I'm seeing a ton of stuff on Twitter about layoffs at The Athletic. Seems to fit the cycle - claim you're going to disrupt the current model, get a bunch of money, make splashy hires, lose money, pare it all back, end up looking a lot like the model you disrupted.

EDIT: Doesn't look like they are massive, but per the next post, they are downsizing the local coverage for some sports - which is the precise reason they were formed, to pick up the slack for the loss of local sports coverage.

Honest question - if they aren't providing quality local coverage, what's the point of The Athletic? https://t.co/3YMrXxnMSk

— Cooper Lund (@cooperlund) June 12, 2023

Since some league audiences are "more local", we'll eliminate having anyone in / familiar with the market cover them.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

The Athletic is eliminating a lot of local reporting roles

Newspapers doing the same

RSNs in big trouble

SBN has nuked/are nuking tons of their team/school sites.

Troubling trend in terms of local sports coverage. Nobody is confident in a business model for local coverage. https://t.co/34MO2zUMAE

— Ben Koo (@bkoo) June 12, 2023

Can’t say I’m surprised but it is disappointing.

It really is.

I love The Athletic's coverage. It's largely my main source of sports coverage other than local papers.

I was an Athletic subscriber for a couple of years. I had one chief complaint. For whatever reason, the site would not keep me logged in. If I hir a link for an article, it would prompt me to log in, then when I logged in it wouldn't take me back to the article. I complained to them about for two years with no fix, so I said "see ya." If you can't make a site user friendly, then you must not really need users.

That’s odd. I use it over multiple devices - a couple PCs, iPad and iPhone - and never had an issue.

The app and website have always seemed really reliable and user friendly.

I subscribe to https://neworleans.football/

It is just one local reporter who decided to try and branch out on his own. It was/is successful enough that he's got a staff reporter now.

I wonder if the model for local can be more like this and less like trying to fit under one umbrella after getting a bunch of VC money.

There might be a market for local news, but not enough of one to make massive profits on top of compensating those who actually produce the content.

I worry about my nephew in the business. He is on the radio now and I think he will always be more audio/visual, but it is still very cut throat.

That's always been the nature of THAT business.

You are, always, like a baseball manager: hired to someday be fired.

Todd McShay out at ESPN.

The heads continue to roll:

Max Kellerman Among On-Air Personalities Laid Off By ESPN This Friday

I haven't watched ESPN in years but I do remember him doing Around the Horn. Giving the host the ability to mute participants is a must for any debate format show. I wish they did it for Presidential primary debates and general election debates.

Joe Namath with a touching tribute to Suzy:

And yet it appears that Doris Burke, Kendrick Perkins and Mark Jackson all still have jobs.

Keep cuttin' ESPN, you ain't done yet.

Hang on, people actually liked Jeff Van Gundy on NBA telelcasts?

They were paying him $5 million per year? Really? :eek:

Yes

Mike Francesa slams Jets for wanting to be on Hard Knocks, which they don't

I guess hanging on too long is really easy to do when there's no one really to tell you to stop

Yeah all of those, especially Jackson.

I have some personal news today. pic.twitter.com/2KbWvr7T5N

— Aaron Schatz �� (@ASchatzNFL) July 6, 2023

Does not sound entirely voluntary. But he's the CEO/Founder, so I'm not sure how he'd be pushed out.

He was not the owner or the guy who was cutting the checks. The folks who do own the site, Champion Gaming, are either not cutting checks at all or the checks they are cutting are made of rubber.

EDIT: https://awfulannouncing.com/nfl/foot...on-gaming.html

Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless, and Colin Cowherd all have well paying jobs, and I would rather have a spike driven through my brain than listen to any of them talk about anything, especially sports.

Same.

This is ... something. So Tyler Kepner is going to be covering the Bronx real estate market now?

NEW: The New York Times is disbanding its Sports desk and integrating more coverage from The Athletic. NYT editors said no layoffs were planned and Sports journalists will move to other roles in the newsroom. https://t.co/mYlY3KC5oa w/ @koblin

— Katie Robertson (@katie_robertson) July 10, 2023

No layoffs are planned.

