ESPN Laying Off Additional On-Air Personalities
- Thread starter knowlesjam
- Start date
Meh? DBag? These are PEOPLE. With FAMILIES to support. Wow. I think some folks here need to step back and think about Mike Golic Jr.'s future. I pray that Mike Jr. keeps his job. Think of the children.
Any word on Danny Kanell's status? Hopefully his kids won't go to bed hungry tonight.[/QUOTE]
Apparently these folks not as angelic and kind as Cooter Ray.
I am really surprised ESPN let Katz go. He seemed to be the voice of college hoops! He was a good analyst. Also, Eammon Brennan's departure is surprising. I wonder if they are going to be shrinking the college basketball online content? Those guys were key contributors.
I was also going to try to catch the replay on the podcast. Can anyone paraphrase what Hassel said, and Keith and Andy's take on it?
Also, I have read that ESPN is releasing some of them with the hopes of signing some of them back at a reduced price. Hopefully Katz and Eammon are two of them.
- Mar 27, 2006
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The liberal angle is just bogus. If that were the reason that ESPN was failing, wouldn't you expect it to only affect them? It's not though. Their competitors are seeing big dropoffs as well. FS1 is down lots of subscribers, too. They just had a big employee layoff about a year ago. Cable subscriptions are down across the board. Unless your theory is that viewers are so angry at ESPN's liberal view that they're cancelling their entire cable subscription in protest, then that angle just doesn't hold water.
There are legitimate reasons why ESPN is not doing as well as they were (and to be clear, they're still very, very profitable). Being too PC/Liberal is way, way far down the list.
I doubt there is a lot of direct cause and effect but I know the politicization of sports has really turned me off in general. We cancelled our DirecTV last month as I couldn't justify it any more.
Sports should be an escape from politics.
It sucks, but I am sure his bracketology page brings more page views during the lead up to the tourney than all of Katz's articles does all year.
- Mar 27, 2006
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CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
That's not what I said. I hope you aren't naive enough to believe that people make entertainment purchasing decisions in some sort of vacuum. Lots of factors go into those decisions, many of them subconscious.
Sports was an escape for me from the grind of life including politics. Less interest in sports, less time to watch and a $140 monthly bill were some of the factors that led me and my wife to cancel. We had RCA/DirecTV/AT&T since 1998.
I believe Lunardi is a freelance guy. He has a full-time job as a VP of Marketing at St. Joseph's University. So he's probably getting paid by ESPN on a contract basis with no benefits.
- Mar 27, 2006
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I was looking for clarification, because your post wasn't exactly clear on your reasoning for cancelling Direct TV. You wrote "I know the politicization of sports has really turned me off in general. We cancelled our DirecTV last month as I couldn't justify it any more." That's ambiguous at best.
