ESPN departures: What mass exodus?
COMMENTARY
A deep dive for context is not required to recognize that the recent high-profile departures of Keith Olbermann, Colin Cowherd, and especially Bill Simmons from ESPN’s roster were not the first phase of a mass exodus of talent.
Sure, the close proximity of the departures — Simmons, a one-man multi-platform powerhouse and the definitive sportswriter of his generation, was fired in May, while talk-show hosts Olbermann and Cowherd left this month — encouraged factually narrow narratives and sensationalistic dot-connecting.
Speculation that the exits were somehow connected by more than coincidence was fueled by a juicy detail found a few paragraphs deep in The Hollywood Reporter’s July 8 story on ESPN’s decision to pass on renewing Olbermann’s contract: network president John Skipper had been given a mandate by parent company Disney to cut $100 million from the budget in 2016 and a staggering $250 million in ’17.
An ESPN spokesman subsequently told THR that the numbers were “factually inaccurate,’’ but the figures were nonetheless picked up by multiple outlets. That same week the Wall Street Journaldescribed ESPN as being in “belt-tightening mode’’ as it faced a loss of subscribers.
The ensuing narrative is admittedly an easy one to construct. ESPN is reportedly told to slash the budget. Three high-profile personalities leave. Conclusion: ESPN is running off its high-priced talent! All anchors must go! Color analysts, half-off, today only!
But that would be a myopic and inaccurate way of looking at it, says Sports Illustrated media columnist Richard Deitsch. No conspiracy theories or simplistic conclusions are necessary. The reality is that it’s pretty much business as usual in Bristol.
“People get a certain amount of stardom and they think they can get a better deal elsewhere,’’ said Deitsch. “I think the whole idea of a mass exodus from ESPN, at least with this, is really overstated. I know people are calling it a talent drain. It’s not. It’s a handful of individual cases that happen to have occurred within close vicinity of each other and had a similar and maybe unexpected result.
“The reason I think there’s a lot of attention on this one is because Simmons was such a unique figure at that place. He’s a central figure, maybe the central figure, of their digital site. They built a very high-end, very expensive boutique website [Grantland.com] around him. They’d never done that before. He really set them up in a different medium other than television. I’m not saying he made ESPN.com, but he gave ESPN.com a certain identity for a very long time. He’s absolutely the most popular sportswriter in the country, there’s no doubt about that. Whoever is No. 2 is way, way behind. That’s a big deal, that they made that decision. It makes it feel big, but his [departure] was really one of those individual cases.’’
Simmons, who landed a deal with HBO to host a weekly sports/pop culture talk show and will write for a yet-to-be-revealed outlet, developed such a massive following that, with hindsight, it was almost inevitable that his brand would collide with a well-known tenet established during Skipper’s tenure: No individual is bigger than the network itself.
While popular personalities will inevitably emerge, and often emerge in ways that benefit the individual as well as ESPN, those four letters are supposed to be the real stars. Jack Edwards, a former SportsCenter anchor and ESPN play-by-play voice who now calls Bruins games for NESN, discussed this corporate mindset in James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’s rollicking 2011 oral history of ESPN, Those Guys Have All The Fun.
“The prevailing idea was that the network was much more important than individuals, and that prevented the star system from starting there,’’ said Edwards. “In many ways, Chris Berman is [management’s] greatest nightmare, because he is a fabulously talented, extraordinarily hardworking, obsessed, dedicated, funny man who relates directly one-on-one to everyone who’s ever watched him on television. They have done everything in their power to prevent anybody from ever getting that kind of power again. Their greatest corporate nightmare is to need someone more than that person needs ESPN.’’
Skipper’s public breakup with Simmons four months before his contract was to expire, emphasized that longstanding philosophy. It reminded ESPN’s talent that no one is more important than the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader of Sports.
“I don’t think even Berman fits into that untouchable category now,’’ said Miller, who noted that ESPN did make Cowherd a competitive offer to stay. “I’m not sure there’s anyone. Simmons might have been the closest, and their parting with him was unceremonious. I don’t believe it was the primary intention, but it did send a message that no one is indispensable.’’
