ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV | Hacker News Reader

ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV

bloomberg.com

35 pointsvirtualwhys69 comments

This article has an interesting point buried deep down in the middle of it (that really isn't the point of the article), in that all of the new-ish things, like Sling or Vue or YouTube TV or otherwise look suspiciously like cable packages on the Internet. And that's something I can't quite get over.

I've used Sling in the past, it can be a good bridge if you've cut the cable and want to hop back in because you miss it, but besides the delivery mechanism — I can bring my own device and it streams over the Internet — I don't see that much of a differentiator from cable. With either package of Sling, I'm still getting a bunch of channels I have no interest in, and while the price may be less per month than cable, it still _feels_ like 70% of the money I'm paying is going towards channels I have absolutely no interest in. Not to mention all the commercials I have to watch with it, not just in live viewings (because that's part of the stream, I get that), but even in on-demand things.

I ask this honestly: is there something I'm missing here? People that I know that haven't cut cable because they would miss this or that laud these products as "the thing that may finally get them to cut cable," but this feels like cable just over streaming.

> 70% of the money I'm paying is going towards channels I have absolutely no interest in

Why does that bother people so much? The incremental cost of delivering you a new channel is zero, so it makes sense to just deliver all of them. Where is the wasted money that's implied by a statement like this? If the average person watches 3 channels, and provider has a choice: charge $30 per channel and let everyone pick only the ones they want, or just charge $90 and let everyone watch whatever they want. I'd rather not be forced to choose the few channels that I'm locked into.

I was in the cable industry for 30 years and ESPN was (at the time) about $6 of a $60 cable TV package. It was the largest fee for produced content. Other channels had to pay to be included in the line-up just so they could subsist on advertising revenue.

I'm not suggesting whether ESPN is or is not worth that kind of premium but it's also not surprising to me that they're suffering this type of subscriber loss. More importantly, ESPN subscribers are CATV (or satellite, etc) subscribers which means these companies are also hemoraging subscribers.

In the case of CATV companies, the equipment and cable plant are huge expenses and these companies usually build out more plant financed on the assumption that there will be large cash flow. The cost of the plant isn't going down even if there are no television subscribers. I'd expect to see the cost of unbundled Internet services from these companies gradually approach the price of their "double-play" offerings (TV + Internet).

I'd argue that the idea got into my head because that's how it's being marketed upon purchase. For Sling at least, "$25 gets you all of these channels, or $35-ish gets you these, or just do $40 for EVERYTHING!" The marketing pitches value based upon quantity first, quality second.

I guess I _was_ just hoping that the coming revolution was something like a "pay per channel" thing, where channels set what they believe is a fair value to charge monthly and I can decide a la cart which ones I want. I get that the cost per channel would be higher, but with the ability to pick and choose, with no obligation into buying into the bigger picture, I feel like there's at least be more pressure for the networks to produce quality content. I know that's probably small-town thinking, but it's a hope.

The numbers in this article of "ESPN subscribers" is not equal to "people that watch ESPN," and I get why switching to a "only selling to people who are genuinely interested" model is absolutely terrifying — because the numbers inflate when subsidized across the entire subscription populace. That's the insurance model, and I don't see cable/Sling as entertainment insurance.

Not sayin' you're wrong, I'm just saying I wish there was another option that wasn't buying shows on iTunes if I just want one channel's programming.

At least in the past 12 months, the proposition with Sling has basically been Disney +ESPN or all the other channels.

Because the majority of people -- particularly a technically oriented crowd like we have here on Hacker News -- are seeing the bulk of their costs going toward channels we never watch. Like ESPN. The amount cable providers pay ESPN per viewer is ridiculously high compared to other channels. And for folks who never watch this stuff, we get a bit annoyed that that's what is causing our skyrocketing cable bills.

However you may think money is earmarked, the proper comparison is to the alternative world where channels are priced a la carte. And the standard econ analysis here is that everyone benefits from these bundles, not just the cable company and not just consumers of popular channels like ESPN. It's all about marginal costs.

http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-a...