We will just move people to areas where they have no experience and no desire to work, and if they happen to resign on their own, then so be it.

Does this move provide a way to prop up The Athletic financially? I'm picturing some sort of "move money from the left pocket to the right pocket" deal where NYT allocates funds in a structure that essentially treats The Athletic like a sort of freelancer.

Just ran across this on Twitter. Holy crap, Charlie Steiner! This wasn't exactly before my time, but I was 10 and 24 hour sports coverage wasn't exactly a thing, so there's no way I would have seen this. I just assumed it was 2 British reporters, and then there's Steiner! Hilarious!

Wimbledon 1981:

Reporters brawl in the press room after the Men's SFs in which McEnroe walked out after being questioned about his personal life

According to the New York Times, the fight involved Nigel Clark with The Daily Mirror & Charlie Steiner of RKO Radio

🎥: ITN Archive pic.twitter.com/lp0eSmb4I5

— Tennis Historian (@HistorianTennis) July 9, 2023

Wow! Had no idea this existed. Charley went from press conference scuffles to classic ESPN moments in two decades. I read where the head of the All-England Club personally thanked him. I'm assuming because the tabloids were seeping into sports and Wimbledon doesn't seem like the venue that the British would appreciate that happening.

Charlie held his own. I would have thought he fold like a deck of cards.

I saw Sage Steele was leaving ESPN so she can get some of that far right grift. Not sure if she's black enough to steal some of Candice Owens's market.

In reading the Reddit thread, I also learned Michelle Tafoya went far off the deep end on the far right but that her views are less than old In The Bleachers episodes.

Details about student pricing for NFL Sunday Ticket are supposed to come out next week. If I can get ST through my daughter at a decent price, I may jump. Otherwise, I'll just watch Redzone.

We are finally considering dropping DirecTV -- it's just too much and we don't watch enough on it, and area trees have really eliminated all good places for the dish (we're not putting it back up on top of the roof, where it is impossible to clean off ice/snow). If we do, we'll likely try YouTube TV. I will not however spring for Sunday Ticket.

NFL Plus Premium is $80 on the NFL website and gets you red zone, local games, primetime games and replays of any game.

Shannon Sharpe on first take starting next month.

:p

Sunday Ticket is by far the worst "bang for the buck" of all of the premium sports services. There are, at most, 16 NFL games per week (fewer during bye weeks), and you can already watch five of those on other networks every week (CBS, Fox, ESPN and NBC).

That's part of it. Originally I got it because I was stuck in MD/DC and was forced to watch the Redskins and Ravens, and then some of the time not even the latter. But when the Eagles are good, I can often see the two WAS/PHI games, many of the other NFC East games involving the Eagles, and some weeks they're on primetime anyway.

(I mean, right now they are slated to be in prime time against MIN, TB, MIA, KC, DAL. They have two against WAS, and are in the 4PM slot for NE, LAR, NYJ, DAL, BUF, SEA, NYG. They'll be on plenty. [also holy shit, not an easy schedule])

But yeah, with MNF, SNF, and now TNF, and with me watching college more, I have plenty of football to keep me happy w/o paying extra for it.

Even with free Sunday Ticket the last few years, I found myself watching Red Zone 75% of the time. So if I get a separate Red Zone without ST, that's even more of a reason not to splurge.

What I've seen about the student version sucks - no family sharing, one sign-in device and one concurrent stream at a time.

I wont be getting it. I watch red zone unless Giants are on. Zero reason for me to have it.

I suspect this was not meant to appeal to me so there is no shock that it does not. Give me the sports bar, chip in to pay for YouTube TV at someone's house, go to the college basketball arena, just about anything else beside going to a theater to watch a football game.

ESPN will air ACC, College Football Playoff games in theaters

We happened to be on a cruise for the super bowl and watched it in a theatre. Not exactly the same kind of crowd, of course, but it was actually a pretty fun environment. That said, I've been in a movie theater about 4 times in the past 20 or so years, so I certainly would not go to one to watch a football game.

