Did Too Much Caitlyn Jenner Doom ESPN?

Real Clear Politics ^ | May 3, 2017

[drewh]

Last week, ESPN, often referred to as the Worldwide Leader in Sports, laid off around 100 employees. The cuts were painfully public and claimed the jobs of some of the top talent and most familiar faces at the network. At the heart of the latest downsizing, as with earlier layoffs, is math: The network has committed billions of dollars to broadcast live sports, and waves of cord-cutters now threaten the cash flow to pay those bills. But amid the hand-wringing over the cable giant’s business outlook, a subplot has begun to dominate the coverage: ESPN’S politics.

.

. For several years now, Travis has been one of the loudest, most persistent antagonists of ESPN on the internet, haranguing the behemoth sports network in much the same way that right-wing disrupters have lobbied against the political media establishment. Among Travis’ biggest gripes: ESPN heaped laudatory coverage on Michael Sam, an openly gay football player, while firing Curt Schilling for a series of incendiary remarks. The network honored Caitlyn Jenner with its Arthur Ashe Courage Award after she came out as a trans woman, and then moved a company event away from a Donald Trump golf course.

And Travis is not alone. National Review, the Washington Examiner and, of course, Breitbart have all weighed in to accuse ESPN of partisanship.

By the end of last week, Deep Root, a media analytics firm that does work for Republicans, published a study that suggested that politics have affected ESPN’s audience. According to Deep Root, which matched voter files and set-top box data, ESPN’s viewers in Cincinnati were majority Republican in 2015; in 2016, they skewed Democratic.

[arthurus]

I think NASCAR is starting to slide off the table into the PC swamp, too.

[dfwgator]

I like Turkish Cliff Diving, myself.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJwx_5LxhW0

Or Tree Catching....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEKPHbE3NmI

[Impy]

I used to watch it regularly but got fed up.

[trebb]

More like their philosophy, which allowed them to go all-pin with Jenner and other leftist issues, is what has been undoing them.

[tnlibertarian]

It’s obvious they still don’t understand why their network is in trouble. They fired 100 on-air personalities, but doubled down on stupid by keeping SC6 with Jemele Hill and Michael Smith. That show is unwatchable. How did they manage to screw up a highlights show?

[N. Theknow]

I think colon kapernick had a lot to do with it also. He kicked off a few copy cats and America just said, "screw you" because the network never spoke patriotically against this weird stuff.

They rationalized, justified and supported Kaepernick.