This is a long read, but it is very insightful on how viewers are evolving, and what ESPN is trying to do to maintain it's relevance.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...e-future-of-tv-and-they-re-not-really-into-it
Here are some snippets that caught my eye:
-- The executive consensus in Bristol is that the threat from cord cutting is greatly exaggerated. Although the audience for traditional satellite and cable is declining, there’s a raft of new services—including Google's YouTube TV. Dish Network’s Sling TV, Sony’s PlayStation Vue, and a soon-to-be-launched-one from Hulu—that are offering channel packages that look suspiciously like cable bundles, and that uniformly include ESPN. Aimed at millenials, these online services are designed for smartphones and devices such as Roku and AppleTV and cost from $20 to $50 a month. Even though these plans are cheaper than a traditional cable subscription, ESPN gets paid its usual $7 per subscriber by Google and the other newcomers, according to people with knowledge of the agreements.
-- In 2015 he installed Van Pelt, one of ESPN’s radio stars, in the midnight slot, as a competitor to traditional late-night fare. Along with highlights and updates, Van Pelt delivers straight-to-camera commentary à la Jon Stewart. If Van Pelt thinks that, say, too many NFL teams are relocating, he says so. Viewership of the midnight SportsCenter is up about 6 percent since 2015, according to Nielsen, even as other editions have seen their audiences shrink.
-- “I’m really tired of being painted as some sort of failing, sinking ship,” SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pekt told the Washington Post in September. “It’s not like we’re losing money, we’re just not making as much. It’s a giant difference.”
-- Some channels get paid more than others, and ESPN gets the most. Carriers pay an average of $7.21 per month for every customer who gets ESPN as part of a bundle, according to Kagan. Fox News, by comparison, gets $1.41; Bravo, 30¢. With almost 90 million homes still getting ESPN, that adds up to $7.8 billion per year. Sister channel ESPN2 chips in an additional billion, and that’s all before ad revenue (roughly $2.6 billion a year, according to Kagan) and revenue from the print magazine and website, which is the most trafficked in sports. Last year, Disney’s cable networks brought in $16.6 billion in revenue and $6.7 billion in operating profit—43 percent of Disney’s total and more than its theme parks and movie studios combined.
-- But while most of ESPN’s TV peers have courted cord cutters—CBS and Turner Broadcasting, for instance, are allowing anyone to watch some of their March Madness games online for free—ESPN’s view cuts against the conventional wisdom in new media. “Everything we do supports the pay television business,” says John Kosner, the network’s head of digital and print media. The strategy, simply put: Defend the cable-TV bundle at all costs."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...e-future-of-tv-and-they-re-not-really-into-it
Here are some snippets that caught my eye:
-- The executive consensus in Bristol is that the threat from cord cutting is greatly exaggerated. Although the audience for traditional satellite and cable is declining, there’s a raft of new services—including Google's YouTube TV. Dish Network’s Sling TV, Sony’s PlayStation Vue, and a soon-to-be-launched-one from Hulu—that are offering channel packages that look suspiciously like cable bundles, and that uniformly include ESPN. Aimed at millenials, these online services are designed for smartphones and devices such as Roku and AppleTV and cost from $20 to $50 a month. Even though these plans are cheaper than a traditional cable subscription, ESPN gets paid its usual $7 per subscriber by Google and the other newcomers, according to people with knowledge of the agreements.
-- In 2015 he installed Van Pelt, one of ESPN’s radio stars, in the midnight slot, as a competitor to traditional late-night fare. Along with highlights and updates, Van Pelt delivers straight-to-camera commentary à la Jon Stewart. If Van Pelt thinks that, say, too many NFL teams are relocating, he says so. Viewership of the midnight SportsCenter is up about 6 percent since 2015, according to Nielsen, even as other editions have seen their audiences shrink.
-- “I’m really tired of being painted as some sort of failing, sinking ship,” SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pekt told the Washington Post in September. “It’s not like we’re losing money, we’re just not making as much. It’s a giant difference.”
-- Some channels get paid more than others, and ESPN gets the most. Carriers pay an average of $7.21 per month for every customer who gets ESPN as part of a bundle, according to Kagan. Fox News, by comparison, gets $1.41; Bravo, 30¢. With almost 90 million homes still getting ESPN, that adds up to $7.8 billion per year. Sister channel ESPN2 chips in an additional billion, and that’s all before ad revenue (roughly $2.6 billion a year, according to Kagan) and revenue from the print magazine and website, which is the most trafficked in sports. Last year, Disney’s cable networks brought in $16.6 billion in revenue and $6.7 billion in operating profit—43 percent of Disney’s total and more than its theme parks and movie studios combined.
-- But while most of ESPN’s TV peers have courted cord cutters—CBS and Turner Broadcasting, for instance, are allowing anyone to watch some of their March Madness games online for free—ESPN’s view cuts against the conventional wisdom in new media. “Everything we do supports the pay television business,” says John Kosner, the network’s head of digital and print media. The strategy, simply put: Defend the cable-TV bundle at all costs."
