The Sports Media Thread

[Digby]

An obstacle to OTT services is that your average sketchy Reddit stream is still higher quality than the official ones, I thought as NBCSports.com repeatedly froze, glitched and randomly threw to "coverage returning shortly" screens in the middle of NHL playoff action.

[Still MIGHTY]

On 4/19/2018 at 12:46 PM, the admiral said:

Let's play some Jellybean Jar here. Can you guess the word count on the article with this war crime of a headline?

 

The Wizards Of Aughts: The Post-Millennium Washington Wizards And The Bloggers Who Immortalized Them

 

Oh my  ing God, why???

 

Both the length of the story and the headline,  ing what???

[The_Admiral]

When Fox Sports did their "pivot to video," Deadspin and Deadspin-adjacent people were some of the loudest voices screaming about what an injustice it was. Now Deadspin itself seems to be pivoting to video, except instead of whatever inanity Fox Sports does, it's Rachel Maddow with shoulder-length hair complaining that sports movies for children/teenagers are Actually Bad. They also have videos of people eating stuff. I don't really get it.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

How are people doing with ESPN+?

 

I really want the service to succeed, but there's no way to use it on my Xbox One, so it's therefore dead to me. A browser or mobile device just isn't good enough -- I prefer watching sports on my TV.

[neo_prankster]

18 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

How are people doing with ESPN+?

 

I really want the service to succeed, but there's no way to use it on my Xbox One, so it's therefore dead to me. A browser or mobile device just isn't good enough -- I prefer watching sports on my TV.

 

Yeah, I hear ya. Nothing wrong with old school traditional TV.

[Red Wolf]

24 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

How are people doing with ESPN+?

 

I really want the service to succeed, but there's no way to use it on my Xbox One, so it's therefore dead to me. A browser or mobile device just isn't good enough -- I prefer watching sports on my TV.

Yeah, I can't believe they launched this thing without support for so many devices. Hell, I can't believe there wasn't just an update to the existing WatchESPN apps those devices had like what was done on iOS and the like. I can't watch it using my PS4 or Apple TV , but my dad gets to use it with his Roku which is odd. I think the newer Apple TV's might have it, but still, so odd that I can watch on my iPhone or iPad which just got updates to the regular ESPN app, but I can't on other things. Hopefully they get this stuff out in time for football season. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

44 minutes ago, Red Wolf said:

Yeah, I can't believe they launched this thing without support for so many devices. Hell, I can't believe there wasn't just an update to the existing WatchESPN apps those devices had like what was done on iOS and the like. I can't watch it using my PS4 or Apple TV , but my dad gets to use it with his Roku which is odd. I think the newer Apple TV's might have it, but still, so odd that I can watch on my iPhone or iPad which just got updates to the regular ESPN app, but I can't on other things. Hopefully they get this stuff out in time for football season. 

 

The WatchESPN app on Xbox hasn't been updated in any real way in several years. And one fun thing about ESPN+ is that it uses different credentials (your ESPN.com account) than WatchESPN (your cable provide; in my case YouTube TV). I'm sure that's a hassle, but again, one I'm surprised they didn't sort out before launch.

 

[Red Wolf]

2 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

 

The WatchESPN app on Xbox hasn't been updated in any real way in several years. And one fun thing about ESPN+ is that it uses different credentials (your ESPN.com account) than WatchESPN (your cable provide; in my case YouTube TV). I'm sure that's a hassle, but again, one I'm surprised they didn't sort out before launch.

 

Everything about the launch seemed weirdly haphazard. Even the date. For a long time they basically just said, "April or March or whenever" and then announced the official launch date less than two weeks beforehand. 

[dfwabel]

I cannot talk about the Xbox situation, but the ESPN app after the ESPN+ introduction has been poor.  The updated app was really good but it seems overloaded now.

[Cosmic]

On the plus side for ESPN, I've noticed that they finally shed go.com from their URL. Now, you can actually go to http://www.espn.com

 

[OaklandIsBack]

Anyone with espn+, can you connect to a chromecast?

[twi]

I’ve loved ESPN+ so far (Apple TV user) and feel that I get more than full value for the price, and that’s without ever planning to watch any basketball, football, tennis, or general ESPN shows. The IIHF worlds has been on, the MLS/USL games are great, and the international soccer planned has my interest. 

 

The only slight issue I’ve encountered is once or twice a game stream has failed to load but a simple menu out and retry has been enough to start it up. 

