Game On

Fantasy football is live. Yahoo changed things up a bit so I think everyone may actually be signed up.

-100

It seems I've mostly been posting about ESPN lately but it's hard not to when they offer up so much material. Today, a big one: ESPN fired 100 people today and some of them are names you'd recognize. Some of the more familiar names: Ed Werder, Roger Cossack, Jay Crawford, Trent Dilfer (one of the best NFL analysts out there), Jayson Stark, and the one that hits me the hardest, Danny Kanell. Russillo and Kanell is just about the only thing on ESPN worth watching (or listening to) so losing half the team hurts. Russillo is reportedly still going to be on the radio but will be cut back on the TV side but it still leaves me concerned. Maybe I'll get to dump the ESPN app the same way I dumped ESPN.

"He's a friend from work!"

Political

ESPN has released new guidelines for discussing politics on the network, though you won't find them on the front page and they waited until just after a NCAA Championship game to do it. As near as I can tell they're giving commentators the green light to discuss politics as long as it's related to sports in some fashion. They're supposed to offer "balance" to opposing views but note that idea is subjective, so you can read probably assume they won't feel the need to talk about conservative views unless they're mocking them. I find this especially interesting given the last story I posted. ESPN again seems determined to double-down on the things people are complaining about. I'm going to enjoy laughing at them when they can't pay their bills any longer.

Falling Off a Cliff

Bloomberg Business Week has an interesting article on ESPN and cord cutting, something I've posted about before. It includes a graph that shows the subscriber numbers falling off a cliff. ESPN though appears to be doubling-down on protecting the cable bundle. Their main problem? Cost. According to that article Game of Thrones costs HBO about $100 million for a season. ESPN pays that just for one MNF game. It's hard to believe that's going to go well for ESPN in the end. They probably can't afford to give people a lower-cost option for consuming ESPN content, but ESPN is a pretty awful deal compared to... well, pretty much everything.