The glory days of the sports media industry may be over.
Over the last few months, the two biggest names in the sports media market, ESPN and Fox, have made substantial cuts to their networks in an effort to cost-effectively reshape their network’s structure.
Way back in April, ESPN cut 100 on air personalities and writers. With the amount of money the network has spent on broadcasting rights to major sports leagues like the NBA, NFL and MLB over the past few years— for reference, ESPN and Turner Sports are paying a combined $2.6 billion a season to broadcast NBA games for the next nine years, roughly $1.3 billion more than over their last contract— the network felt the need to cut costs in other areas. The network also wants to add an influx of video to their arsenal.
Fox Sports has taken that last part to an extreme.
According to a report by Bloomberg, the network eliminated their entire writing staff in late June to “invest in more-lucrative video production.”
“We will be shifting our resources and business model away from written content and instead focus on our fans’ growing appetite for premium video across all platforms,” said Jamie Horowitz, who was the president of Fox Sports National Network at the time, in a statement.
The company has been shifting their M.O. over the past few months to be all about the almighty dollar. They cut their highlight show “Fox Sports Live” back in February and have since added opinion based shows such as “Undisputed with Skip and Shannon,” “The Herd” and “Speak for Yourself,” which they hope will draw more viewership.
And as for their writers, Horowitz “enlisting veteran reporters to ghost-write or compose “as told to” content during Super Bowl week for talking heads like Colin Cowherd and Skip Bayless,” according to Awful Announcing.
Their new strategy for the website is to increase promotion of those shows by posting clips of them on their site, as well as various social media platforms in hopes that one may go viral. Even with the mega salaries sports talk stars like Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd are making, these shows based on opinion much cheaper than a show like ESPN’s Sportscenter, where they have reporters from around the country on location.
All of this is very dangerous.
Obviously, the technological landscape is completely different than it was 15, 10 and even five years ago. Even still, these major networks with deep pockets cutting actual reporters and writers just to keep a couple dudes yelling into a microphone about how they are always right is just a bad look for the industry.
On the other side of the coin, it’s extremely disheartening as a college student going to school for journalism to see writers just being disposed of.
Take Ken Rosenthal, for instance. Rosenthal still does some spots for FoxSports.com but his writing career on that site was cut short in June with his peers. Rosenthal for years has been respected as one of— if not the— best baseball writer and reporter in the business. Rosenthal, 54, was writing and posting articles on his Facebook until he was just recently hired by The Athletic, which is a new subscription based headquarters of sports journalism for die hard fans.
But the point remains; how is a student fresh out of college supposed to compete with legendary writer of Rosenthal’s caliber?
Oddly enough, a lot of people within the industry are optimistic about new opportunities for the next wave of sports journalists. They just need to be well versed.
“I was a little worried at first, especially with the way the ESPN cuts hit. It definitely worried me. But after the initial shock wave of the cuts, I’m no longer worried,” said Brian Nestel, a Cabrini University alumnus who now works for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. “But there will still be jobs in sports. People will just find a different way to consume it. It’s just that those in sports must be willing to have multiple skill sets and they have to be able to adapt to changes in the industry.”
Nestle said, “If you want to work in sports media, you better be able to shoot video, edit video and audio, interview, know various software programs and be a master at social media. No longer can you just be good at one of those things, you have to be an expert at all of those things. If students learn those skill sets now, they’ll be successful in sports media and will always have a job.”
Nestel isn’t the only one to think like this.
“I don’t think as many jobs are going away as we think, or as I hope,” said Timothy Taggerty, a journalism major at Marquette who currently interns for ESPN Milwakee. As far as writers and talent go, you need to definitely be able to do more than write to survive now.”
“A Swiss-army knife is better than just a regular knife.”
