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ESPN personality Sarah Spain, captioned the announcement (of Trump's twitter account being deactivated by a rogue employee) from Twitter with a single word, “Hero:”

ESPN distributed new social media guidelines to its employees Thursday, which reinforced some existing rules about not breaking news exclusively on social media, respecting colleagues, and—oh wait, here’s a new thing: “Do nothing that would undercut your colleagues’ work or embroil the company in unwanted controversy.” The “unwanted” there is doing a lot of work. Unwanted for whom? The employee who feels so strongly about an issue, perhaps the direction his or her employer is going, that they use Twitter to provide their insight? Of course not. The controversies are “unwanted” for ESPN executives, who want to keep advertisers happy,...

It looks like the left-leaning political bloviating has finally caught up to the troubled ESPN network. Not long ago, the sports channel was forced to admit that lecturing Americans about politics wasn’t exactly a smart business plan. With revenue dropping, ESPN had no choice but to drastically eliminate staff — but now it may be considering an even more dramatic cut. The Hollywood Reporter has suggested that there are signs the struggling sports company may be getting ready to walk away from the NFL. ESPN’s contract to air Monday Night Football games is expiring fairly soon… and some experts think...

There are a variety of ways, in which businesses judge whether they’re having a successful business day. However, if you’re losing over 15,000 customers a day, that is generally frowned upon.

Morale was bad inside the league office, and the pressure was not letting up. There was the looming notion that sponsors would leave the NFL -- not just because of the protests but because of an array of challenges confronting the league, including the continuing decline in TV ratings. Nearly all of the league's longtime sponsors, from Papa John's to USAA, were rattled, and fissures within the league offices and teams, to say nothing of the players, were starting to expand. [Snip] Polls show that the protest issue has resonated with millions of fans who insist all players should stand...

More bad news could be on the horizon for ESPN. Staffers at the Worldwide Leader in Sports are bracing for another possible round of layoffs late this year, multiple sources tell Sporting News. The next round of cutbacks could come down in late November or early December, with 40-60 positions potentially being impacted, according to sources. The layoffs could hit both on-air TV/radio talent and behind-the-scenes production staffers.

TV network executives are scrambling to solve the NFL ratings decline and are looking to possibly cut games on Thursday to prevent “over-saturation.” According to Sports Business Journal, there are talks to cut “Thursday Night Football” from 18 games a season to eight games. The report states there is a plan to pull games played in the UK back to 1 p.m. ET, or 6 p.m. London time. “Ten years ago, the NFL had 32 game windows through week six,” the publication said. “This year, it is up to 39, a 22 percent increase. It’s even more crowded in college,...

The White Sox continue to get little to no recognition from the national media for winning the 2005 World Series. In this case, it’s for how dominant they were in winning it. ESPN tweeted: “The Dodgers are 7-1 this postseason. The 1998 Yankees are the only team in the Wild Card Era to win the World Series with 2 losses or fewer.” Screengrab of deleted ESPN tweet. Of course, the Sox did that — swept Boston and the Astros, and beat the Angels in 5. ESPN deleted the tweet and apologized, but they’re repeat offenders. 24 Oct Chuck Baker @chuckbaker23...

Some people express their controversial support for others in bizarre ways. Girls’ Lena Dunham was apparently thrilled to discover that ESPN’s Jemele Hill was following her on Twitter, and announced to her followers: “Holy shit @jemelehill following me is like finding out definitively that God is here and she reads your blog. Fan dance.” This tweet brings up a number of questions. Does Dunham believe in God? Does Dunham believe God is a woman? (An infinite deity with no concept of space or time would also not have a gender, since that would be a part of creation.) Does she...

Hill added, “The only thing I ever apologize for, I put ESPN in a bad spot; I’ll never take back what I said.” She declined when offered a chance to expound on how she feels about President Trump, only saying that he already knows. Hill wasn’t suspended after calling Trump a white supremacist. She was suspended after her comments mentioning a boycott of Dallas Cowboys’ sponsors. After her suspension was announced, some commentators like the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple wrote that ESPN didn’t deserve her and suggested there was nothing wrong with what she had said, at least nothing worthy...

When the first half of the 21st century is way back enough for a history to be written unencumbered by agenda, President Barack Obama will be remembered as the worst thing that ever happened to the Democrat Party. And to the NFL.* If you think that is a stretch, hear me out… Thanks to George W. Bush’s terrible second term, two unbelievably awful Republican opponents in John McCain and Mitt Romney, not to mention the charisma and impressive political skills as the most leftwing senator in the country, Barry O won two national elections and did so by impressive margins....