The theory is that most of the cost of your cable package is going back to the networks. So from a technology side the incremental cost to add channels is zero but from the business side the cable operator still has to pay for each additional channel they put on their service. If they put fewer channels in the package they sell you then they could sell you the package for less money.

It bothers people because cable packages are so expensive. If they were cheaper no one would complain.

Sure but there's no incentive for anyone to make them cheaper. The cable operators make more by creating more expensive packages and then can justify it by putting a bunch of channels in them. The networks make more by forcing the operators to take small/niche channels if they want the popular channels. And since cable networks are not perfect substitutes, you can't just disrupt the industry by carrying a bunch of channels no one cares about. Also, because the channels have a fair bit of power in the relationship, they can structure their contracts with the operators in way that it's not economically viable for the operators to unbundle.

>The cable operators make more by creating more expensive packages and then can justify it by putting a bunch of channels in them.

But they won't make more money if they keep driving more people off.

Where are you going to go? All the OTT providers are similar, it's just fewer channels for less money. No one has an incentive to sell you individual channels and the channels don't have an incentive to sign contract with someone who would sell you individual channels (because they can just do that themselves for $10/mo). Remember that a cable operator can't just decide to start carrying a channel, they have to sign a contract, so a channel can ensure that they can always under cut someone who's selling unbundled channels and still make a healthy profit.

If you're interested in more than a couple channels then it's going to be cheaper to get a package through someone like Playstation VUE or Sling. You're paying anywhere from $20-$75 for one of those services and once you put it on top of your monthly internet how much are you really even saving vs. a Double Play from a cable provider?

Amen. I won't complain about all of the stuff on Netflix that I ain't gonna watch, when it is so cheap anyway.

Because nobody likes to pay for something they don't want? No, incremental cost is not zero, or there'd be infinite channels.

I said incremental cost of _delivery_.

The selling point of Vue for me is the constant $35/month price. I can get a better deal from the cable company, but I'd have to renegotiate every year. The reduction of cognitive load here is freeing.

I don't think of it as "I'm paying for x channels I don't watch," I think of it as "I'm paying $35 for these channels that I do watch, and I'm happy to pay that."

You need to not look at the cost as cost-per-channel or cost-per-show, but in terms of value to you.

If you are paying $15 or $50 or $200 per month for TV, do you feel you getting adequate value? Are you getting the shows you want to watch?

An interesting thing about nearly all subscription services (cable, YouTube Red, Netflix, Sling, etc) is because they are fixed cost they have a built-in volume discount: the more you watch, the less you pay per hour.

So if you pay $100/mo for all your services, and watch a total of 2 hours a month, that costs you $50/hr. If you watch 6 hours a day, it costs you about $0.55/hr.

Let's say you're paying $185/mo for cable, and $15/mo for Netflix, but watch them evenly (3 hours a day each). Now cable is costing $2.03/hr and Netflix costs $0.16/hr. Are you getting value for the time? Are the shows you're watching on cable really worth paying 12 times more (plus being forced to watch commercials) than the ones you're watching on Netflix?

Your original point was about paying for stuff you didn't watch, but when you think of it in terms of value per hour, if you are watching 6 hours of content you want to watch, you are paying $0.55/hr. It doesn't matter if you get 6 channels or 600, the cost per hour of content is the same to you.

It's a different question you have to ask yourself if the service adds 200 channels (that you don't watch) and ups the cost so now it costs you $0.65/hr to watch the exact same content you were watching before: are you still getting adequate value for that price? If so, continue paying.

I think it may just be a mental thing. I have PS Vue and I got it initially because it let me change from month to month as well as cancel for certain months without any hassle. Ironically the reason we get it is so my wife can subscribe to ESPN during the months that big tennis tournaments happen. Then we just drop it after. I wouldn't dare attempt that with Comcast 4 times a year.

That makes sense, and as the article points out, that's sort of the gambit that HBO's run. (And it's worth mentioning, is how we consume HBO. Let the shows have their run, and then binge all the shows in 1-2 months per year for $30/year instead of $180.)

