HeyKurtz
Well-known member
This seems awfully premature to me, but...
http://espn.go.com/nhl/powerrankings/_/season/2016/week/0
http://espn.go.com/nhl/powerrankings/_/season/2016/week/0
ESPN Power Rankings - Canes @ #28
- Thread starter HeyKurtz
- Start date
Pucking Lamplighter
Well-known member
How can ESPN be taken seriously about their hockey commentary? They barely give it the time of day, unless they seize the opportunity to bash it for any possible reason. Go back to pimping the NBA you turds. It kills me how they boast about being the worldwide leader in sports, yet they barely cover hockey. I give them credit for broadcasting the Frozen Four, but that's about it. I suppose they also deserve a little more credit for keeping Barry Melrose employed to keep him off the streets.
Jim
Jim
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
Well they did cover cricket!! Only because they were selling a pay service to watch the cricket championship. Once that was over, their cricket coverage went back to zero. 
NoMich
Well-known member
Well they did cover cricket!! Only because they were selling a pay service to watch the cricket championship. Once that was over, their cricket coverage went back to zero.
Well, that's just not true at all. Currently, on ESPN3, they are showing the Caribbean Premier League, the NatWest T20 Blast, and when the legendary Ashes series continues this week, they'll be showing that as well. I'm sure they'd be featuring more cricket if Willow didn't exist.
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
Just my 2 cents but I don't count ESPN3 as a real channel. I've never watched that stuff but I guess if you are really into something that's on there it's nice to have.
ESPN3 shows a lot of crap college FB games from major schools vs FCS teams that end up 77-3 which might be a good cure for insomnia.
ESPN3 shows a lot of crap college FB games from major schools vs FCS teams that end up 77-3 which might be a good cure for insomnia.
Ummm ... that's because it's not? It exists only on the internet, which makes it a streaming outlet, not a channel.
ESPN has been pretending that coverage on ESPN 3 is real for a couple of years now. Tell that to the goodly chunk of the population who can't get it, even if they did know how to do the technical stuff.
HeyKurtz
Well-known member
Huh? They get huge carriage fees because the marketplace deems their value. I'm no ESPN defender, but I'm not sure I get your argument.
Me either. They're the 800 lb. gorilla. They get the huge carriage fees because they carry content that the marketplace demands. Fox Sports has already started laying people off because they're losing money on FS 1 and 2. Granted they're on the "journalism" side, but their ratings pale in comparison to ESPN. And every cable operation depends on carriage fees, it's not just ESPN. Carriage fees are the reason why some cable companies don't have access to NBC Sports Live Extra or Extra Time. After 2 years with it, I'd die if I lost access to the Premier League because my cable company lost access. The increased broadcast rights fees from US Soccer almost cause a revolt because U-verse wasn't going to carry the Women's World Cup on cable, only real Fox. They eventually caved on the World Cup, but they still don't carry the Sunday night MLS game for the same reason.
No they don't. ESPN gets huge carriage fees because they existed at the right time in the history of cable television and in the right place. They earned nothing from an open marketplace (because there wasn't enough competition to do the word justice for that one minute in time) and are benefiting a ridiculous amount from having the silly good fortune to have had their economics plated in gold before anybody really understood what cable TV and cable sports would turn into.
Look. I'm all for dumb luck and good timing and making your money. Cool. But those clowns have abused the position that their fortuitous market position gave them and have in general crapped all over sports in this country and around the world with the childish way they handle virtually everything about their business. And their bloody carriage fee advantage means virtually no one has any chance of ever touching their position as the self-proclaimed worldwide leader because there's no way a competitor can match their financing without scuttling a traditional broadcast network to do so. All because of timing? It's disproportional reward that is in no way tied to value.
HeyKurtz
Well-known member
JB, business history is filled with companies that were first in and blew it. (Yahoo, anyone?) It's fine to not care for ESPN--I share a lot of your opinions about how they cover sports--but to chock up their success to dumb luck and good timing is naive. There are and have been a lot of smart people other there who know what they're doing.
Myspace?
Sorry buddy. Not naive at all ... but certainly cynical. Do some research on how much they actually get in carriage fees versus their competition. It's obscene. And thanks to our stupid cable TV structure, they are locked into basic cable status when they simply don't carry the viewing numbers to justify their fees. There is no competing with them in our current bollocksed up cable marketplace and that really has nothing to with ESPN's performance in any way. And because they get three times as much revenue as everyone else, they can get away with running that kindergarten boys club they call a network over there with absolutely no threat of a free marketplace correction. It offends.
HeyKurtz
Well-known member
Well acquainted with them...you forget that I've worked in media for 30 years. Subscribers pay nearly $7 per household per month for the mothership and then about another dollar per month for the ancillary networks (ESPN2, ESPNU, etc.). Carriage fees generate over $7 billion dollars for ESPN.
The only other network carrying a lot of sports that is even in the same neighborhood is TNT, which is about $1.65 per household per month.
What do these two networks have in common? The NBA. Like it or not, the immense rights fees that the NBA gets networks like ESPN and TNT to pay are driving much of this because the marketplace value of NBA basketball is huge...just less so among the population contributing to this board.
To me, the awesome deal is the NBC Sports Network, which only gets about 30 cents per household per month. However, unlike most of the population, NHL hockey and EPL soccer consume the largest shares of my TV sports viewing.
Average Joe Sports Fan consumes a heck of a lot more programming from ESPN than he does from any other outlet; if he didn't, ESPN would not be able to consume such pricing.
Even as consumers move away from cable to the many new "over the top" streaming services that are or will be offered (e.g., Sling TV), the ones that will gain traction in the marketplace will heavily sell the fact that ESPN is included in their offering.
CarolinaRedEyes
New member
The keyword here is average
ESPN is a joke and I'm happy to know that I no longer pay $7/month to not watch it.
CarolinaPen
Active member
Big fan of NBC Sports Network as well as they also carry F1 which I got hooked on overseas.
Regarding ESPN not my favorite network as a lot of the personalities are clowns but it is hard to argue with their success. There is a lot more than blind luck that has put them into dominant position and as much as we all hate it here, dropping the NHL was probably something that aided them in the long run. I hate the network but I watch it all the time and can't fault them for being in the right place at the right time....it wasn't an accident.
And ESPN3 was useful during the UEFA Champions League group stage, where they carried most of the matches live, even though the over the air rights were held by Fox.
HeyKurtz
Well-known member
I use it all the time, too. Great for college lacrosse and--as andyt pointed out--soccer.