The Media Drop

Last week, Joe Jaffe wrote about how ESPN’s television programming might be reaching the end of the line - in line extension, that is. You know, like when you’re in the grocery store, and you see the “new innovation” by your favorite pickle maker, and wonder what the heck they were thinking. It’s more akin to “jumping the shark” but in a business model sort of sense.

I’ve got to say that I love ESPN, watch it for hours a week, but realize that even the SportsCenter flagship has changed - with the catchphrases becoming the important thing, rather than being thrown in for fun here and there. Sometimes I feel like as a sports fanatic who enjoys everything from golf to tennis to college football to hockey to, well, pretty much everything, I might not be the target audience the network(s) are aiming for all the time. Like, who cares if I’m the person watching 15 hours of college football per week, plus SportsCenter once per day, and so on, as there are people watching these new “entertainment”-based shows that must get better ad rates or are targeted at people who miss John Tesh on Entertainment Tonight.

I’m a sports fan - I watch basically every game on Sunday during the NFL season through DirecTV, I sit through 400 laps at Dover Downs on days like yesterday, catch probably 150 baseball games a season on television between my beloved Yankees and any other important games I feel like checking out - I could go on, but that’s not the point. When does the stupidity in programming end? Because ESPN’s new “Hollywood” programming certainly put me off the cliff - I liked having Chris Connelly do a thing here and there, and totally love Outside the Lines - but enough is enough.