Even if you’re not a sports fan, yesterday’s massive layoffs at ESPN could affect you.
Letting about 100 people go, ESPN signaled it was responding to the changing media landscape, in which millions of people are sawing off the cable TV handcuffs and switching to streaming devices.
A lot of those doing the sawing are young people, who are increasingly getting content on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.
NPR said ESPN lost about two million subscribers in fiscal year 2016 and that over a period of several years its subscription numbers have gone from about 100 million to 87 million. NPR quoted John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal as saying, “ESPN gets about $7 per subscriber per month, so that loss ends up being a lot of money.”
I sympathize with the scores of people who lost their jobs — including Jeremy Crabtree, a KC Star sportswriter from 1995-1998 — but I am in favor of anything that helps loosen the cable companies’ grip on the public.
Let me approach this from personal experience. I think many of you will identify with it.
…Until a few years ago, we bought home-phone, cable TV and internet service from Time Warner Cable. After Google Fiber became available, we switched. We dropped the home phone, as many others have done, and we are paying about $140 a month, which is about equally split — $70/$70 — between cable TV and internet. (We also subscribe to Netflix.)
With Google Fiber, we get about 185 stations. We watch maybe 10 of those. The main ones I watch are ESPN, the Golf Channel and Fox Sports Kansas City, which carries the Royals. (From the way this season has started, I doubt I’ll be watching much FSKC this summer.)
The content on most of the cable stations is absolute junk. Not only that, but for about every minute of content, you get a minute of advertising. If you just flip through the stations, I guarantee you will land on a commercial more often than not. Just try it…The Golf Channel has a ton of ads, but I’ve taken to recording the tournaments I want to watch and then watching later and fast-forwarding through the ads.
As it is, we’re paying about $840 a year to watch relatively few channels — a situation that is common in many American households.
In a 2015 Forbes article, contributing writer Greg Satell said, “The truth is that, beyond infrastructure, cable companies are providing little, if any value.” He went on to say:
TV programming is going through a similar transformation as every other software business. In effect, it is moving from installed solutions to the cloud. There is, in fact, no reason that we need cable boxes anymore.
In line with Satell’s reasoning, Patty and I considered cutting the cable a few months ago. We explored the possibility of going with antennas to get the local broadcast stations and then, perhaps, buying a streaming device, along with a subscription to MLB to get the Royals’ “away” games.
So, I went to Target and for $40 bought an antenna — not rabbit ears, but an unobtrusive, flat, plastic antenna that fits nicely behind the TV or against a wall. It worked well. I also went to Best Buy and checked out streaming devices. I was leaning toward Apple TV, which costs about $150.
I realized that one complicating, cost-creeping factor was we would need antennas for each of our three TVs and a separate streaming device for each of the ones we wanted for Royals baseball, unless we were willing to put up with the inconvenience of moving the streaming box from one TV to another.
Despite the expense and complications, I was ready to move forward. Being shackled by the cable bothers me more than it does Patty. At first, Patty agreed, but she wanted to wait until we returned from Europe in March. After we got back, we didn’t talk about it for a couple of weeks, and then one day Patty said, “Why don’t we just hold off on switching from Google Fiber for a while? I’m not ready to do it.”
I didn’t object. The fact is she and Brooks watch more cable stations than I, and it would have affected them more.
Thus ended my brief foray into the world of streaming TV. My hopes of defeating Google Fiber — which we’ve been happy with, I have to admit — were thwarted, at least for the time being. The handcuffs were back on, as tight as ever.
But yesterday, with news of the ESPN layoffs, my hopes rose again, if only a little. I can’t wait to someday saw off those damn shackles.
Meantime, I’m stuck with the Target antenna; I paid cash and lost the receipt.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Alternative access is one reason for ESPN’s subscriber loss. Another is their continual foray into the political arena, exclusively with a liberal slant.
You can’t possibly be referring, in part, to our beloved Jason Whitlock, formerly of the KC Star, can you? In a statement, ESPN said it would continue to put more emphasis on “personality-driven” programming. That’s the kind of stuff I never watch. I like ESPN for its website and some of its actual sports programming, including women’s college basketball.
I see this rationale tossed around a lot about ESPN (liberal slant), but the people dropping/cord cutting doesn’t match this profile. Most all of the cord cutters are young people who survey after survey shows by a vast majority do not have a conservative slant.
In terms of cable TV penetration, I would be interested to see a profile by age group. Channels like Fox News have an average viewing age of 66 years old and are only available on cable packages.
Like Jim, I have Google Fiber and Fiber TV. People complain that Fiber TV does not have all of the bells and whistles that say Comcast or Spectrum have, but I have always subscribed to the theory that Google is playing the long game here and sees a time very soon that TV bundles served by the Internet will replace the conventional cable package.
I found this table of 2015 cable TV household penetration:
As I suspected, the greatest cable TV penetration is 65+ which generally disputes the ESPN is too liberal theory. Those people are paying for it whether they watch it or not.
