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Even though sports are stupid and boring (which is total objective journalism talking, and def. not the personal opinion of this particular blogger), ESPN gets mad cred for having the funniest commercials ever. Something about sports and comedy go hand in hand apparently, which would explain the success of Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night.
But ESPN's good humor extends far beyond their network advertising dollars. Take for example, the signs posted in NY after the station's billboards for Monday Night Football, made out of real football turf, were stolen.
Sure, they threaten to burn your house down with bad vibes, but still: More clever marketing stunts like this and perhaps ESPN can just shuck the whole "sports" thing and become a comedy station?
Please, please, please, if you watch one video today, make it this one of ESPN sports anchors speculating on a HJ some girl was giving her boyfriend during a college football game:
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In the far off year of 2014, the Olympics might leave their home at NBC and arrive at ESPN. But for the next four years, through 2012, Jeff Zucker's network has the exclusive broadcast rights. And the possibility of them changing hands is a big maybe — IOC officials are beyond pleased with the ratings records NBC Universal's slate of networks captured, which means you can expect their fees to increase from 2008's $894 million.
Will EPSN have the cash? Perhaps. Parent Disney has the bucks to have a seat at the table, and the media giant has its own roster of channels, including ABC, ABC Family, SoapNet, The Disney Channel, and ESPN's endless spin-offs, to rack up new programming hour records.
But none of that really explains why ESPN decided to run this ad in the New York Times and USA Today. Though it doesn't mention NBC, it certainly congratulates the competition on a job well done, turning Michael Phelps' swim meets into a national obsession.
So here's to self deprecation. And the mystery behind it.
Finally, there is solid proof that debunks the Creative Intelligence Theory (at least in advertising): ESPN has recruited the cavemen characters from the Geico commercials to shill the network's fantasy-football team, as well as promote Sportscenter. This will come as a shock for anyone who was alive last year for the dismal and short-lived ABC sitcom based off these characters, marking a time in in history where a TV executive had one too many ideas. This one was: "Hey, let's just turn that commercial into a show."
So why are these two-bit acts coming back again? CONTINUED »
Jon Friedman highlights some of ESPN's biggest recent faux pas, which include the website headline "Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim" and reporter Bonnie Bernstein talking about Palestine's suicide bombers on a morning sports radio show. Friedman blames the missteps on the network trying to be too controversial. Indeed. That current ESPN The Magazine story on the last days of Yankees Stadium. Tres risqué!
But when it comes to sports media controversy, isn't the Golf Channel the one that's really got the crossing-the-line problem? Huh. Where was Friedman on that?
To promote justhowclose to the action it gets, and its impressive ratings, ESPN sent media buyers in Asia these "You can't get closer" eyeball packages, created from actual basketballs, footballs (sorry, soccer balls), and baseballs. The direct marketing campaign supposedly drew "extremely positive" reactions from recipients, who promptly kicked the thing down their office stairwells because it kept staring at them.
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ESPN The Magazine, aka that sports magazine launched by that sports channel, is getting its own site. ESPNthemag.com had a soft launch on Friday.
The magazine’s executive of multimedia, Robbyn Footlick, described the site like a TV network, with “lunchtime programming.” That’s all well and good, but it wouldn't have been cheaper for ESPN The Magazine to just siphon off of ESPN’s actual lunchtime programming?
Even Sports Illustrated’s website is part of the CNN network. This means that ESPN either made a very costly mistake of splitting up their brands, or they have the ridunklous money and patience to wait for ESPN The Magazine to come into its own.
ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman joins Katie Couric in what we hope to be a growing number of on-air talent who should shut the hell up when they're mic-ed up but not live.
Here, Berman confesses to making his way up to Canada for the $10-a-pill deux deux deux, or "two two two" – aspirin with "a little bit of codeine in it" – that he smuggled across the border.
• A Democratic National Committee spokesman asked Queerty if the picture above was "humor or accuracy?" Both! Here's your gay cheat sheet to the DNC.
• Craigslist gives back to the industry he helped destroy.
• Unlike your office manager, we never got into LOLCats. LOlsens is more our style. CONTINUED »
Rick Reilly was making crazy money at Sports Illustrated, but when ESPN offered him money that was, in his words, "ridunklous" he left.
And because of a non-compete clause, Reilly is just hanging out until June 1, getting paid by ESPN for just being him. And what has he been up to? Living the life:
"I just got back from three weeks in Argentina," Reilly says, "and I'm fixing to go to Tahiti, Thailand, New Zealand, Cabo, Europe. I'm going to drink coffee, play the piano, get up, have breakfast, go back to bed and read, and forget the job. They call it a no-compete clause. I call it bliss."
… Reilly is "reading all the books I ditched out on in high school — like Nabokov, who I'd never read before" and adding to his frequent-flier miles. He'll continue doing so for the better part of four months, all the while collecting a massive salary simply for being him.
The jocks win again.
[Photo]
We at Jossip don't really care about sports, but we do think ESPN is doing awesome things for sports journalists. We talked to Rob King, the editor-in-chief of ESPN.com to talk about investing in writing, fan expectation and how his son wants an elevator for his birthday.
ESPN seems to be aggressive in pursuing top-notch journalists over the past few months. So what's up with that?
