So Eric and I were having a very interesting talk this morning about ESPN and what direction the network is heading. We both agree that ESPN non-game programming is gearing more towards entertainment style shows than actual sports reporting shows, which includes their pre and post game coverages of football and baseball. Is this smart or is this a dumb? We are having a very tough time figuring this out. I tend to believe that ESPN is not dumb and understands what their core audience wants. They understand that most of the in depth analysis and true reporting is now found on the web, either at their own site or on the growing number of team supported sites, and their core audience (18-40 males) continues to increase viewership of these sites. Are they being proactive in adapting to the new style of media unlike the newspapers. Do they see the figures for the number of viewers on sites like Deadspin and such and change to cover more of these items than normal game reporting?
And lets give ESPN some credit. Both Eric and I now turn to ESPNews when we actually want to see highlights of the games. Since I do not have the football package, I tend to spend a lot of time on ESPNews to catch just the highlights. And the postgame press conferences that they show are amazing. Why should ESPN duplicate programming, when they are giving exactly what we want on another channel? Why is it so tough for us to just go straight to ESPNews instead of first going to ESPN, gettting pissed off about the coverage, and then changing it to ESPNews and seeing what we want?
And I want to retract some of the things I said in my prior post because I should know better. What will pull in higher ratings for Baseball Tonight, 30 minutes of Yanks-Sox coverage right after the game, or 30 minutes of highlights of the A's, Twins, Indians, Rangers, Royals, DRays, BJays, and such. Of course the Yanks-Sox coverage. Now I was in a desperate place last Friday night since the baseball package wasn't working, I forgot about ESPNews, and I was too lazy to go get my laptop to check the scores and the recap so I ended up venting on this subject.
But the real problem for people like Eric and I (and the many people that continue to vent on this subject) is that we have extremely high expectations of SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, and Primetime since we all grew up on this and have great memories of these shows. Watching Berman do highlights and creating nicknames used to be awesome. Watching Peter Gammons do his Diamond Notes everynight used to be a can't miss segment. Even Kruk was fun for a short period of time. Now we have to settle for Steve Phillips, an out of control Kruk, an even more out of control Berman, and Tom Jackson butcher everything that we used to enjoy about ESPN. But to replace all the things we loved about ESPN is now either on ESPNews, XM and Sirius radio, or the Internet. Why is this so hard for all of us to grasp.
Finally, Eric and I wanted to know from Jon and Jay is if the overexposure of the Sox and Yanks on Baseball Tonight bothers you or do you love it since you get to see a lot of additional coverage on your teams.
2 comments:
Good topic.
As far as yanks-sox overexposure I'd put it this way.
When you're in the midst of losing 7 straight, including 4 to tito and the bloody, bloody, very bloody, not kidding around, drenched in hemogloblin, red sox, and you see 7 hours of tito in his always dumb looking red pullover, and youkilis and drew rubbing their goatees together in celebration, while the closest thing to a highlight for the yanks is trying to figure out why Igawa's arm angle is different than the time he struck out 14 Yakult Swallows 5 years ago, well, thas' nah so good.
No on the other hand I could watch the 2003 alcs probably for 4 days until I became bored, or at least until they showed the 2004 alcs.
The first NYY-BOS matchup of the season always feels like the real start of the season for me. You know that the season really gets in full swing when they get together. So, I enjoy the extra coverage to start. But, eventually (after game 10 or so) it does feel like a little overkill. They basically dissect every game like a playoff game. I will watch BBTN more if they have the "A" crew (with Gammons), but if they have some of the lower guys I don't pay near as much attention.
Overall, I just watch ESPNnews (coming soon in HD I hear) for the highlights. If there is some SportsCenter piece that I am interested, I can pick it up online via ESPN360. I think what ESPN is doing is spreading out to include everything. They have so many delivery mediums now they need to expand a little on what they are doing just to fill the content void of having radio, magazine, website, podcasts, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPNU, etc, etc, etc.
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