ESPN Prez Pitaro: Without question our data tells us our fans do not want us to cover politics

Here's the problem for ESPN....it has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with filling 24/7 programming hours when most of your "major live sports" coverage is in the evenings and weekends only. So what do you do? If you try to cover the "lesser" sports, there is no demand for it, so why waste your time/money on that production? If you fill the non-live sports coverage with trivial crap like talk shows and highlight shows, people tune out because they, like Fox News and MSNBC and all others, just beat the crap out of every topic.

ESPN should seriously just operate from 4pm to 1 am Monday thru Friday and then all day Saturday/Sunday. SportsCenter in the morning is just a relic of what it once was. It used to be cool before the Internet/Twitter and you actually had to wait for highlights. Now? That stuff is on demand. You can literally watch highlights seconds after the play/game happens.

Alabama BS wrote:

Not political by any means, but the Dan Lebetard show at 4:30 EST has to be the worst show ever put on TV.

Worst take of all-time. 1000% wrong. Lebetard makes fun of how seriously people take sports/themselves. It's genius when most of the other programming is what everyone is complaining you need more of -- just highlights & boring analysis.

Look I don't know the ins & outs of this but I would guess age has something to do with some of this stuff too. Younger folks are getting their entertainment elsewhere. Most people follow teams/stars so will tune in if they want to watch a specific game. Most people can't be bothered with the daily programming, lots of other thing competing with that. Politics isn't going to stop someone from tuning into Toronto/Milwaukee last night. If it is, a network shouldn't cater to someone so narrow minded. Also maybe there is a duty for a network with a ton of viewers to present different subjects/issues as they come up & slowly bring people along who might not agree. Maybe by taking stances that are becoming increasingly popular with younger folks, they would attract some more viewers.

YOU DON'T GET THE SHOW

They have 24 hours to cover on each network they run, but here's the question: how much of that time involves actually showing a game? They should use a lot of their non-live game time to show games taped. I know I would prefer to watch the NBA games I miss at night at other times rather than get a few seconds of highlights and lots of grandstanding.

Not repeats from 10 years ago; that's for ESPN classic. How about repeats from last night? And how about showing a lot of other sports, talking about them, and showing highlights of them instead of incredibly monotonous coverage of, say, KD's free agency, or a single NFL penalty. If your answer is that not enough people want to watch anything else, then why are they losing so much of their audience? Why not build larger audiences for sports like track and field, soccer, and so forth in the U.S. by periodically showing highlights and whole competitions like the networks used to do?

If you watch “shut up and dribble” the three-part miniseries done by LeBron, you will understand that politics is always going to be intertwined with sports. To ignore it is just ignorant.

electron1661 wrote:

If you watch “shut up and dribble” the three-part miniseries done by LeBron, you will understand that politics is always going to be intertwined with sports. To ignore it is just ignorant.

The first 10 to 15 years of espn was 99% politics-free

Awsi Dooger wrote:

No kidding. Conservatives invent reasons to be scared and offended. Now they are whining and trembling about Burger King. Next week it will be aimed somewhere else.

I watch ESPN all the time. It is sports. When the nation has so many examples of discrimination or powerful figures abusing their power and covering it up, any proper mention or analysis of them is somehow viewed as unfair politics. That tendency has been all over the sports world in recent years, whether it's Baylor or Michigan State or Kaepernick or you name it. Somehow conservatives want to pretend that every network is supposed to look away and we'll simply allow Jeanine Pirro to jump in and make us feel better.

Whenever I read or hear a rant about CNN or ESPN, it is impossible not to break into a huge grin.

That person has instantly defined himself

You clearly agree with ESPNs political slant. That’s fine, you should keep watching. But I do not care for Kaepernick, kneeling during the national anthem, or leftist politics, and do not wish to be reminded of them while I watch sports. So I do not watch ESPN. That is a legitimate, logical, opinion.

zxcvzxcv wrote:

Not repeats from 10 years ago; that's for ESPN classic. How about repeats from last night? Why not build larger audiences for sports like track and field, soccer, and so forth in the U.S. by periodically showing highlights and whole competitions like the networks used to do?

Exactly. On Big Ten Network, they'll show an entire football game in 60 minutes by taking out 30 seconds between plays, 5 minutes between quarters, and 20 minutes at half time. This should be a no brainer for them; air last nights Golden State Warriors game vs. whoever condensed down to 60 minutes instead of WNBA or whatever else they think people like but don't. Soccer games are 90 minutes + half time and stoppage. Condense it down to 30 minutes and show us the meaningful pieces (hard fouls, free kicks, corners, shots on goal, etc.).

Only in your own head bro wrote:

electron1661 wrote:

If you watch “shut up and dribble” the three-part miniseries done by LeBron, you will understand that politics is always going to be intertwined with sports. To ignore it is just ignorant.

The first 10 to 15 years of espn was 99% politics-free

Ok. So then if anything ESPN has figured out what they were missing in their commentary and they’ve added it. That makes it that much better.

C-SPAN will soon be 99% sports.

electron1661 wrote:

Only in your own head bro wrote:

The first 10 to 15 years of espn was 99% politics-free

Ok. So then if anything ESPN has figured out what they were missing in their commentary and they’ve added it. That makes it that much better.

So much better that they're losing all their subscribers?

Only the idiotic, right wing ones

The first ten-fifteen years of ESPN involved endless rodeos, pool matches, and Australian League football.

Once they sold off the B.A.S.S. Fishing league, it was all downhill from there.

sport will never be free of politics and it never was. Why even pretend otherwise.

Ok, you are saying that ESPN would be better served as a propaganda machine for the extremist left. Well, the president of the network is saying that they went whole hog with this concept and it wasn’t good for business.

I really don't think we're using the word "politics" correctly. None of this discussion is about politics. ESPN covers too much non-sport, cultural/societal/personal, irrelevant, unimportant items. But very little politics.

And waaaaaaaay too much of athletes' tweets. Half of sportscenter or any of the talking heads shows is devoted to discussing stupid tweets. Sometimes there's an actual news announcement via twitter, but mostly it's like, "so and so tweeted 'sometimes we just need to play better', what do you make of that?" And they talk about it for 5 straight minutes.

And it's ridiculous how much they over-promote the sports they show. One would think MMA is like the 3rd biggest sport in the U.S.

Ok, I'll stop ranting about ESPN. It's just bad.