This site has several graphs:
Note the biggest streamers of video (and then by direct inference the biggest non-cable TV buyers) is the age group under 36.
I see it didn’t like the links:
Here they are again:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/659779/cable-tv-penetration-by-age/
indeedwrestling.blogspot.com/2013/12/streaming-statistics-by-age-group.html
When Debra and I moved into an apartment in downtown LA, at first we were going to go with cable. However the company insisted on our ss number which having been a victim of identity theft was a non starter. So we got a roku box and subscribed to Sling. We get also get local channels (except CBS) for about $40/month. The Roku stick (plugs into your tv’s hdmi connection. The subscription comes with the maximum for 3 devices so our daughter also uses our Sling account and we use her MLB account. One drawback is our internet is through AT&T which has below average speed plus limits the amount of streaming per month. That is a kind of arrogance that the cable companies have. We would love to have Google fiber.
I didn’t realize it was as easy as removing a stick from one TV and moving it to another. That sounds like a pretty good option, except for not getting CBS. That sucks.
We tried coupling Roku with an antenna to get CBS. While we got great off the air reception for some local stations, CBS’s tower was the other direction and there was too much concrete between my antenna and their tower.
I have the MLB package now for the third year. The games on FSKC are blacked out on MLB.tv and the MLB app while the game is live and if FSKC is showing the repeat following the game. The out of town TV feed is also not available due to the same restriction. There is no restriction on the radio feeds.
I have one smart TV. The others have Sony Blu Ray players bought at Costco for $55 (cables included) that have Internet capability and feature the MLB app and well as many other apps.
Personality-driven programming sucks. And it’s a big problem I have with ESPN. Now there is one thing that ESPN does very well: The 30 for 30 programs. And the O.J. Simpson documentary was outstanding.
As for cable TV, Bruce Springsteen put it very well in a song he put out 25 years ago: “57 channels and nothing on.”
I haven’t heard the song but certainly agree with the sentiment. I guess it’s been that way since cable was first introduced (although it took us several years to sign up). It was kind of magical back then — all those stations for just a few dollars a month.
I remember the local start-up, American Cablevision, which solicited a group of investors to invest money in the business. It was like giving them a money-printing machine; there was no competition, and the field was wide open. It’s a lot different now.
I’m not married and live by myself, so I don’t need to consider other household members. So, I don’t own a television set, by choice. I just use my laptop for news feeds and Facebook. And I read books. Oh, I do own an Android..
There is a CBS app that you can play through Roku (ABC and NBC too). It’s great, you don’t need to record stuff anymore. We were watching 60 Minutes on it just right after it was over on broadcast TV. I am thinking about switching from Roku to the Fire stick pretty soon because the Amazon Music part of it superior on the stick. I would never get cable again, but I do pay for Netflix, Amazon and Sling with the ESPN. For the Royals I have Fox Sports Go app on Roku.
We have a basic Spectrum package of local stations, but good Internet. We then got Amazon Prime and got the Fire box. Next, I got Sling for three months and they gave me a Roku for the other TV. However, I didn’t like the channel lineup on Sling and so dumped it for Play station Vue.
Vue has an excellent line up of the best cable channels for news, sports and the shows we like to watch for $35/month. The biggest problem I have is that I’m stuck with Spectrum for Internet out here in Edwardsville. Give me a decent alternative for that and they’re gone.
By the way, I like the idea of a JimmyCsays get together (suggested in your last posting). A few of us have already done that, but it would be nice to add a few bodies to the mix. And, I have a lengthy list of reasonable places to dine her in the Dotte for all you unemployed former Star folk.
My head is spinning from all these viewing/subscription options…I knew I didn’t know much when I started writing this. Fortunately, it appears I sounded quasi-knowledgeable, at least as far as I took it.
I have been cordless for 4 years, I had the luxury of having built a couple of computers that would serve as streaming devices for a couple of my TV’s. I have ATT’s Gigabit service and my home is hard wired to each TV. Used PC’s that are perfect for streaming can be had for around $100, or a used laptop that seems obsolete can get a new life as a chromebook. With a PC or apple computer you can access thousands of hours of programming for fee. The Roku stick, Amazon Fire Stick are all dependent on the deals they cut with providers. With a HDMI/usb cable you can hook your phone or a tablet to your TV and have the entire internets on your TV. There are wireless ways of connecting your phone/tablet to your TV, but I am not a fan.
Content wise, you can watch all of CBS’s current programming next day at CBS.com. With a Sling TV subscription you can visit your favorite networks website and access archive programming going back 60 years, or current programming is again next day available. The big boys like Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are just the tip of the content iceberg, Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars getting Coffee is pure fun.
On a second note you can buy a “whole house” FM transmitter for about a hundred bucks, add an old PC and you have your own radio station with thousands of streaming radio stations of all genre’s for free.
Actually most of the time all it takes is a couple of cables and a computer to join those who have told cable to eff off.
http://www.espn.com/blog/ombudsman/post/_/id/767/inside-and-out-espn-dealing-with-changing-political-dynamics
Their own people are saying a liberal bias is the problem.