It's something that has been going on for a long time. If you look at some of the people who make decisions here, they come from newspapers, magazines like Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated. Vince Doria, who oversees our news coverage, is a longtime newspaper man. … It seems to be happening a condensed burst. Rick Reilly is a big enough name that it has generated more attention to what we're doing. But the truth of the matter is that we've long been involved with trying to find the best sports journalists we can. I'm happy recipient of that kind of attention myself. I was in newspapers for more than 20 years. I was working at the Philadelphia Inquirer when ESPN came and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. CONTINUED »
The change has been more jarring for the biggest newspapers, like USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. They have always lost the occasional writer to a better offer from a magazine or from television, but not on this scale.
“When you lose an established star like Howard Bryant, it’s a terrible blow, because they’re not easily replaceable,” said Mr. [Emilio] Garcia-Ruiz of The Post. “We’re used to being a destination, not a stepping stone.”
- Richard Pérez-Peña, "The Top Player in This League? It May Be the Sports Reporter," New York Times, on how the recent windfall for sports journalists has hurt print outlets.
For the past few months, ESPN has been gobbling up the best sports journalists in this country with the kind of money that would make most writers blush.
But their strategy is not to save journalism, but to save themselves. With the Internet and all that Web 2.0 stuff going on, keeping ratings growing is next to impossible for cable news. So ESPN is gambling on quality reporting to keep themselves relevant: CONTINUED »
Rick Reilly Is Really Rich Rumors that Rick Reilly will be making $2 mil at ESPN were apparently low. Not relative to our salary, but to his. New sources have him at $17 million over the next five years, or $3.4 million a year. Cha-ching! [Silicon Alley Insider]
First it was Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. Then it was Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle. Now ESPN has added T.J. Quinn of the Daily News to its inflated payroll. Quinn’s reasoning for leaving the news business:
There is a world of difference between what TV pays you and what newspapers pay you. You hate that to be a deciding factor, but I have three kids. That alone isn't enough, but it pushes you in that direction.
On the plus side, the overpriced burgers at the ESPN Zone are ultimately funding award winning sports journalism.
If the steroids were baseball’s Watergate, then Mark Fainaru-Wada is Bob Woodward. Along with Lance Williams, Fainaru-Wada broke the Balco steroid scandal for the San Francisco Chronicle. Sadly, the public is more forgiving of lies when homeruns are attached.
Now Fainaru-Wada is taking his scoops to ESPN, ESPN.com and ESPN the magazine. He joins Rick Reilly who left Sports Illustrated last month for a $10 million deal.
ESPN’s recently launched the newsmagazine show E-60, which is sort of like HBO’s Real Sports, but not as good. Still, with this hire, ESPN seems posed is overtake SI for serious sports journalism. Apparently that shouldn’t be so hard.
Rick Reilly, allegedly the highest paid writer in history of Time Inc., is set to make even more at ESPN. Once the proud signer of a five-year, $5 million contract, he’s now doubling that at ESPN with a $10 million over five years deal.
Reilly will stay on at Sports Illustrated until December 1. Time Inc. is enforcing its revenge non-competition rule, so Reilly won’t start at ESPN until June 1.
On the deal, Reilly said, "It's tough leaving SI after 23 years, but I just had this itch I had to scratch," referring to working on TV.
Now he can scratch that metaphorical itch with a figurative diamond encrusted backscratcher.
Last week, Dan Patrick signed with Sports Illustrated, presumably for more money than ESPN was offering him. This week, Rick Reilly, longtime SI columnist, made the opposite move, also presumably for more money.
Patrick and Reilly have played ESPN and SI against each other for their financial gain. But the network and magazine are stupid to engage in these lateral trades. Anyone who cares about following the work of Dan Patrick and Rick Reilly already watches ESPN and subscribes to Sports Illustrated. To the rest of us, all white guys reporting on sports look the same.
UPDATE: Rick Reilly confirmed the pay increase, saying "the money [at ESPN] is ridonkulous."
Time Inc. has lured SportsCenter mainstay Dan Patrick away from ESPN The Magazine and his ESPN radio show and convinced him to totally switch directions. In a stunning turnaround, Patrick will henceforth be a senior writer at Sports Illustrated magazine and will host a radio show for Sports Illustrated's website.
Yeah, we're still trying to wrap our heads around it, too. But as far as we can tell, the name of the game is still synergy—meaning the only that's really changed here is the brand. And, presumably, the number of zeros on those paychecks Patrick's cashing.
[Folio]
ESPN truly is, as TVWeek writes, "pulling out all the stops" for David Beckham's debut as a member of the Los Angeles Galaxy on Saturday, July 21. The network's efforts include an extended edition of SportsCenter, an ET special entitled "David Beckham: New Beginnings," a half-hour pregame show and the game itself, to be broadcast on ESPN with the help of 19 cameras, featuring "Skycam, super slo-mo cameras and robotic goal cams," not to mention a "Beckham cam," and additional coverage on ESPNSoccernet.com and ESPNNews.
In fact, with all the aforementioned measures (not so subtly designed to milk this historical moment for all its worth) ESPN seems to have forgotten only one thing, namely: Americans hate soccer.
Which is why we'll be spending the evening washing our hair and ogling Victoria Beckham's B-cups on the highlight reel.
Editorial Director
