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Losing Millions Of Subscribers, ESPN Now Facing Tough Decisions
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vincent...-subscribers-espn-now-facing-tough-decisions/
No matter your opinion of the “sports leader,” ESPN ESPN has been the one constant around the sports world for well over a quarter century. Now, with unprecedented competition and some pretty ugly public relations issues, ESPN is seeing its biggest downturn since its inception during the Jimmy Carter Administration.
According to Nielsen, the network has lost 3.2 million television subscribers in a little over the past year (via Wall Street Journal, subscription required).
With Fox Fox Sports 1 debuting and a trend towards fans getting their news from the Internet, this isn’t a huge surprise. Long considered divisive in the minds of many within the general public, ESPN’s reputation has also taken a hit during this span. From enigmatic personalities such as Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith to other enigmatic personalities clashing on our airwaves, it seems that the network has gone away from simply providing viewers the news—a philosophy that made it the sports leader in the first place.
Just over the past two months, it’s been announced that Keith Olbermann and Bill Simmons will soon be departing the ESPN airwaves. Clearly divorces based on creative differences rather than tightening its financial belt, ESPN made the decision to part ways with these two big-time players while still airing what some would call the hogwash that Bayless, Smith and company convey on a near-daily basis.
Some analysis points to consumers looking to cut costs by going to more slimmed-down versions of cable/satellite subscriptions, but the drop of ESPN subscribers is an outlier of sorts around the sports world. The first quarter of 2015 saw Fox Sports 1′s viewership increase by 73 percent from the prior year. And while ESPN’s primary station is still leading all cable sports networks in ratings, Fox Sports 1 and NBC Sports Network just surpassed ESPN2. It’s a minor gain for rival networks, but it also represents a changing of the tide...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vincent...-subscribers-espn-now-facing-tough-decisions/
No matter your opinion of the “sports leader,” ESPN ESPN has been the one constant around the sports world for well over a quarter century. Now, with unprecedented competition and some pretty ugly public relations issues, ESPN is seeing its biggest downturn since its inception during the Jimmy Carter Administration.
According to Nielsen, the network has lost 3.2 million television subscribers in a little over the past year (via Wall Street Journal, subscription required).
With Fox Fox Sports 1 debuting and a trend towards fans getting their news from the Internet, this isn’t a huge surprise. Long considered divisive in the minds of many within the general public, ESPN’s reputation has also taken a hit during this span. From enigmatic personalities such as Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith to other enigmatic personalities clashing on our airwaves, it seems that the network has gone away from simply providing viewers the news—a philosophy that made it the sports leader in the first place.
Just over the past two months, it’s been announced that Keith Olbermann and Bill Simmons will soon be departing the ESPN airwaves. Clearly divorces based on creative differences rather than tightening its financial belt, ESPN made the decision to part ways with these two big-time players while still airing what some would call the hogwash that Bayless, Smith and company convey on a near-daily basis.
Some analysis points to consumers looking to cut costs by going to more slimmed-down versions of cable/satellite subscriptions, but the drop of ESPN subscribers is an outlier of sorts around the sports world. The first quarter of 2015 saw Fox Sports 1′s viewership increase by 73 percent from the prior year. And while ESPN’s primary station is still leading all cable sports networks in ratings, Fox Sports 1 and NBC Sports Network just surpassed ESPN2. It’s a minor gain for rival networks, but it also represents a changing of the tide...