You may have heard that ESPN has laid off at least 100 on-air employees. ESPN is the latest company to choose between being liberal and being profitable, and choosing liberal.
You want to watch the Lakers game? Okay, but first you’re going to hear about Caitlyn Jenner. Want some NFL highlights? We’ll get to those eventually, but coming up next will be a discussion about how North Carolina is run by racist, homophobic bigots. You want to see the box scores of today’s baseball games? You can watch those at the bottom of the hour, but right now some D-list network talent would like to lecture you about gun control. After that we’ll have a panel discussion about how much courage it takes to turn your back on the American flag.
The most interesting aspect of the mass layoffs on Wednesday isn’t that they happened, it’s who the network targeted. Not the high-priced carnival barkers and the know-nothing loudmouths doing their best to make Rachel Maddow proud. Nope. ESPN targeted sports reporters. In an effort to cut some fat from its bottom line, ESPN exchanged a scalpel for a chainsaw, skipped the fat entirely, and went straight to cutting out muscle.
If ESPN wants to once again be the worldwide leader in sports, it should refocus on covering sports, which used to be a refuge from politics and the news. America is politicized enough already, and if its citizens want political news, several cable outlets do political news far better than ESPN ever could. Instead of doing sports and politics poorly, perhaps the network could return to the thing that it used to do better than everyone else in the world: cover live sports.
To be sure there were a lot of other contributing factors (rising fixed costs from overpaying for sports, people dropping cable, etc.), but the relentless left-wing culture war slant was among the most avoidable of all ESPN’s self-inflicted wounds.
More reactions:
ESPN was a sports network back when MTV was a music channel. Now both are just liberal propaganda.
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) April 27, 2017
ESPN is literally publishing feminist poetry, and wonders why subscribers are down pic.twitter.com/LQQBu8Vd6d
— Michael Gray 🇺🇸 (@graywolf) April 27, 2017
@ESPNPublicEd As long as @ESPN keeps allowing this type of stupidity – they will reap the consequences of its own ignorance. pic.twitter.com/OE7GKWoQbb
— Filthy O'Hoolihan (@Shimmyfab) April 26, 2017
@ESPNPublicEd When you admit you most often heard line from your fan base is "stick to sports" and your response is "no" your network is done. SMH
— Sidney Blair (@sidblair) April 26, 2017
So who at ESPN decided it was a good idea to let Black Lives Matter hijack the ESPYs in the middle of a cop killing epidemic? #ESPNLayoffs
— Charles Martel (@KeepItRealist) April 26, 2017
ESPN had a day long eulogy to Fidel Castro when he died. Disgusting network. Sorry for those who lost job but #espn can tank #ESPNLayoffs
— J (@jackbauer5575) April 26, 2017
ESPN replaced @SageSteele because of her political comments. @JemeleHill's Twitter has a pinned pic with Obama. #doublestandard #ESPNLayoffs
— Wike Mickett (@wikemickett) April 26, 2017
Amen. Thank you @ClayTravis #ESPNLayoffs pic.twitter.com/LiPsW2v2vl
— Ryan Hadaway (@ryan__hadaway) April 26, 2017
Welcome to 2017 ESPN LAYOFFS pic.twitter.com/UoWWtRL1A8
— R.K. Hayes (@RK_Hayes) April 26, 2017
Tags: ESPN, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors
ESPN is part of the ABC/Disney Corporation that cares nothing for the USA. Disney brings in foreigners and force their American Engineers to train them before they fire them. ABC is pure liberal and against American ideals. ESPN is following the political model and will not change even with layoffs. I gave up on them all and do not watch them. It doesn’t mean that much to me to miss a sports game. Sooner or later maybe they will get the message but sports in America will take a big financial hit along with TV and colleges.