The Sports Media Thread

[DEAD!]

2 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

Having screwed up at ESPN, worn out his welcome at Fox, and gotten dumped by Clay Travis in favor of something called a "Buck Sexton," Jason Whitlock has landed a job at Glenn Beck's The Blaze. Welcome home, Ruckus.

Whitlock and Beck? Whoa... those are names I have forgotten about 

[The_Admiral]

On 6/8/2021 at 3:10 PM, Sodboy13 said:

Having screwed up at ESPN, worn out his welcome at Fox, and gotten dumped by Clay Travis in favor of something called a "Buck Sexton," Jason Whitlock has landed a job at Glenn Beck's The Blaze. Welcome home, Ruckus.

 

Buck Sexton used to co-host Rising with Krystal Ball. What a pair of not fake names. 

[monkeypower]

Adrian Dater with a real humdinger of a question. He started the question and then it got away from him (or never had a destination in the first place) and dropped an f-bomb in the middle of it.

He tries to defend himself/go after Pete in the replies.

[The_Admiral]

It's the opposite end of the continuum from "setting up the play."

[The_Admiral]

Hawks pushed Pat Foley out; the scalps keep piling up.

[schlim]

ESPN announced their lineup of play by play and analysts for the NHL, Sean McDonough doing play by play and Steve Levy in the studio. It's a pretty big and ambitious lineup that even includes Spanish language play by play for ESPN Deportes. It looks like a lot of analysts will be integrated into existing shows (Get Up, etc.) throughout the regular broadcast schedule.

https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/nhl-on-espn-coverage-team-announced.html

Kenny Albert and Eddie Olczyk were previously announced as the game announcers over at TBS.

[who do you think]

On today's episode of Problematic Opinions

 

Quote

In comments still rippling through the network, the reporter Rachel Nichols, who is white, said Maria Taylor, who is Black, earned the job to host 2020 N.B.A. finals coverage because ESPN was “feeling pressure” on diversity.

 

...

 

Some of those involved saw the initial maneuvering as a sign of the network favoring Nichols despite a backdrop of criticism from employees who complained that the sports network has long mishandled problems with racism. It had declined to discipline Nichols despite fury throughout the company over her remark, which she made during a phone conversation nearly a year ago after learning that she would not host coverage during the 2020 N.B.A. finals, as she had been expecting.

 

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols said in July 2020. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”

 

There's audio excerpts in the page (and on Youtube), and also a Deadspin link within that has more audio, for those that wish to give clicks to that infected anal fissure of a website.

 

Quote

The only person known to be punished was Kayla Johnson, a digital video producer who told ESPN human resources that she had sent the video to Taylor. Johnson, who is Black, was suspended for two weeks without pay, and later was given less desirable tasks at work.

 

[The_Admiral]

Spot the lie in anything Rachel Nichols said. She's been a respected NBA personality for years, and ESPN had been a soft landing spot for white guys from the Northeast for many years more. (So has Deadspin.) Of course she doesn't want to get kicked off a prime assignment for some up-and-comer. Why would she? Why would anyone?

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I'm more surprised Nichols even wants the job: it's not good. ESPN's game time basketball analysis is hot potato from one jock to another plus Woj with Maria Taylor -- whose name I learned today -- doing intros, outros and passing the mic to the next guy. It's not interesting or memorable or a valuable use of limited TV time. 

 

Inside the NBA is the template for good basketball television and ESPN's version is forgettable at best, terrible at worst.

 

Sage Steele, for her faults, was at least memorable.

[The_Admiral]

I remember Maria Taylor from last fall when she wore some black leather outfit on Monday Night Football and got a local talk show host fired for making a joke about it. She seems very easy to work with.

