ESPN Is Pathetic

kenneycb

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You're leaving reader interest out from the equation. There's some tail wagging the dog stuff but I would guess an NFL stories draw more eyeballs than an average MLB story by a good margin, especially when the NFL just finished a week ago. Not to mention the NBA trade deadline was yesterday, which is in ESPN's interest to push. Some of it is tail wagging the dog but ESPN probably has scores of data justifying the above.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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You're leaving reader interest out from the equation. There's some tail wagging the dog stuff but I would guess an NFL stories draw more eyeballs than an average MLB story by a good margin, especially when the NFL just finished a week ago. Not to mention the NBA trade deadline was yesterday, which is in ESPN's interest to push. Some of it is tail wagging the dog but ESPN probably has scores of data justifying the above.
I'm sure you're right -- the editorial decisions they're making are based on what generates the most views. To put it kindly, that is "satisfying user demand -- give the people what they want". To be more cynical, it's "to hell with our perceived role as a journalistic entity, let's just make money."

Same decision that MTV made years ago to nuke airing music videos. You could call it greed, but as somebody there at time we preferred to think of it as "removing low-rated stuff for higher-rated stuff is just us trying to please more people."
 

glennhoffmania

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Apparently Cone may replace Mendoza. I didn't think they could find someone worse but I guess I underestimated them.
 

jon abbey

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Apparently Cone may replace Mendoza. I didn't think they could find someone worse but I guess I underestimated them.
You and I might have trouble agreeing whether people need oxygen to survive but Cone is the best analyst I know of currently. He's not as good as Girardi was when he did it for a year in between managerial jobs, but he's better than anyone else I'm aware of currently working.
 

jon abbey

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The best analysts are all ex-Yankees, everyone knows that. :)
They have plenty of terrible ones too but those two are great (well, Girardi was great, Cone is just very good). Feel free to tell me the guys for other teams I'm not familiar with who are on that level, never was as into Vin Scully as everyone else but he's retired now anyway.
 

ifmanis5

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Cone is fine, he has a good grasp of advanced stats and will criticize when it's needed.
I was hoping they'd fill the spot with a more recent player who has actually played with the guys we're watching and can tell inside stories that reflect the game today and not just that time he hung out with Clemens and Jeter.
 

Captaincoop

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Cone is fine, he has a good grasp of advanced stats and will criticize when it's needed.
I was hoping they'd fill the spot with a more recent player who has actually played with the guys we're watching and can tell inside stories that reflect the game today and not just that time he hung out with Clemens and Jeter.
At least he has played Major League Baseball. That's a big step up for that broadcast.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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Man, I wonder what ESPN is going to do to fill its air. Aside from speculation against NFL free agency and the draft, and NCAA audience-free hoops (which, I'll speculate, may yet get cancelled too) they have no content. Can't even go to overseas sports leagues, as they're all melting too.
 

dirtynine

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Reasonable, nuanced discussion? Stephen A. Smith in a surgical mask? Marble Racing?

Since this thread is about to be a decade old, I’m not holding out hope.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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Man, I wonder what ESPN is going to do to fill its air. Aside from speculation against NFL free agency and the draft, and NCAA audience-free hoops (which, I'll speculate, may yet get cancelled too yup, that's gone now too) they have no content. Can't even go to overseas sports leagues, as they're all melting too.
Updated
 

scottyno

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xfl just suspended play for the year, and pretty sure wsop will get canceled too, though they'll probably wait a little while to make that call

time to go all in on e-sports, because you can cover and play it even while quarantined!
 
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The Gray Eagle

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They need to run a computer simulation of the NCAA tournament.
Get participants who are current students at each school, have a "selection show," and show all the games on TV. If they did that, we could still have brackets!
 

allstonite

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They should get weird with it. Bring back old school Classic shows (as suggested by Chad Finn), rehire Simmons to create newer Classic stuff (longshot but him with live “rewatchables” type stuff with their catalog could be great), bring back any backlog of the Ocho type stuff, 30 for 30 marathons.
 

scottyno

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maybe they can't even cover e sports, apparently the nba 2k league is postponing play too, for all the sense in the world that makes
 

Marciano490

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They should get weird with it. Bring back old school Classic shows (as suggested by Chad Finn), rehire Simmons to create newer Classic stuff (longshot but him with live “rewatchables” type stuff with their catalog could be great), bring back any backlog of the Ocho type stuff, 30 for 30 marathons.
Simmons is en route to the 3 comma club, I don’t think even Disney can afford him now.

A friend from elementary school started the drone racing league that espn broadcasts. Maybe that’ll take off now.
 

scottyno

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Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but the Revolution are doing a live stream ea sports simulation of what would have been this weekends game vs Portland. ESPN should be doing this, get the real announcers, and live broadcast some madden or 2k sim of some of the top teams, they can even have studio analysis, and pre and postgame shows with the highlights. Seems like it would take very little work on their end, and they can even have the announcers broadcast remotely if necessary for safety reasons.
 

jercra

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Based on the past few responses I'm going to guess that most people posting don't really know what goes into a live TV broadcast. It takes a lot of people in very confined spaces. It's not just about the players. TV looks like magic, but it's actually pretty old technology requiring physical wires and buttons and knobs and people to connect them, push them and turn them.
 

