the time they don't care one iota about a coach, player or yammering nabob discussing-ranting-talking about politics. They just want the escapism of the game.

There's been quite enough said and written, too, in the last 8-10 years about ESPN telling its talking heads to not be political. That meant not being conservative. If you wanted to be more open, "diverse" and Disney-like when you're hugging on Bruce Jenner, that was fine. Say anything to the contrary and you'd be shut down, or say anything about the NFL and you'd be shut down. So all that political stuff did play into it somewhat. Fans don't like it or want it.

The financial stuff is the dagger, though. I think they'll shed more people and events in another 9-12 months, and maybe try to get out of some of their live rights contracts. Definite sea-change for sure, and all out in the open.

I love it when it hits the fan for a bunch of libs who think they know what's better for everyone and shove chit sandwiches down everyone's throat.

The down hill spiral started years ago when ESPN would let that hack Kieth Suckerman spew his liberalism. Then it got out of control with Jenner and the fro bro in San Francisco. I use to watch that network nonstop when they reported sports but not anymore since it's gotten so politically correct. I only get the phone updates on my favorite teams from them. I listen to college sports on SiriusXM to get my updates and information and Tony Barnhart on CBS sports. Screw ESPN and Disney with their queer loving agenda.

13 million subscribers gone in the past year or so; that'll get someone's attention ...

21.50 per month and 21.50 per year are different

Ooops. A small but important detail.

Danny kannell sucked anyway

Im jumping for joy that Kannell got caned. He was a total DA. Hated and disparaged the SEC at every opportunity. I JUST HATE THAT GUY...


Id love to tell him:
GO BLOW KANNELL, MAYBE YOU CAN GET HIRED CALLING A JR.HIGH GIRLS SOFTBALL GAME ASSHOLE!!!!!!!

Ditto. What a dick.

Looks like it was get rid of whitey,take a look at the list of folks laid off.

At $5.50 per month; real money.

Also, ESPN like the other TV networks still have not figured out the commercial over saturation runs viewers off. 3 minutes of programming for every 5 minutes of ads makes tv unbearable.

ESPN has an identity crisis of sorts. The company failed miserably at rebranding itself. Predictably, the boat began sinking faster after Disney bought ESPN.

When I turned my CATV gear in at the Charter office about 6 weeks ago, I was one of 4 people in my age group that were there doing the same thing. We were the only 4 customers in the place. Now, extrapolate this out 10 years from now. How hard will this hit pro football in lost revenue due to ESPN being gone completely or at least a very small player in the grand scheme of pay to play for the big leagues? How hard will that same scenario hit the salaries of pro players (who are WAY overpaid anyway IMHO)? What restructuring for cable companies, in favor of customers, will we see? I believe the whole market will be changed over the next 10 years.

You're right, Wiley, and it will. Maybe not even 10 years. Everything is moving at lightning speed and the legacy media can't keep up.

Only reason I ever watch ESPN is college football. They've sort of owned it. We don't subscribe to ESPN Feb-Aug. Just during the season.