I hate that McAfee has decided he can make more money by platforming anti-vax nonsense.

ESPN's Barry Melrose retires after Parkinson's disease diagnosis - ESPN

Melrose joined ESPN two years before my son was born. He literally doesn't know national coverage that doesn't include Melrose.

I barely know NHL national coverage without Melrose.

I don't watch pre-game shows, but I just saw some good news for people who do - Pat McAfee is not coming back to College Game Day.

Nick Kyrgios - best known for being a self-defeating hothead tennis player - is commentating on the ATP finals this week and he's been great. I could easily see him following fellow hothead John McEnroe into a post-career booth job.

Today, after hearing Alcaraz beat himself up over his loss to Djokovic yesterday, Kyrios said that Alcaraz was being too hard on himself and invited him to come see him so he can "pump his tires up." His partner said, "You've been talking about players being nicer to each other all week," and without missing a beat, Kyrgios said, "Maybe I should take my own advice."

Really enjoyed listening to him this week.

I was watching some old NFL games from the 80's on Youtube - it's really interesting how different some things were, what I randomly remember vividly.

Also, sideline reporters used to have a purpose. Ahmad Rashad (in his glorious fur coat) is reporting and analyzing and adding context to what we're seeing. Which I guess was a lot more important back then when replay and cameras were much more limited. Today you get that kind of analysis on a play by play basis.

I also can see part of why there's so much more consternation about refs today. In 1985, there might be a huge drive-killing facemask penalty, and then, everybody just moves on to the next play. There was no ability to isolate and actually find the play and penalized player and what he did or didn't do.

I like my current combination of NFL+ and Redzone without subscribing to YouTube TV. I’m sure whatever happens with this merger/equity stake/whatever it is, it will end up making it worse.

Sports Illustrated officially died today. The group that owns the license for the name just pulled the license and everyone that worked for SI was let go. End of an era.

Ah, the SI Swimsuit editions from the 80s and 90s.

Let's give them a salute.....not with that Ed!

I didn't even know SI still existed.

Seeing a lot of people chanting the "Go woke, go broke" mantra about Sports Illustrated, namely, their decisions to put a plus size woman and a woman (who is trans) on the cover of the swimsuit issue. Of course, the real lesson is that 'Be old-school and fail to change with the times means you'll die off like the dinosaurs" will go RIGHT over the CHUDlets heads at about Mach 2.1.

It's a magazine. Is there a single magazine which has persevered or successfully evolved?

Maybe National Geographic. They have a whole thing going on.

AARP, People, Cosmo, Vogue, Golf Digest etc.

All have migrated to online, digital to adapt, but still doing okay.

I haven't considered SI a "magazine" - in the traditional physical sense - in years. Hell, I don't know that I've seen one in years.

It existed in recent memory to me simply as a brand applied to often questionable content generation online.

Consumer Reports.

Got an email yesterday from ESPN+ with new subscriber agreement terms, and just got another one from Disney+. Waiting for the trifecta from Hulu.

Anyway, this is one of the terms in both:


Interestingly, when clicking on the Agreement link, I was unable to highlight any section to easily copy it. Instead, I had to pretend like I was printing it to highlight it. This is what it says:

Curious if they are going to start policing this in some way, or just added it for possible future use. Also curious if they are going to go the Netflix route of deeming a college student as outside a household.

Looks like its back:


Sports Illustrated lands new publisher as Minute Media obtains rights with plans to continue printing - The Athletic

I don't see an Olympics thread yet so I'll put this here. I'm not a fan of the Olympics at all (just in general), but I end up having to watch it (a) because of other family members or (b) because there's usually nothing else on. Apparently this year we won't get stuck with only having tape-delay airings - as long as you subscribe to Peacock! But at least an option exists.

However it's the regular NBC coverage that I just read about that sounds absolutely horrid:


Just shoot me - seriously, I'd rather watch reruns of a 20-year old David Spade comedy show. I also can't wait until NBC is flooded with social media doctors warning that a parental heart attack is imminent, or questioning the character/love of a parent because their heart rate is so low they must not care about their kid - or worse, perhaps it's not even their kid and mom must have had an affair or they're adopted and don't know it. The possibilities are endless!