Pablo's TB Lover

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They need to run a computer simulation of the NCAA tournament.
Get participants who are current students at each school, have a "selection show," and show all the games on TV. If they did that, we could still have brackets!
There is a Bona Commenter on Youtube who ran a marathon stream of the simulated A10 tournament yesterday and the final is going on now to line up with when the Final would have occurred. St. Bonaventure vs URI for a chance to the imaginary big dance. Some funny comments going on like "Is 4 games in 24 hours catching up to the Bonnies?" A few actual players are in the comments as well.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMgzFTo1IOU
 

The Gray Eagle

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This is cool.

ESPN should do the full NCAA tournament version of this like I said earlier, with players from the actual universities, and broadcast them. And announce it long enough in advance for people to fill out brackets.

Would be a nice distraction for a lot of people and give them (or any other network that does it) some cheap "sports" programming.
 

Marciano490

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Minor complaint, but I was watching the replay of ufc fight night last not on ESPN2. I had purposefully avoided looking up who’d won earlier in the night, but they kept running the scroll underneath and spoiled all the fights.

How hard would it have been to not give away the winners during the reairing?
 

DJnVa

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I know normally they are, I don't understand why they can't just play them remotely though, the players don't even need to be in the same room as each other
In some tournaments they need to make sure the players aren't cheating. May not be an issue in this specific tournament, but it is a thing.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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ESPN should do the full NCAA tournament version of this like I said earlier, with players from the actual universities, and broadcast them. And announce it long enough in advance for people to fill out brackets.
I'm curious, when you say players from the actual universities, do you mean real player(s) at the controls of their particular team, or those players doing some sort of commentary of computer generated simulations?

Guess it might come down to whether you want to see the video game version of the tournament somewhat reflect the real life teams as opposed to coming down to which teams have the best video game players on the roster. I can just picture the student manager for Prairie View A&M being some sort of an XBox whiz that leads his "team" on a Cinderella run to the title.

Personally, I wouldn't be interested in who has the best XBox players. I would be interested in a full simulation of a game with no human influence.
 

DJnVa

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Minor complaint, but I was watching the replay of ufc fight night last not on ESPN2. I had purposefully avoided looking up who’d won earlier in the night, but they kept running the scroll underneath and spoiled all the fights.

How hard would it have been to not give away the winners during the reairing?
No networks seems to have this figured out. During March Madness if you watched streaming through the NCAA there was delay, yet the same site you're watching on has updated scores scrolling by.
 

Marciano490

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No networks seems to have this figured out. During March Madness if you watched streaming through the NCAA there was delay, yet the same site you're watching on has updated scores scrolling by.
The scroll is a bit of an antiquated concept in the smartphone era. It’s more distracting than informative, even when it’s not acting as a spoiler.
 

Vinho Tinto

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The scroll is a bit of an antiquated concept in the smartphone era.
This is true, but it was easier for me to confirm my mother’s parish had cancelled services via the local station’s news scroll vs the internet. But for sports, I’d be pretty satisfied if they just stopped.
 

Marciano490

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This is true, but it was easier for me to confirm my mother’s parish had cancelled services via the local station’s news scroll vs the internet. But for sports, I’d be pretty satisfied if they just stopped.
I was referring to sports scrolls specifically, but that makes sense. Churches always seem to have the most antiquated, uninformative websites. It’s like they’re stuck in the past or something.
 

InstaFace

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They're doing an ESPN The Ocho schedule day tomorrow (Sun 3/22), because they're fucking desperate to televise something other than Screamin A Smith "There is never a bad time to celebrate creativity and athletes at the top of their sport".

As fun as the cherry-pit spitting contest and the Stupid Robot Fighting League all sound, I do think they're doing a disservice to ultimate by airing it at 4:00am. But I'm intrigued by a decent number of the evening events so I might even tune in.
 

h8mfy

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The “Headis” competition is pretty interesting. It is ping-pong played with a ball about as big as a volleyball, and though they looked like the help desk crew, the guys I watched (at about 930 pm pt Friday when the ocho was on espnews) were surprisingly good at getting their heads on the ball to serve and return. There were much longer rallies than you would expect.

Here’s a headis clip: View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_U4farpGvw


I realized how starved I was to watch any kind of competition.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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While the Ocho stuff is on the Deuce, the mothership is showing Patriots all afternoon in an "NFL Greatest Games" marathon starting with the tuck rule game and going through every Super Bowl win. After that, it's Wrestlemania 30.

Definitely a step up from MLB Network programming which has been all 1978 since yesterday morning...replays of game 163 on a loop. :confused:
 

Pablo's TB Lover

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The Sign Spinning Championship is mesmerizing
My wife was asking how does someone get started in this? Watching it, seems like a mix of if you are great at fencing and break-dancing, this is the hobby for you. It did feel odd being in the middle of the day, with the electronic music I was in a trance and all of a sudden felt like doing hard drugs.
 

DanoooME

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The Ax throwing is engrossing
My wife and I tried this a couple of months ago and I have tons more respect for these guys hitting the bullseye pretty much every damn time. She kicked my ass when we did it (she seems to be some sort of natural at it), and it was a lot of fun, but even after an hour, I had a hard time hitting what I was throwing at. And I managed to break an ax.