I guess my pitch isn't even abolishing cable packaging all together. If people like it and want it, then let them do it. But there's a lot of room between a cable subscription and wanting one or two channels. If ESPN makes $6/mo off subscriptions, and I don't have cable but want ESPN, $6/mo becomes a lot more enticing than $25-40/mo.

Again, it's sort of how HBO works. You can get it with your cable or get it on its own. And I'm sure it's a contract thing, but at this point it just feels like more money than what they're already getting; that they may find they gain more subscribers in the transition than they lose, or at least find more eyeballs that are actually watching versus those inflated subscription numbers from "people that have cable with ESPN attached" numbers.

I have Vue and I really like it. It's nice to use on the PS4 and even the Windows browser client is good.

But I pay just about the same for it as I paid for a cable package...so at the end of the day I'm not sure what the victory is other than not having to use a set top box designed in the aughts.

Tivo Bolt people. It's awesome.

Well there's instant subscription and unsubscription. If you just want to keep your subscription for a couple months while your favorite show or sports season is on, no problem. Try that with cable.

Even if you keep it on all the time it's (for now) cheaper than cable.

Exactly. As a premier league fan living in US, sling for watching nbc sports is the best option for me. But they force a "package" for $25 per month and I actually don't watch any of the other channels.

The reason for this is that it is not the service providers that decide the packages, but the companies owning the channels.

I tried to cut my cable, but the best I could do was cutting back to local channels with 10x Internet speeds.

Comcast has you by the balls

I may be in the minority here, but one aspect of TV that I'd miss if did end up 'cutting the cable' would be the communal sense I get from watching TV. It's a bit hard to articulate, but when I watch TV I know that other people are watching exactly what I'm watching on that channel at that time. It's sort of like the feeling you get when you look at the Sun or Moon and know that people hundreds or thousands of miles from you are looking at the exact same thing. Or perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be watching a movie in a theater. Being there in the theater with other people is part of the experience and adds to it.

Netflix and streaming services don't really offer this because while other people may have watched what you're currently watching, your viewing experiences aren't synced up. You can watch whatever you want when you want and so the chances that you're watching the same thing at the same time, synced with others, is very small. Though freedom of choice is the major strength of streaming services and I love them for it, you lose that vague connection of sharing a singlular experience - watching that show, at that time - with thousands of others.

Maybe if Netflix were to implement a feature that indicated how many people were watching a show or movie at any given time it'd restore the communal aspect.

You're the first person I've seen describe this, but I feel exactly the same way about listening to the radio. I can listen to my own music collection, but there isn't the vague sense of community and 'life'. So even though I don't hear as many favorite songs, I still prefer radio. Internet radio is half way in between.

I still get this feeling for some shows, like House of cards and Stranger things for example. Most people (that are commenting online, or talking about it at work anyway) are binge watching in the first week or two, so you know quite a few people are watching at the same time as you, even if its not exactly in sync.

I think a great feature addition would be a planned watch party so you can invite friends and all start an episode at the same time

Youtube is experimenting with an app that allows users to watch videos together and interact in real time. So you can invite a friend to watch and it will start playing for both of you at the same time. https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/03/google-experiments-...

how twitter/periscope hasn't figured this out already is beyond me.

I've been thinking about this too. Maybe more of a twitch.tv style delivery scheme? When they streamed all of Bob Ross' stuff, that was hugely popular.

So maybe stream it at a time/schedule announced ahead of time, and then give the ability to view any of the previously streamed content. Seems like most of the best of both worlds.

This is a good point. I could almost imagine a live social site where you could "watch X with friends" like a meetup and chat on a side channel. Of course you could do this wholly out of band but NF could certainly be involved.

I have seen this with... erm... less-than-legal streaming setups, it would be great of somebody figured out how to do it legitimately.

With Youtube it would actually be pretty simple because you can embed an iFrame for the video and manipulate the timestamp, but with other streaming sites I imagine it would be harder.

I do watch stuff on Twitch with friends, for example the League of Legends LCS games.

Sling, Direct TV and Sony Vue? all are live channels. There are also On Demand (YouTube TV will have Live and unlimited DVR) and they cost $25 to $35 to start with. I say give it a go and try it for 7 days.