While ESPN has parted with high-profile talent (Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen, Erin Andrews) at various stages and for various reasons through the years, it’s a fair presumption that many, if not the majority, who work there have little desire to take their talents anywhere else.
ESPN is the ultimate career destination for many in sports television and journalism, and it requires relentless hard work and a decent helping of good fortune to get there that leaving might feel like a step down the ladder if not an outright failure. For all of the reverberations felt after recent departures, the network has recently re-signed several high-profile personalities, including NFL studio host Trey Wingo, radio host Ryen Russillo, versatile host/reporter Suzy Kolber, and hot-take specialist Stephen A. Smith.
(Smith, who can be seen dressed as a fisherman while portraying the voice in Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman’s stomach in an Oberto beef jerky commercial, makes more $3 million per year on a contract extension agreed upon in January. The concept that Smith gets paid that amount to do what he does is harder to digest than lousy beef jerky.)
Cutting talent — even relatively high-priced talent such as Simmons, who was reported to earn $5 million per year — is, Miller noted, a “drop in the bucket to ESPN.’’ ESPN has saved money in other ways, including postponing plans to move the “Mike and Mike’’ morning show from Bristol to New York City and cutting ties with the NHRA were recent if relatively subtle cost-cutting measures.
“They’ve been told to cut where you can in the near term,’’ said Deitsch. “To say they’re paying the piper is a little too cliché, but I think they’ve spent so much money that even at a certain point, ESPN which has been an endless ATM, has to have some cost control. That’s where they are right now. But I don’t believe they’re cutting talent solely because of money by any stretch.’’
But consider that $350 million Skipper has reportedly been told to whack from the budget over the next two years, and then look at where ESPN really spends its money: On live sports broadcast rights. And they cost billions. Not millions. Billions. Right — with a B.
In September 2011, ESPN agreed to an eight-year extension through 2021, during which it will pay the NFL $15.2 billion to broadcast Monday Night Football and a handful of other games. (That’s $1.9 billion per year if you do not have your abacus handy.) In August 2012, it reached an eight-year deal with Major League Baseball worth a total of $5.6 billion in broadcast rights. And last October, ESPN and ABC (also owned by Disney) teamed with Turner Sports on a nine-year, $24 billion media rights deal with the NBA, a deal that takes effect in 2016-17.
“Skipper’s approach has been to sign those long rights deals,’’ said Miller. “Sports — live, compelling sports — are always going to get the most prominence there, and they should. It’s tried and true with the NFL in particular; people are going to watch. You’re going to tune in to watch the big event, the college football championship game, whatever it is. It’s ESPN’s advantage over their would-be challengers, whether that’s Fox Sports 1 or NBC Sports Network or other cable sports networks desperate to make inroads with an audience. But the cost of live broadcast rights, I mean, to say they are steep doesn’t begin to tell the story.’’
ESPN’s expensive partnerships with the various professional sports leagues sometimes lead to the perception of tangled loyalties. Though it should be noted that ESPN reporters Don Van Natta Jr. and Kevin Van Valkenburg were at the forefront of investigating what NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell knew — and when he knew it — regarding former Ravens running back Ray Rice’s domestic violence incident, it is a conspicuous coincidence that Simmons and Olbermann were both unrelenting in calling the league executive’s competence and intentions into question.
Simmons was even suspended for three weeks last September for calling Goodell a liar on his podcast and then all but double-dog-daring his bosses to punish him for saying as much.
“I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell. Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public,’’ said Simmons. “You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast … Please, call me, and say I’m in trouble. I dare you.’’
It wasn’t the size of Simmons’s salary demands that led to his split with ESPN. If anything, it was the size of his cult of personality — and perhaps the size of his mouth, too.
“I don’t want to say ESPN made an impetuous decision [in firing Simmons], but I do think it was emotional given how it went down so quickly,’’ said Deitsch. “I think some of that had to do with his sort of suggesting to the company that he was bigger than the company, with the Goodell stuff. In that sense, I think it was ruthless. And now that he’s at HBO? Oh, it’s going to be no-holds-barred. He can say whatever he wants about ESPN or Goodell or whatever now, and I’m sure he’s fired up. We’re all going to get our money’s worth out of this.’’
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