By Dejan Kovacevic | Trib Total Media
The chat transcript gets into Jason Worilds’ apparent irrelevance with the Steelers, the Penguins’ need for another Rob Scuderi, the tolerance public service ads by Brooks Orpik, the gap between Duquesne and Robert Morris, and even more.
Thanks to all who participated! Good stuff today.
ESPN criticism seems misplaced to me. ESPN is not a public broadcasting enterprise with serving the public interest as its underlying duty. The purpose of ESPN is to provide customers for its advertisers and cable carriers. The advertisers and carriers pay for the Berman salaries and the big buildings full of employees in Bristol. Of course they will concentrate on promoting sports and leagues that are part of their entertainment packages that they hype to advertisers to get their business. If I am an Oldsmobile dealer, then I talk about Oldsmobile not Toyota. Similarly, population concentration and market share interest means focusing more attention to popular teams from the major urban centers. That gets more people to buy Budweiser and that gets Budweiser to pay for more ads.
NBC does the same. NBCSN and NBC cover hockey and Olympic sports more intensely because those sports are part of their entertainment package. Fox has shows dedicated to soccer, NASCAR and the NFL. When Murdoch’s enterprise begins in August, I expect them to do the same. Rupert isn’t a billionaire because he doesn’t understand capitalism and thinks Minnesota is being cheated with not enough Twins games being televised nationally. I’m sure there will be nothing altruistic about the News Corp national sports network.
I also stick to the networks that are under their league’s proprietorship. I watch college basketball and football on ESPN and that’s about it. I get my sports news online but, quite frankly, I get a lot of my news from the good ole newspaper. I still have subscriptions to the “physical media” of USA today and two state local papers. I’m with Warren Buffett on that one.
Very much agreed, John.
Well, except for the first line. I think we can recognize the business model and still criticize it as being a crappy product.
But we have to recognize we are clearly the minority or else ESPN would never have changed in the first place. Ratings drive content. I don’t care how altruistic a network sets out to be.