It felt like a little bit of history was being made on Monday Night Football as the Tennessee Titans finally snapped their streak of 11 consecutive losses to the Indianapolis Colts. However, as social media sparked with ESPN not showing the playing of the national anthem, another type of history was also being made: Last night’s primetime broadcast of the Titans’ 36-22 victory stumbled to a season low with a 6.1 in metered market results. In a season stained by overall ratings declines and political controversy, that NFL Week 6 rating is down 13% from the early numbers of the...

There is only one way — one! — to finally and forever destroy Hollywood and much of the mainstream media. You have to cut your cable or satellite cord. You have to cancel your pay TV package. The one-legged stool propping up ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, Disney, MTV, and the entire Tinseltown crime syndicate is you paying for cable TV. If you want to know how this scam works, read all about it here. If you want to know what do to after you cut the cord for America, read all about it here. Not to put too fine a point...

Disney/ABC TV has begun making long-feared layoffs as part of a broader restructuring of its broadcast business, with rumors swirling that bigger moves—including a possible sale of ABC—are coming. Deadline first reported the staff reductions on Thursday, saying they could impact up to 200 employees across Disney and ABC properties. An ABC source with knowledge of the situation said that the cuts will hit upward of 40 of its employees on the East Coast and still more out west. Multiple people at ABC told Splinter that there is a widespread belief at the network that the belt-tightening could be tied...

Please join me on a whirlwind superficial but revealing tour of liberal la-la land as we peek at recent headlines. Meanwhile, liberals call conservatives wingnuts. Singer Nancy Sinatra tweeted, "The murderous members of the NRA should face a firing squad." One wonders whether in her rendering, "murderous" is redundant. One might also wonder whether she thinks other murderous people should be exempt from or perhaps face a less humiliating form of execution. Responding to Michelle Obama's claim that people are distrustful of politics because the GOP is "all men, all white," Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, said, "I don't know if...

ESPN doesn’t deserve to retain the services of Jemele Hill, its opinionated “SportsCenter” anchor. Proof? On Monday, the Disney-owned sports-broadcasting colossus suspended Hill for issuing an insightful tweet about the NFL, a league that ESPN supposedly covers. At issue was Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a guy who is sounding a lot like the president of the United States these days. “If there’s anything that is disrespectful to the flag, then we will not play,” said Jones on Sunday after his team sustained a difficult loss to the Green Bay Packers. “Understand? We will not … if we are disrespecting the...

On Monday, ESPN suspended SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill for two weeks after a series of tweets critical of Dallas Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones’ stance on standing for the national anthem—as well as calling for a boycott of Cowboys advertisers. The network said Hill had violated the company’s social media policy. As you might remember, ESPN seemingly went to bat for Hill last month, after she slammed President Trump on Twitter, calling him a “bigot” and “white supremacist.” That said, there were reports that the network had, at the time, attempted to replace Hill on that evening’s SportsCenter broadcast, but received...

On the same day that Jemele Hill was suspended from ESPN for tweeting about politics, another network personality, Michael Wilbon, compared Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to a slave owner. Mr. Wilbon, co-host of "Pardon the Interruption," took issue with Mr. Jones' stance that players who do not stand for the national anthem before football games will not play. "And the word that comes to my mind―and I don’t care who doesn't like me using it―is plantation," Mr. Wilbon said on Monday’s show. "The players are here to serve me, and they will do what I want. No matter how...

This is 100 percent pure speculation, but if I were a betting man, I'd say The Six, hosted by Jemele Hill and Michael Smith, will be gone from ESPN before the end of the year. -snip- First things first, despite what the lunatic in charge of our country tweets, one host who appears for an hour a day is not responsible for an entire network's ratings tanking. Yes, the ratings for The Six are down from that time slot last year when ESPN aired SportsCenter featuring Lindsay Czarniak. But let's put things in perspective and offer some context. Via Awful...

RUSH: The New Black Pantherette, Jemele Hill, who is recently suspended from…? (interruption) What are you lookin’ at? New. New Black Panther. She’s not a Huey Newton. I mean, the Black Panthers, they’re one and alone. But the New Black Panther… She’s a New Black Pantherette. These are the people that thwarted people’s efforts to vote in Philadelphia. (interruption) Uh-oh. Dawn is got a worried look on. (interruption) Oh, it’s not about me. Okay. I use barometers on the other side of the glass to tell myself when the media is gonna get exercised over something I say, and… (laughing)...