Can’t get much bigger than ESPN.Well, actually the global sports media conglomerate recently must have realized this and decided it had room to trim a little fat.
Unfortunately, it came from the wrong side of the pig. Apparently 400 mid-level jobs were cut due to escalating costs for sports programming. We’re talking statisticians, researchers, advertising agents … you know the folks who make ESPN run. Not the long line of ex-football players, basketball players, coaches and interchangeable talking heads who spend 20 hours of ESPN’s daily programming debating the same two topics for weeks.
Dear ESPN, who do you think is responsible for the rising cost of programming? Who spent $12.4 billion to broadcast MLB for seven years? Better yet. How about the reported $15 billion for Monday Night Football, which equates to $1.9 billion a year? That’s a 73 percent increase. Really, is that necessary? For Monday Night Football!
Maybe $1 million less could have saved those jobs. Or better yet, how about one less football player on NFL Countdown. I’m pretty sure the audience won’t mind. Actually, how are those “experts” supposed to offer insight without those fact-checkers, statisticians and researchers?
Dear ESPN, your content is going to suffer. Oh never mind. You’re not in the content business. I should've remembered. My bad.
— Jaime North