 

Two things stand out to me:

 

1) it was wrong to punish the video editor here for something Rachel Nichols said (true as it may have been)

 

2) Julie DiCaro is a big idiot for getting the tape over at Fake Deadspin a year ago and calling the editor a "creep" for sending it, claiming that the editor was doing the same thing that people did to her hero Elizabeth Warren:

Quote

 

In light of privacy concerns and our being unable to view the entirety of the conversation recorded, we have chosen not to detail the conversation or post the video of the call. Sources have told Deadspin that the entire video of Nichols’ conversation was 30 minutes long. Deadspin received about four minutes of edited footage. It is also worth noting that the videos were sent to Deadspin as an attempt to discredit Nichols’ job status within ESPN, and with the public at large, with the anonymous source texting our reporter that the videos would “expose” Nichols as a “back-stabber” and a phony ally.

Nothing in the videos Deadspin viewed show Nichols saying anything that could be construed as either a back-stabber or phony ally. Historically, casting successful women as conniving backstabbers has been a tried and true method of encouraging public condemnation of them. (See, e.g., Clinton, Hillary, and Warren, Elizabeth). You love to see the classics trotted out.

 

 

I mean, it's media. If you want women to join hands and work together in harmony, maybe try, like, a public school or something, a place no one from Deadspins real or fake would know anything about. Media is a place for backstabbers and fake allies; I don't know precisely when it became a clearinghouse for hyperambitious, hypersocialized upper-middle-class people, but it is, and they're all ruthless backbiting sociopaths whether they're black or white, man or woman.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Mina Kimes seems cool though.

[Kramerica Industries]

56 minutes ago, the admiral said:

1) it was wrong to punish the video editor here for something Rachel Nichols said (true as it may have been)

 

Thought the trouble they got in was for sharing that video to Taylor when the video itself was illicitly recorded by someone and spread from there. I would argue everybody involved in that particular chain should've been punished - and maybe they were - for that kind of gossipy nonsense. A video like that obviously wasn't meant to be recorded, contains sensitive information, and should've been referred to someone to be properly handled. Oh well, not gonna pretend I'm surprised with what actually happened.

 

I want to make it very clear that I find Rachel Nichols rather insufferable and have no particular affinity towards her, but my personal feelings are irrelevant. Was she bumped from a gig she clearly values (and claims was contractually agreed to) for performance-related reasons, or something different? You can support diversity; that doesn't mean you need to be ok with someone else being given an assignment over you that you had every reason to think was yours. Did the swap occur for diversity (race) related reasons? Evidence is only circumstantial so who knows for sure, but I also don't think you can fault Rachel for thinking that way, either, and especially when it's done (she thought) in private and was just kind of venting to someone she obviously trusts. I mean, who hasn't said something about their job or possibly a colleague in private that isn't exactly the most friendly? Anyone who says they haven't is a liar.

 

I will say that the response of some of Maria's colleagues on the show - at least Woj, anyway; really shouldn't be surprised that the other black athletes will support a black person in this scenario - is a bit telling. Wonder if Rachel isn't terribly popular at least with some of her colleagues and, well, if that might've been a possible reason for a change as well. I suppose it would be a bit difficult to tell someone that the reason they're being replaced is because their colleagues don't like them.

 

Who knows. What a mess. Who knows the sincerity of Rachel's attempts to apologize, and who knows Maria's level of pettiness if she isn't going to give her a chance to tell her side of the story. Comforting to know, as @the admiral so strongly alludes to, that sports media personalities act in a way towards each other that is really no different than the way teenagers act towards each other. 

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, Kramerica Industries said:

Was she bumped from a gig she clearly values (and claims was contractually agreed to) for performance-related reasons, or something different?

 

Women in sports media get taken out back when they get old, and the executives were suddenly keen on Maria Taylor last summer after the cops murdered a black guy. ESPN's production of the NBA is so bland and lifeless from top to bottom that you can't pin it on poor performance from Rachel Nichols alone.

 

  

1 hour ago, Kramerica Industries said:

who knows Maria's level of pettiness 

Dan McNeil sure does!

[DEAD!]

 

Whatever the circumstances or whatever the issues are, the responsibility should fall on management.  If management promised an employee something, but fails to live up to the promise, that's on them.  And if not, there should be clear communication as to why. 

Yes, racial bias can be a factor no matter what the workplace.  Diversity can be better achieved in a larger corporation that is visible, but smaller workplaces are not nearly as tolerant. 