Those are all like 20-30 seconds behind live for some reason. When you watching something while following along on say, Twitter, you're going to get spoilers.

I encounter it while watching hockey constantly.

It sounds like they are still intent on riding cable into the ground, as they are "planning to roll out a Netflix-like interface for a section of the ESPN app that’s limited to cable customers." Seriously? Wouldn't it make sense to just offer an OTT service at a pricepoint slightly higher than what cable providers give them per sub? If they cannot get enough subscribers at that pricepoint, then why not offer pricing per event?

I'm a cord cutter. I follow a single NFL team. They are on MNF maybe once a year. I'd pay $25 or so to watch that game (legally) at home rather than go to a bar or deal with a flaky illegal stream. They're leaving my money on the table.

They most likely have a contractual obligation with cable companies to only serve their content to subscribers. Probably a catch 22 of "We can't afford to renegotiate with cable companies right now, but we can't innovate on our current model without marketing to cord cutters".

ESPN (and many other media companies) are stuck and most likely in revenue-maintenance mode.

This exactly. ESPN was forced to sign such exclusive contracts in order to get the content. They are not permitted to sell the content any other way (like to individuals). It's a terrible contract they cannot get out of. If Disney pushed ESPN out on its own, that entity might be might be able to renegotiate. Of course the NFL for example could always sell the content to some other sucker then. Sports content is a nasty business.

My wife and I just cut the cable, and it feels great. Even adding HBO Now and Turner/Criterion to Netflix and Hulu Prime, we save a ton of money, and no commercials.

Not being subjected to network news like MSNBC, Fox, and CNN is another fine bonus.

Paying for ESPN on cable, and never watching it was a nudge to cut the cable.

It's been about a year for me, and it's blissful. I tried to watch some Channel 4 UK on demand, and even that small amount of advertising had my teeth on edge. It's amazing how quickly you stop calmly glazing over for the high octane mindlessness you find in advertising; the tolerance just vanishes. The music grates, the acting is more obviously terrible, and messages more obviously manipulative... when you're not constantly immersed in them.

I also find that I watch less, because I'm actively finding anything I want to watch, rather than passively channel surfing or just "seeing what's on".

Indeed. Having "cut the cord" for 10 years now, I find commercials extremely grating: loud, frantic, and stupid. My watching has plummeted to almost nothing, precisely because when I _do_ watch it's very deliberate, knowing what I'll see and how long it will take - contrasted with a flippant/reflexive "see what's on" and settling for whatever drivel vaguely catches attention.

I honestly don't see how anyone can spend the average 40 hours a week "watching TV" now. My time is so crammed full of things having priority over "sit and watch" - because I'm evaluating the content & time before I watch, and comparing it to the value of what else needs doing. I'll get in a few hours a month of video, usually movies because I perceive a need to "be done with it" rather than having more to see and little time to see it.

We cut the cord late last year and I can say we feel the same way about commercials. They seem so forced. From the acting to the music to the stale jokes. I must say though, sometime I miss being able to just turn the TV on without actively searching for something.

It'd be great if Channel 4 let you pay a subscription to go ad-free. I think ITV does, but I have no interest in their programming (unlike Channel 4, which would be worth it in my opinion).

I agree completely, and anecdotally it's the ad-free option that finally got me on Hulu.

Between Netflix, HBO, YouTube, and iTunes rentals I feel my Apple TV solves all my entertainment needs. Sports however, and in particular live sports, is a different matter altogether. I'd love to have easy pay-per-view access, as easy as iTunes rentals, to various sports events (think the Olympics, world cup of X, that sort of thing) and for some select sports a season pass (huge NHL fan here – go Rangers!)

Alas, there's nothing like that. :o(

I have to either get some weird NHL package, which only gets me out-of-market games since those other games are exclusive to whatever local channel may have bought the rights, and since you have different broadcasters to things like the Olympics depending on where you live, and which year it is, you don't know where to go for those either.

