With a hat-tip to Deadspin, there was a fascinating article on SportsBusiness Journal regarding ESPN and the way ESPN is seen by it’s partners and competitors in the sports world.

While the article itself is quite long, it’s well worth it if you have an interest in sports media. Being from that profession, I have a never-ending interest in sports media, and thousands of opinions about ESPN.com.

The gist of the article is that ESPN is seen by competitors as failing at improving ratings, while blurring the line between sports events, news and promotion. Leagues are upset when their corporate partner (ESPN) says bad things about them in a news segment or The Magazine, and they complain that the quality of game broadcasts is not at the level of network television or even TNT.

ESPN responds by saying that they offer so much more than a singular three-hour window of live broadcast that they can’t be measured in ratings, nor judged on only production value. The Multi-Platform Strategy that includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine, Spaceballs the Coloring Book, ESPNU, and ESPN Radio offers so much exposure to it’s partners that a single game broadcast is not a good way to judge the network or it’s successes and failures.

Like I said, the article is long (well over 5000 words), but full of details and interesting bits of information. If you’ve got the time and the interest, it’s well worth the time.

As for my own opinions of ESPN, I have a lot of them. On a personal level, I always hated covering games that ESPN was broadcasting because they always showed up and acted like they owned the place, displacing regular local media in the process. I’ve never had any issues with their talent per se, but the logistics of covering a game ESPN was at made things more difficult. I never disliked anyone personally, and I always understood why this was happening, but it was annoying nonetheless.

As a reader and viewer of ESPN’s mediums, I will say it’s got it’s goods and bads. Here’s my brief lists.

Good People: Scott Van Pelt, Bill Simmons (minus Boston and/or NBA columns), Dan Rafael, Buster Olney, Jayson Stark, John Clayton, John Buccigross, Rece Davis, Le Anne Schreiber, Mike Tirico

Bad People: Chris Berman, Joe Morgan, Mike Patrick, Mel Kiper, Joe Morgan, Chris Berman, Joe Morgan, Mike & Mike (the Arena Football salesmen and former great radio hosts), is Stephen A. Smith still there?, Stuart Scott

Sidenote – I worked with Mike Golic when I first started in radio in Phoenix and he was always good people. I have nothing against any of these people, I just dislike their characters, so to speak. Except Joe Morgan. He’s actually a stupid man and I dislike him for many reasons.

Good Programming: Friday Night Fights, Outside the Lines, live college sports, SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, that NFL breakdown show (used to be Edge something), World’s Strongest Man, SportsCentury, Ringside

Bad Programming: PTI (worst boxing coverage on television), Around the Horn, live professional sports, NFL Prime Time, the NBA studio show, World Series of Poker (compared to other poker programming on TV), anything with catchphrases that aren’t coming from Scott Van Pelt

I’m indifferent towards Jim Rome is Burning and pretty much everything else, as far as programming is concerned. I have no problem with fishing all morning on Saturdays, spelling bees, arm wrestling, or old-school wrestling. Where my biggest problem with ESPN comes in is the shameless self-promotion.

Generally speaking, I appreciate all that ESPN has to offer. I am a daily user of ESPN.com, as I believe it is the best sports news site on the web. ESPN employs great writers. They have great writers on the website, and nearly all of their reporters are former writers. Their anchors come from television stations and their reporters come from newspapers.

Guys like Pedro Gomez were recruited from doing beats for professional teams, and turned into television reporters. That’s why some of them see a bit awkward in front of the camera to start, but their information is quite good. Pedro is another one I used to work with and have nothing but respect for.

What it all comes down to is the way that ESPN presents itself. Feeling the need to throw “ESPN’s Buster Olney reports that…”, when what he is reporting is not exclusive news. Or even worse “The New York Times reports and ESPN’s John Clayton confirms that…” when it’s somebody else’s story. ESPN is getting better at this, but generally speaking, they are awful at giving other media outlets credit for stories. This bothered me as a reporter, as there would be news that broke in Phoenix, and was being reported by multiple outlets there, that would come across the crawl on ESPN as “ESPN’s so-and-so is reporting…” No other news outlet in the world (I’d bet) strokes itself quite like ESPN does.

As a follow-up to the story in SportsBusiness Journal, I’d recommend reading the latest piece by ESPN’s ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber. Schreiber’s job is to be the public’s representative to ESPN, and to objectively examine the network. Her latest piece is about the improvements made in recent months to SportsCenter, and the changes being made at ESPN.

When it comes to sports media, there is no doubt that ESPN is in fact the Worldwide Leader. But there is also no doubt that they are losing some hardcore sports fans. Their ratings may not reflect it because sports fans don’t really have any other options in most cases, but there is a growing dislike for the family of networks.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is that no one brings you sports at the level that ESPN does. Having said that, they could do it much better than they do, and possibly more importantly, they could do it with better choice of people. Lose the catchphrases, lost the endless self-promotion, and give the fans sports. The fans will appreciate it much, much more.

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