Did you know ESPN was dying?

[eagle eye]

Was I the only one who was ignorant of the fact that ESPN had a major lay-off last week? I’m serious, the only inkling I got of something happening was when I saw an article where ESPN football analyst Trent Dilfer said he bore no grudge against ESPN, and in fact he was grateful for the opportunities they afforded him. That was on Monday, on Tuesday I went down to a friend’s office and we got to talking sports and he asked me what I thought of all the people ESPN let go of last week. I replied, “I’m sorry, what? What are you talking about?” to which my friend replied with a question about whether or not my living quarters are under a rock somewhere. He went on to say that ESPN let go about 100 employees that included Dilfer, Danny Kanell, Jayson Stark, Ed Werder and Brett McMurphy were amongst the notable cuts to the ESPN payroll.

I find it quite ironic that the best article about this deal that I found was on Foxsports.com, the same company that poached such ESPN stalwarts such as Colin Cowherd and Skip Bayless a little over a year ago.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/04/27/espn-lays-off-about-100-employees-including-danny-kanell-ed-werder.html

So, why the people purge at the Mother Ship? That’s the only question in the Foxsports.com article failed to answer but USAtoday.com had their back with a concise answer--money. ESPN, since 2011, not only failed to grow its viewership, it has lost subscribers. As my friend said, “ESPN is bleeding money.” and it appears that is just the case. ESPN has literally gotten too big for its britches and they had to make cuts and as we, who live in the real world know, most of the time those cuts mean layoffs.

We all know people like to troll other people and the responses from the Foxsports.com article are no different, they are inflammatory and racist or homophobic posts but some are spot on. Most of the comments made at the end of the Foxsports.com article that I agree with feature some of the same gripes I had about MTV. When MTV came out you got to see cleaver videos of your favorite artists 24-7. Every once in a while either Kurt Loder or Tabitha Soren would come on and give us some music news. I really liked the first decade of MTV. I miss the original VJ’s like Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman, JJ Jackson and Nina Blackwood. Even some of the second generations VJ’s were pretty good too except for all the air time MTV gave to that dumbass Paulie Shore who annoyed the crap out of me.

It’s no surprise that ESPN came on about the same time as MTV and instead of videos it was 24-7 sports and endless repeats of SportsCenter in the mornings. It was awesome. About the same time both ESPN and MTV started diversifying. MTV started delving into reality TV and game shows while ESPN started doing documentary TV and game shows. If you wanted to see videos on MTV you had to watch MTV 2 or MTV Classic but it just wasn’t the same. ESPN started hiring smart-ass, mean spirited anchors like Craig Kilbourne and Keith Olberman to replace the Chris Berman’s and Charlie Steiners and Bob Ley’s. Both MTV and ESPN got mean spirited and I can honestly say I haven’t even watched SportsCenter in years and MTV is dead to me now. Maybe it’s just a function of just getting old. I don’t know but now that I have digested the news I am not surprised at this turn of events. At one time ESPN truly was the world wide leader in sports but there are too many players in the game now and ESPN is just a face in the crowd. All I can say is I’m sorry so many people lost their jobs, I when people lose their jobs, so for them I’m sad. As for ESPN all I can say is, “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.”