[Red Wolf]

3 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Inside the NBA is the template for good basketball television and ESPN's version is forgettable at best, terrible at worst.

 

Inside the NBA has been the gold standard of sports presentation for years. I just think it's almost impossible to replicate. The Bizarro World chemistry of everybody is what sets it apart in most cases. The other being that it's fun. Sports themselves aren't that serious and the Inside the NBA crew treats it as such without it becoming a total mockery.

 

ESPN's best analogue would be College Gameday, which is a weird and wacky show running down stories from college football before the weekend's games begin. They have some interesting and serious stories sometimes, but overall the show is just fun. They have a bunch of people behind them yelling because they're inebriated at 10:30 am and they've got just under 24 hours before they need to get to church to beg forgiveness on Sunday.

[The_Admiral]

Best I can tell, Inside the NBA is the product of two factors:

 

1) a one-of-a-kind set of on-screen talent, 

 

2) Turner Broadcasting's longtime ethos (I'd call it more of a hangup, a complex, or a neurosis) of overcoming the perception of being a bunch of down-south goobers and producing award-winning programming. Remember part of the impetus behind kicking WCW off the air was to open more prime-time hours for made-for-TV movies that didn't draw WCW's numbers but were Critically Acclaimed and won Cable Ace awards or whatever. Turner treats the NBA as their most valuable property, they're absolutely correct to, it shows, and they both win awards for it and everyone likes to watch their games. ESPN never had the personnel on either side of the camera to really show their love for the game; it was just more content among other content.

 

Everyone wants the NHL to replicate Inside the NBA, but they can't, because they don't have talent with that once-in-a-lifetime chemistry, and if they did, everyone would just get mad at them for one reason or another anyway. There can only be one across both the sport and network axes.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The thing is, ESPN does ten million podcasts. They aren't all great, but it's not like people aren't used to listening to sports people talk about sports stuff for extended periods of time. And Inside the NBA shows that even beyond the personalities, there's also an appetite for Xs and Os talk. ESPN doesn't deliver any of that during its NBA programming, opting instead for tabloid narrative stuff and that's about it.

 

But to the podcast point, there is a way forward. Have people just start talking -- like there's clearly a market for -- and see what happens. Or get rid of everyone and sub in Stephen A Smith and Wilbon to do all of the studio stuff. Or just let Jalen Rose go off -- he's got the talent for it!

 

Inside the NBA has one of a kind talent but it also has a ton of trust from Turner to be what it's going to be. I know ESPN's tight TV control makes that so much more difficult to emulate, but it doesn't need to be.

[The_Admiral]

If you were to get rid of everybody but Stephen A and Wilbon, wouldn't that just make it even more tabloid? 

 

I doubt Inside the NBA's considerable audience is there for Xs-and-Os talk.  I find basketball Xs-and-Os talk uniquely tedious and I can't be alone in that regard. (This may be because the main sports talk show in Chicago used to go on freeform jazz odysseys of that stuff when I just wanted them to make jokes.) Just someone explaining the triangle offense gives me Homer-Simpson-at-the-cider-mill brain. I can tolerate it in football, but on the basketball side, it might actually be worse than FreeDarko posts about how Rasheed Wallace is like a Geto Boy. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The Inside the NBA has the big board that's a pretty big feature. It's balanced by the takes and morning zoo stuff though.

 

I'm not a TV producer so I'm not sure how they fix it. I just know it sucks now, there's little worth keeping, and ESPN should be willing to try everything if they're going to spend so much money on the damn rights.

[Red Wolf]

I think there's still a lot of people who want sports talk to be very specific. However, we live in a world in which people not only appreciate off-topic conversation, they actually want it. Podcasting has probably helped that as radio dorks went from having to cut the fun out of their shows for time purposes, to having an avenue in which they can blabber on about whatever.

 

ESPN's NBA coverage is stale and bad. It isn't interesting and it isn't fun. I don't get some knowledge of a team's strategery and I can't enjoy the host's banter. What is there to watch, people talking about petty drama that they made up? That appeals to somebody, but it's not for me.