ESPN's future

Quote: AZDuffman

The al a carte question is what will fans pay? Will they pay $35? I doubt many would.

The secret is to remove choice. When the choice was either free broadcast or cable, then most people opted for cable. Now you have people who only keep Netflix for 6 months out of the year, and cancel it the other 6 months to save money.

In a sense all the cable channels will have to face this issue, but ESPN is far more expensive than the #2 channel (which is TNT). And all the other companies with sports programming want a piece of the ESPN pie.

I remember the late 70's when there
were about 30 cable channels and
getting a black market box and
stealing service was easy. I did
it for years in Santa Barbara.
You could get HBO free if you
had the right box. I didn't pay
for cable the whole 5 years I
lived there. That was 40
years ago, good grief.

Quote: Evenbob

I remember the late 70's when there
were about 30 cable channels and
getting a black market box and
stealing service was easy. I did
it for years in Santa Barbara.
You could get HBO free if you
had the right box. I didn't pay
for cable the whole 5 years I
lived there. That was 40
years ago, good grief.

Stealing cable was a joke then. The technology was easy to overcome on one hand and its was not a "crime" yet on the other. Half my neighborhood would pay for basic then guys would climb the phone poles and take out the little filter. Later, early VCRs let you get cable channels without renting the box.

Quote: Pacomartin

In a sense all the cable channels will have to face this issue, but ESPN is far more expensive than the #2 channel (which is TNT). And all the other companies with sports programming want a piece of the ESPN pie.

ESPN also has the special problem of very high rights costs. Nobody else has the level of cost they have. Most everyone else can produce their own shows and develop talent. ESPN is at the mercy of sports leagues and competitive bidding.

Quote: AZDuffman

ESPN also has the special problem of very high rights costs. Nobody else has the level of cost they have. Most everyone else can produce their own shows and develop talent. ESPN is at the mercy of sports leagues and competitive bidding.

Right now only AT&T has zero rated television over cell phones if you buy Direct TV Now, but I expect other cell services to follow their lead. The expectation is the 5G will make HD Video streaming very commonplace. Right now a multi-channel video programming distributors (MVPD) sell cable to 53 million cable households, and satellite to 33 million households. They count on Nielsen to estimate how many people in those households and what type of person is watching their shows to sell advertising time.

It will be much more efficient to broadcast to 250-300 million people, all of whom have entered all their personal data into their phones for a chance to win prizes. That way you can tailor advertising to the actual person, and you don't really care what show they are watching. Obviously people don't want to stare at little screens all the time, but they are free to cast their video to a bigger screen.

I think statistically when you are watching another person's video probably won't add up to much time in the big scheme of things. Television was more of a communal experience when I was little, but video watching is pretty much a private function today.

The companies will stress to people how important it is to have a private device to keep track of what you are watching and precisely at what time in the show you tuned out, so you can go back to that exact point in time. When I was a kid you shared one household phone line, and you weren't allowed to hog it all night. Today most kids have their own line. People expect to have their own phone line, and soon video streaming will work that way.

I think it is a natural evolution of the industry. The problem has been that sending that amount of data over cell networks has been very expensive until the recent drops in cellular data prices.

This conversion from cable, satellite to cellular and ethernet (wired or wifi) will probably completely shake up the business model that specifies roughly 50 nationwide channels be included in the basic tier.

And I agree that ESPN is the most vulnerable channel because of all the reasons you mentioned.

Hey Bob Remember when Espn had all these old pool hustlers on, or figure 8 stock car races. Anything to fill the time slot. haHa

Quote: buzzardknot

Hey Bob Remember when Espn had all these old pool hustlers on, or figure 8 stock car races. Anything to fill the time slot. haHa

They had demolition derby's too. All those huge
60's and 70's cars crashing into each other, it
was fun. A 72 Buick was built like a tank, might
as well use it as one.

Quote: Evenbob

They had demolition derby's too. All those huge
60's and 70's cars crashing into each other, it
was fun. A 72 Buick was built like a tank, might
as well use it as one.

My grandfather had a 1966 Imperial, those things were such tanks some demolition derbies banned them.

One thing that impresses me about ESPN is their films division 30 for 30. At first it was a celebration of their 1st 30 years and did 30 documentaries. They were so successful and well received they continued after the 30th one. I really enjoy watching them. Extremely well done

Quote: terapined

One thing that impresses me about ESPN is their films division 30 for 30. At first it was a celebration of their 1st 30 years and did 30 documentaries. They were so successful and well received they continued after the 30th one. I really enjoy watching them. Extremely well done

I agree. Almost everyone that I have seen has been well done.

New ESPN guidelines recognize connection between sports, politics

Funny, wasn't it a just a few weeks ago some here were denying there was any politics on ESPN?