Surprisingly, smaller sports franchises that haven't sold off all their media rights typically do this much better. Handball for instance is pretty easy to get a live stream of, because they're so starved for attention that they put it out there just to get people to watch the thing in the first place.

In short, I would love a Netflix for sports that would also do live streams. Viasat in Europe comes close, but their subscriber deals are expensive, they don't have all the rights, and their apps are terrible.

> I'd love to have easy pay-per-view access, as easy as iTunes rentals, to various sports events (think the Olympics, world cup of X, that sort of thing) and for some select sports a season pass (huge NHL fan here – go Rangers!)

There's no legal way to get live access to sporting events, since those are held by TV channels that have a vested interest in you buying back into a bundle (especially for the Rangers -- their ownership structure includes the TV channel that airs their games).

However, you can get delayed games. The out-of-market package puts up replays 48h after the game broadcast finishes, and various online shops have a curated selection of games each year[0].

Basically, the whole situation is a toxic mess that's built on a crumbling foundation. Teams are owned by cable operators that retain the exclusive live broadcasts for their sports networks (or sell the rights at a premium to national channels), and have no incentive to step outside the bundle. It's a bubble, through-and-through.

[0] e.g.: https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/nhl-games-of-the-year-...

> Basically, the whole situation is a toxic mess that's built on a crumbling foundation.

Yes, exactly. I'd love there to be an iTunes/Netflix for sports, but understand why there isn't.

I've gotten by with some shady tricks, like buying access to NHL on the playstation because they don't geoblock access like they do on NHL.com or on the iOS apps, and only use whatever country a user listed as their origin. I've still paid for the access, and I'm happy to pay for it, but it's literally a situation of me not being able to access these things the way you probably should, simply for reasons. I always try to find a way to pay for access, and usually Viasat will have what I'm looking for. When all else fails I go for some shady live stream from Russia or something. It's certainly not ideal.

(I stopped having a proper TV with a tuner about a decade ago, so just getting a cable package isn't an option.)

The MLB added a "follow your team" feature for this year -- for $10/mo extra, you can watch your team through their paid streaming service.

Except it's near-useless, since you need to authenticate through a cable provider.

Getting cable news out of my life was one of the primary reasons I cut the cord. I get my political news almost exclusively form digital print. It's to the point where actually seeing video of Trump is jarring because I'm just so used to reading and seeing stills. I pretty much forget how stupid the man sounds when he talks until I catch a clip on Last Week Tonight.

I find digital print to be worse then Cable news Politics. I don't know where the idea that news is suppose to be a robot and just the facts with no worldview comes from. I prefer to watch the middle of the road news but I also watch FoxNews and MSNBC to keep a perspective on different views.

Seems to me that most people are just interested in an ideology and you only consume that ideology and we now have 2016.

I, personally, found that my views were being influenced by the uniformity of opinions on my network of choice (MSNBC). For example, after watching the first debate I felt that Hillary was getting smashed after watching the post show, I had changed my opinion.

SlingTV with the TCM package has been really nice. Espn is a whole different package, with all the Disney shit

Few weeks ago a very fantastic thing happened in my city, about live sports and so on.

Context: soccer is the main sport, TVs buy the rights to transmit, and pays a big money for the whole season. But the two biggest teams didn't sold their rights, so TV can transmit the whole championship except for those two teams.

When the confront of those two teams was about to happen, commercial controversy arose: the teams didn't accept a one-time-contract to that match because they estimated to receive 3x more from youtube live stream. The league had a say, the tv, the teams... bureaucratic problems prevented the have from happening at the expected day, but it happened a week later.

Live at youtube, enough quality, free, ad sponsored.

League wasn't happy (the championship worths a lot less without those teams, so smaller teams received a smaller share this year). Tv was more or less, as it profits selling pay-per-view or live transmission.

Public was happy. Those who wanted to go to the stadium, went and were happy too. Teams got bigger money and were happier than never.

---------

I cutted cable because I was paying >$100 to watch just 4 or 5 channels. Would they have some kind of subscription, I would surely go for them.

I'm still waiting when cables (or channels companies) will allow me to subscribe for just specific channels.