[The_Admiral]

Barstool and Deadspin are having another dumb slapfight because Deadspin exposed the identity of PFT Commenter (he's, uh...some guy Drew Magary was friends with, it's not like the Fire Joe Morgan guy turning out to be the creator of Parks & Rec) and now all the Barstool drones are all mad about it. PFTC, to his credit, told everyone to leave the writer of the piece alone. Deadspin tried to frame it as needing to expose his name so that he can't make money for himself and for BAD PERSON Dave Portnoy without sullying his own name but no one's really buyin' that. It's really just Deadspin flailing out of professional jealousy because Barstool is making good money selling crap and Deadspin is probably about to go out of business once again.

[rams80]

6 hours ago, the admiral said:

Barstool and Deadspin are having another dumb slapfight because Deadspin exposed the identity of PFT Commenter (he's, uh...some guy Drew Magary was friends with, it's not like the Fire Joe Morgan guy turning out to be the creator of Parks & Rec) and now all the Barstool drones are all mad about it. PFTC, to his credit, told everyone to leave the writer of the piece alone. Deadspin tried to frame it as needing to expose his name so that he can't make money for himself and for BAD PERSON Dave Portnoy without sullying his own name but no one's really buyin' that. It's really just Deadspin flailing out of professional jealousy because Barstool is making good money selling crap and Deadspin is probably about to go out of business once again.

 

Also, didn't Mose Schrute out himself on Fire Joe Morgan?

[buzzcut]

ESPN to become the Exclusive home to the UFC. Which comes on the heels of Fox getting in bed with WWE. I'm sorry if this is being discussed over in the wrestling forum.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

7 hours ago, the admiral said:

Barstool and Deadspin are having another dumb slapfight because Deadspin exposed the identity of PFT Commenter (he's, uh...some guy Drew Magary was friends with, it's not like the Fire Joe Morgan guy turning out to be the creator of Parks & Rec) and now all the Barstool drones are all mad about it. PFTC, to his credit, told everyone to leave the writer of the piece alone. Deadspin tried to frame it as needing to expose his name so that he can't make money for himself and for BAD PERSON Dave Portnoy without sullying his own name but no one's really buyin' that. It's really just Deadspin flailing out of professional jealousy because Barstool is making good money selling crap and Deadspin is probably about to go out of business once again.

 

I read that whole thing and am glad I have nothing to do with Barstool Sports. The closest I've got was the Tank stuff (is that still a thing?) and watching those guys be terrible (like, the boring kind of terrible) on ESPN.

 

Am I supposed to subscribe to the Athletic now? I don't know where all of the sports is supposed to be anymore. And I'm generally in line in Deadspin's particular brand of liberal-tinged sports reporting. Their soccer coverage stinks though.

[The_Admiral]

I really, really miss Sports on Earth. On rare occasions its Leitchiness would be a little thick, but they had writers I like (Jeb Lund, Dan O'Sullivan, even Leitch himself) and were a far better example of what intelligent, right-thinking sportswriting should be than Grantland/Ringer's pop-culture aspirations or Deadspin's clickbait and bratty-rich-kid sniping. 

[Digby]

4 hours ago, DG_Now said:

 

I read that whole thing and am glad I have nothing to do with Barstool Sports. The closest I've got was the Tank stuff (is that still a thing?) and watching those guys be terrible (like, the boring kind of terrible) on ESPN.

 

Am I supposed to subscribe to the Athletic now? I don't know where all of the sports is supposed to be anymore. And I'm generally in line in Deadspin's particular brand of liberal-tinged sports reporting. Their soccer coverage stinks though.

 

I think it depends on whether you need news or takes. I get the sense the Athletic wants you to subscribe for the news. But they haven’t cornered the market on news enough yet.

 

i generally like Deadspin but I can’t believe they still have the soccer guy after the Mix Diskerud bicycle kick incident. 

[Sec19Row53]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

I really, really miss Sports on Earth. On rare occasions its Leitchiness would be a little thick, but they had writers I like (Jeb Lund, Dan O'Sullivan, even Leitch himself) and were a far better example of what intelligent, right-thinking sportswriting should be than Grantland/Ringer's pop-culture aspirations or Deadspin's clickbait and bratty-rich-kid sniping. 

Jeb Lund - that's a name I haven't seen in a gazillion years since he vanished from The-W. IIRC he changed his screen name prior to exiting.

[Sport]

The Ringer is a Celtics blog. 

 

Deadspin is a bunch of people who should be better who have turned into extremely online guys. I like a lot of what they do, but they also get sucked into internet bull :censored: too often. 

 

Barstool is scum and I can no longer defend PFT's involvement. 

 

I have not regretted my subscription to The Athletic thus far and read it every day, but a lot of their recent hires have been disappointing (RICK REILLY!!!!).