Also, please keep trying to force-feed late night TV on us because it's not dying and irrelevant, and we need more celebrities and promo-tie-ins because we don't get enough of that already.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but... take me back to the good ol' days of a 20 minute feature on Peekaboo Street while live events are going on rather than this shlock.

Who doesn't want to see Snoop Dog comment on the form of a javelin thrower?

Glad to see CFB is finally adding the 2 minute commercial break to games. They move too fast as it is.

Article I just read said the addition of a two-minute warning in both halves will not result in a commercial break. Did you misspeak or maybe the article I read is wrong?

It will be a commercial break, just a fixed/planned break. Similar to the under 4 basketball TV timeout. The claim is that it will hopefully stop broadcasters from overloading "commercial/kick-off/commercial"-type situations earlier in the quarters. Color me skeptical.

Also, having the 2 minute warning AND stopping the clock on first downs during the last 2 minutes seems like overkill. But they want crazy endings to games, similar to the stupid advance the ball to half court in basketball which is just designed to try to create chaos at the end of games and not really tied to anything from the actual game of basketball.

I saw a couple notes of interest yesterday - one, Jason Kelce is joining ESPN MNF Countdown. I assume someone has or will be let go. Two, CBS finally dumped Simms and Boomer and hired Matt Ryan. This is going to revolutionize the way I don't watch pregame shows!

Someone (Klosterman I think) wrote an article on how we all grew up with this rule and take it for granted, but when you stop to think about it, it is really weird.

I saw that about Simms and Boomer. Over the last few years I feel like I'd assume it was one of them on TV, then find out it was the other. They seem like basically the same guy to me, so I guess it's only fitting that they leave at the same time?

The sad part for the networks is if they came to me personally, asked me what they could do to get me to watch their show, I have no clue what that thing or things would be.

For me, there isn't anything. I feel like it's an age thing. I just want to watch games. I no longer need analysis and over-analysis because I just don't care like I used to. I still enjoy watching the games, I just don't need the deep-dive or extraneous BS.

And, in terms of breaking news, it's all on social media so I don't need to be tuned in to hear Mort or Schefter tell me something I can't get anywhere else.

Yep, that's mostly me too. I used to eat up the pregame shows, oh, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Of course we had less information available then, and I cared more.

I don't know if the "cared more" is a youth thing or not. But if it is, it makes sense to keep the studio assembly line moving. Like I've said before, if you're below a certain age, you don't give a rat's ass who Simms or Esiason are. One hasn't played since '93, the other '97. So bring in Matt Ryan, who never struck me as someone with much studio charisma, but at least everyone has seen play.

Sunday Ticket trial, with up to $21 billion at issue, gets started - NBC Sports

A potential $21 billion lawsuit that might drastically change the way Sunday Ticket works.

How had I not heard of this until today?

Agreed. I had no idea this was a thing.

It feels like the NFL told its media partners to basically not report about this.

I opted in woot woot!

This seems like as apt a thread as any

Looks like the popular hockey site CapFriendly will go dark on July 5th, as it has been sold ... to the Washington Capitals

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

That's both tacky and kind of a sad look for the Caps IMO.

CapFriendly? No, Capitals, UNFRIENDLY...

Losing CapFriendly will definitely suck. It took a bit for CapGeek to be adequately replaced and now I imagine the same will be true here.

Read some stuff prior to Saturday's NHL game 1 that people around the league and in the media were not happy with a FL/EDM final and that viewership was going to be terrible. Well, ratings for game 1 were up 43% over last season. It specified "across North America" so maybe a Canadian team being in the final is driving the ratings increase. I do know that outside of college baseball, there wasn't crap on Saturday night and we watched it (will tonight, too).

Stanley Cup ratings jump 43% across North America, NHL says - ESPN

I mean if they're going to be like that all the time, just contract all of the leagues to be NY/NY2/LA/LA2/BOS/CHI and be the fuck done with it. (I dunno, add DAL/PHI if you need an even 8, maybe.)