The article makes a point that if ESPN charged $15 a month for a standalone streaming channel, they'd need 43 million subscriptions to make up for revenue it gets from cable packages.

In the same paragraph it mentions that ESPN pays more than $100 million for the rights to a single Monday Night Football game. What I don't see mentioned is that the price of content should be a function of how many people watch that broadcast. And disregarding the fact that some of these prices are locked in from long-term contracts, if ESPN loses subscribers, fewer people will watch the content and the price broadcasters will bid in the future for that content will go down.

Cord cutters aren't all switching to OTA antennas either, so the usual broadcast networks should be bidding less on the content as well. It seems like an equilibrium will eventually be reached letting ESPN survive with fewer subscribers, which makes the $15 a month standalone streaming channel more feasible. The real loser in all this would be the sports leagues that can no longer command the same price for broadcast rights.

I've cut the cord and subscribe to ESPN through Sling. I'm very happy that ESPN has readily made themselves available on all the different streaming services (PS Vue, Youtube TV, Sling, etc). However, I also pay for Hulu and Netflix. In the end it still comes out to be the same price as cable, but with a more friendly subscription model.

Time Warner tried giving me a free year of basic cable and each month all of the random fees and surcharges were placed on me. Bills weren't predictable. All of a sudden the price would change 1 month and they have every right to do so. So yeah, I'm never trying that experiment again.

In the end, as long as ESPN has games to broadcast, they will no doubt have viewers and subscribers. Aside from that? People unsubscribe to ESPN either because they never wanted it to begin with OR because they honestly lack programming. Football has Sunday Ticket and Basketball has NBA GameTime.

Outside of live sports, IMO Scott Van Pelt is the last great sports commentator on ESPN and everyone else on the show (Stephen A Smith, Skip Bayless) and other people I don't care to remember the name of, sucks. The commentating and the topics they discuss are now more reality TV than it is about sports. Why did Kaepernick kneeling get so much airtime? Are they same demographic of people who watch sports on ESPN the same who would care? I felt like any coverage of that should have been on Bravo or E.

Also Bill Walton's coverage of NCAA Basketball seriously makes me want to shut the damn game off.

The root of ESPN's problem seems to be that what they call 'ESPN subscribers' are actually just 'cable subscribers', because ESPN is bundled with so many cable subscriptions. The actual number of people that want ESPN is some subset of all cable subscribers.

Since the only way to get ESPN right now is to be a cable subscriber, it means two things: everyone that still wants ESPN still has ESPN (because they still have cable), and all of the people unsubscribing no longer want ESPN. Note: To keep this away from pricing issues, I am excluding "cannot afford or do not want to pay the price of cable but still want ESPN" from people that truly "want ESPN".

The true number of ESPN subscribers as a percentage of cable subscribers is likely going up. The cable companies probably know what this number is (feedback from set top boxes), but as far as I know don't share this data.

I would assume their cost to get rights to events seems would be somewhat based on their published subscriber numbers. Since those are the wrong numbers, they are getting hit in two ways: the subsidy from non-ESPN viewers that no longer subscribe to cable is going away, and the cost-per-subscriber of broadcast rights is going up because number of subscribers (according to their broken metric) is going down.

Had they just always charged for ESPN separately (meaning 100% of people who paid for ESPN wanted to pay for ESPN) it seems like neither of these things would be a problem, though, they'd have lower revenue. The market will correct itself eventually, and ESPN will either adapt by cutting their costs or they'll eventually go bankrupt.

ESPN is honestly the single biggest selling point FOR cable. If not for ESPN I'd have cut the cord long ago. Live broadcasts to millions of people at the same time make tremendously more sense in a broadcast model than a TCP connection per viewer model.

It works fine for sporting events that are expected to have fairly low viewership or for content like Netflix which gets preprocessed and pre delivered to closer-to-viewer nodes. If I'm trying to watch Clemson vs Alabama in the national title game and the feed goes out because so many people are trying to watch it at the same time I'm not going to be a happy camper.

That is what multicast was meant to address. Sadly, it did not catch on.

