On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 11:49 AM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 2:39 AM, Joe Coughlin <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Or, as you had alluded to, he was being paid too much for too little >> ratings impact. I bet it's cost-cutting at Disney that's the cause of >> this. I mean, this is a company that has had to cancel Fantastic Four >> and throttle back on X-Men because they can't make movies from >> them...all as a result of a big time shareholder pulling rank. > > > But unless his ratings have been below expectations, or gone down (which I > can not find any evidence for), how is the cost/benefit different now than > it was 2 years years ago when they signed him? But I was not aware of the > shareholder issue at Disney, which might make the difference. > > This has less to do with KO than an apparent change in mindset at ESPN over the last two years, and in particular the last six months. Between Simmons and Olbermann, it seems clear that ESPN has decided that it isn't going to spend large money to keep big-name personalities around, preferring instead the relatively-cheap hot-takery that populates most of ESPN2, the generic wheel of SportsCenter suits and a band of a thousand analysts who can bloviate on any number of ESPN-type platforms.
One cost element is that KO's show taped in New York City, and was said to be the only show that used the ESPN studio in Times Square (an announced move of Mike 'n' Mike to NYC was scrubbed, leaving New York critically short of Mikes). Vacating that studio saves ESPN money, more than just KO's salary and whatever other production costs they had. Conspiracy theorists can hang their hats on the theory that the NFL "punished" ESPN with a garbage schedule for Monday Night Football this year, as payback for Simmons' and Olbermann's negative commentary on the league. I'm not sure how true that is, since the MNF package has always been the secondary one since MNF moved to ESPN and SNF went to NBC. While it is possible that the NFL put better games on its own network than it gave to ESPN, to try and pump up the always-dismal Thursday night package, I'm not sure if that had anything to do with punishing ESPN or not. John -- John Edwards "You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