Found another U.S. only version, listing 3.1m in the U.S. (peaking at 3.65m), which is up 12% over last year. So that leaves 4.0m viewers in Canada, seems like the Canadian team-effect kicked in for sure.

The increase isn't entirely shocking though, first three rounds listed in this article as the most watched in the U.S. since 1996, most-watched North America total since 2018.

This is a minor complaint but I sort of hate how the NBA Finals is presented as just another game. Always felt like NBC went over the top for their Finals presentation in the 90's. Outside of a little thing on the scorebug, you'd never know it was the Finals.

And the NBA is at fault too. The in-season tournament has their own special court but they can't bother to put the trophy decal or anything on the court for the Finals? That was a staple back in the day. How about putting the trophy in a visible spot (midcourt)? Anything to make me feel like these games matter and they're playing for something.

I get the Panthers not being a draw though going to the finals in back to back years should count for something on the familiarity chart. Why wouldn't Edmonton be a huge draw? I am the most casual of the casual fan and I know who Connor McDavid is. Add in some sprinkles of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and other Oiler legends to tap into people's childhood memories to that. I would think that would bring in people that say Vancouver might.

Wait, they don't have the trophy logo on the courts this year? WTF?

That's ... well that's just damned dumb of them.

They got rid of it like 10 years ago actually. It started in the 80's and they used to have a different logo for almost every year which was cool. Then I believe in 96 they standardized it. At some point in the 2000's they went to the giant trophy logo at midcourt that kind of sat behind the team's logo.


It's a minor thing but every sport seems to dial up the presentation for their championship outside of the NBA.

Well where do you want them to put it? The YouTube TV and Michelob Ultra advertising have taken the spots on the sidelines and the baselines. TD has its sponsorship on the court as part of the naming rights deal. The only other space available would mean getting rid of Lucky the Leprechaun and that would be disrespectful. I mean they would do that before they get rid of the YouTube TV, Michelob Ultra and TD ads but you get my point as to what the priorities are.

Charles Barkley announced he is retiring from television after next season. That is disappointing. He is definitely one of the most consistently entertaining studio guys ever to do it.

This is as good a place as any. My towns team. This is the 12U All Star team. My daughter is on the 10U all star team but plays with a lot of these kids in rec. Coach Gill and I coached together this last season. Really great story about a kid who is always smiling

Little League softball: North Wall, Cory Amadio defeat Manasquan

He's a savvy businessman so I wouldn't be surprised if he stays. He flirted with LIV and got a monster contract.out of it (Turner reportedly paid $100 million). Has also threatened retirement in the past. Still feel like if the money is right, he will be around

Here's hoping the jury renders a verdict that would have the net result of making Sunday Ticket mildly affordable for a few years, or results in team plans or other creative packages for people to purchase.

That's a lot of guacamole.

Jury in the Sunday Ticket antitrust trial orders NFL to pay $96 million in damages to commercial class and $4 BILLION in damages to the residential class.

— Meghann Cuniff (@meghanncuniff) June 27, 2024

Sad to read that Skip Bayless will be leaving Undisputed. /s

I did laugh when I read that at one point in February, an episode of Undisputed was outdrawn by a Tennis Channel match between Medvedev and Shevchenko.

Put Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith on a raft and push them out to sea......then set it on fire.

I noticed that he is leaving Undisputed and not retiring.

Is it possible that he goes back to ESPN to team back up with Shannon Sharpe while Stephen A makes his inevitable jump to Fox News?

Possible. This will all revolutionize the way I don't watch sports/political confrontional BS TV, though. That much I am certain about.

This Portney story is equal parts hysterical and stupid. I go to Nantucket every summer and know the harbor well. He wasn’t ever in any real danger other than hitting another vessel or shoal, but unmooring without any safety gear is incredibly stupid.

Nantucket Current | Adrift In The Harbor, Barstool Sports' Dave…

CBS beats ESPN to claim U.S. TV rights to EFL – and has bold plan to tap into ‘the drama’ - The Athletic

If your EPL team has been relegated or you are just interested in the rest of the English pyramid.