John Skipper has agreed to a contract extension with Disney to remain president of ESPN through 2021, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Skipper has been ESPN’s president since New Year’s Day of 2012, and been with the company since 1997 when he started at ESPN the Magazine as VP-GM. In 2015, Skipper signed a contract extension through 2018.
ESPN will lay off more than 100 staffers after the Thanksgiving holidays, multiple sources say. The layoffs, which were described by a person briefed on the plans, will hit positions across ESPN including front-facing talent on the television side, producers, executives, and digital and technology staffers.
Exclusives
More bad news could be on the horizon for ESPN. Staffers at the Worldwide Leader in Sports are bracing for another possible round of layoffs late this year, multiple sources say. The next round of cutbacks could come down in late November or early December, with 40-60 positions potentially being impacted, according to sources. The layoffs could hit both on-air TV/radio talent and behind-the-scenes production staffers.
Among various tech innovations at this fall’s coverage of baseball’s post-season play are new — and more — infield mics that drive enhanced audio production through an IP routing infrastructure.
Altice Not Just Another Deal For Disney
The prospect of TV channels going dark due to a standoff between a media conglomerate and an MVPD has become so commonplace in recent years that it barely registers anymore. And with less than 4% of Disney’s total TV reach coming through its New York-based cable TV footprint, Altice USA may not have loomed too large as challenges go for Bob Iger. But the implications of Disney reaching agreement on an affiliate-fee renewal Sunday after extended talks with Altice shouldn’t be easily ignored.
Cable operator Altice USA and Disney have reached “an agreement in principle” after days of tense contract talks. Talks between Altice and Disney went down to the wire Sunday afternoon against a 5 p.m. ET deadline for a new carriage agreement to avert a black out of ESPN, WABC-TV New York and other Disney-owned channels on Altice USA’s Optimum platform serving about 2.6 million New York-area subscribers.
Walt Disney Co. is facing a crucial test of the strength of its ESPN sports empire as a New York pay-TV provider is balking at the Burbank entertainment giant’s contract demands, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown. Altice is refusing to meet Disney’s demands to carry ESPN and Disney’s entertainment channels, including ABC, saying Disney is asking for too much money, particularly for ESPN, which has been struggling with subscriber losses and ratings declines.
Margaret Sullivan weighs in on the controversy around ESPN anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets on President Trump, and she has little to laud in the network’s response. She says Hill isn’t a reporter of straight news but an anchor and commentator called upon to share her views. For that matter, Sullivan argues, ESPN isn’t a news network either, and “at a time in America when authoritarian tendencies are rising, shutting down voices such as Jemele Hill’s is worse than inappropriate,” she writes.
ESPN Public Editor Jim Brady looks at how anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets about President Trump — and the fallout that followed them — reflect the network’s difficult navigation of sports, politics and culture. “Media companies are simultaneously asking many of their personalities to be active and engaging on social media but not partisan or opinionated,” he writes. “It’s a line that is, at best, blurry and, at worst, nonexistent.”
ESPN President John Skipper said in a staff memo Friday that the network “is about sports” and is “not a political organization.” The memo followed anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets denouncing President Trump as a white supremacist and capped off a rough week for ESPN. “In light of recent events, we need to remind ourselves that we are a journalistic organization and that we should not do anything that undermines that position,” Skipper wrote.
The POTUS hit Twitter hard Friday morning with a salvo aimed at ESPN and its anchor Jemele Hill, who called Trump a white supremacist earlier on the platform. “ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers,” Trump exclaimed.
On Monday night, Beth Mowins will call the Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers in the second game of ESPN’s Monday Night Football doubleheader — the first woman in 30 years take the microphone in an NFL game, and the first for a national broadcast.
ESPN said it would make a new push into the boxing ring by striking a multi-year deal with Top Rank, one of the sport’s biggest promoters.
Disney’s upcoming branded streaming service will likely be priced around $5 per month in order to drive wider adoption, according to MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson. He says that the new Disney streaming service and the upcoming ESPN services need clear distinctions. The ESPN service will likely test different prices as it prepares ESPN to be ready to go fully over-the-top, according to the report, but the Disney service is about building asset value instead of taking licensing money from SVOD deals.
With cable TV subscribers fleeing, the sports giant has to look for customers online. That’s not where the money is.
The Walt Disney Co. finally unveiled its plan to offer an over-the-top video streaming edition of ESPN for the growing number of fans who want live sports — but not the big cable bill that a previous generation paid. Now the question is whether the revenue generated by the new service to be launched in 2018 will be enough to offset the subscriber dollars that go away every time a household decides it can do without cable.
The ACC Network is off and running with its first distribution deals. The ESPN-owned conference channel recently secured its first carriage agreements with digital video providers, guaranteeing that the channel will be available to consumers when it launches in August 2019. The deals mark an important first step that comes as critics question the network’s viability in such a volatile media marketplace. ESPN would not identify the providers who agreed to a deal, saying it is with providers whose carriage deals run beyond 2019.
The sports media giant is on the defensive about a declining subscriber base, layoffs and executive changes. What happened? And what’s the plan for the future?