Just get Direct TV or Slingbox you get all that for $30 to $35

Used to have Direct and got tired of the annual price increase drill.

Step 1) Get pestering phone calls to change your package for 3-5 months for FREE to include all of the movie channels

Step 2) Promotion runs out and you want to go back to your old package, but it's now $5 / month more expensive than it used to be

Step 3) Start refusing the free package change calls and watch the calls just keep...on...coming.

Plus, with Direct I can't use my Tivo Bolt...which is giving up a lot because it's so much better than any of their DVR tech.

ESPN is at the dangerous point that Kodak was at some time back - and made the wrong decision about.

When the mass popular switch to digital photography was imminent, Kodak still had enormous sales from film - mostly sold & processed thru retail stores, which relied on the product/service to generate foot traffic (one visit to buy film, one to drop it off for processing, one to pick up prints - with likely tangential purchases while the customer was there). Retailers saw Kodak starting to make noise about switching to digital, which would have (and eventually did) destroyed that very lucrative sales model - so the retailers threatened Kodak with "if you push digital, we'll drop your products" ... so rather than sacrificing the cash cow, Kodak slowed the digital roadmap to >5 years to keep retailers happy, failing to notice that retailers weren't the actual end customer making the actual decision to buy film. Competition emerged from bizarrely non-sequitur competitors, like printer & computer manufacturers Epson & Hewlett-Packard - leaders in markets that had nothing to do with photography. Bottom-end digital camera prices fell to around $100, UI/UX improved, picture-takers discovered that "digital film is free", and the whole market switched from photochemical consumables to digital capital equipment practically overnight.

ESPN and other major specialty content producers are facing the same problem. The bulk of their customers still watch via "cable TV", and cable TV providers are likely threatening to drop the ESPN-type packages entirely if they start providing serious streaming/app alternatives. That's a LOT of revenue to lose fast, so they're avoiding the big push to new media. Unfortunately for them, some other content delivery companies (like Netflix and Amazon) are seeing the potential, and putting big money into producing or negotiating highly desirable alternative content. Remember, there is a new generation coming of age who were raised playing soccer or other engaging sports instead of American football; they're looking for content that's not necessarily NFL etc, they're not so mentally tied to "TV", they want mobile content, and other non-sequitur competitors are making serious progress toward capturing their dollars where ESPN et al are reluctant to go under threat of old-model revenue being abruptly cut off.

If ESPN et al really want to survive the pivot that killed Kodak, they need to call Comcast et al's bluff, pivot into on-demand streaming, and partner with Apple, Amazon, Netflix, etc for future survival, and make an ESPN-branded push for viewers to spend the one-time $50-150 already for a superior & enduring viewing experience. Otherwise, NFL on iTunes and World Soccer on Netflix etc will become not just a thing, but the thing. Kodak doubled down on retail, instead of leaping to the seemingly non-sequitur future, and died. ESPN is doubling down on cable, with no reason to expect a different result.

> Retailers saw Kodak starting to make noise about switching to digital, which would have (and eventually did) destroyed that very lucrative sales model - so the retailers threatened Kodak with "if you push digital, we'll drop your products" ... so rather than sacrificing the cash cow, Kodak slowed the digital roadmap to ....

I don't think that is the right narrative. All those same retailers print out pictures more now then ever. Kodak's digital products were a sub par and their competition (Especially Sony and Nixon) were destroying them in the market.

That was the narrative. That was the perception at the time, and decisions were about a predictable future (even if the prediction was wrong). The retailers may (I'll have to check) be printing more than ever, but customers are walking into the retail store _once_, not three times - and that point alone terrified retailers.

Kodak had excellent imagers in development and high-end production. They knew the imaging technology & business better than anyone. They just didn't pivot (fast!) to making that their core competency. Having literally 5 miles of chemical processing factories clouded the vision required to build highly competitive cameras.

I wonder if any other recent changes by ESPN are compounding their viewship decline.

Black background with white text makes me semi blind for about 5 minutes.

Is it just me, or are the images on the page incredibly broken?

That's sort of what they're going for. It's streaming and the distortion that happens sometimes.

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