ESPN’s commitment to liberal politics is killing the network.
The “Worldwide Leader In Sports” has made it a point to bring in a younger, more liberal base, and the results have not been good.
Now ESPN just got another ratings snapshot, and the results should have people at the network deeply concerned.
The mainstream media has skewed left for decades. Conservatives have known this and have constantly called out the blatant bias, but their calls have largely only been heard by fellow conservatives.
However, more people on the left and in the middle are slowly waking up to the plight of slanted news — or flat-out fake new — that permeates through the mainstream media.
One of the main purveyors of biased news is ESPN, a major subsidiary of Disney.
Sports fans as a whole tend to lean slightly to the right because the core principles of sports are rooted in conservative values of hard work, personal responsibility, order, and delayed gratification.
But ESPN has chosen to cut against the grain and report sports from a liberal position. The network purged a spate of conservative voices including Curt Schilling, Mike Ditka, and Britt McHenry.
Meanwhile, progressive voices like Jemele Hill were propped up and protected despite porous ratings and inane social media rants.
Not only did Hill call the Trump a “white supremacist,” she also foolishly told people to boycott several companies that do business with her employer.
Hill remained at the company and only received a slap on the wrist for her economic stupidity.
Former ombudsman Jim Brady detailed the liberal bias that became so pervasive, some employees were afraid to have Fox News playing in the break room.
ESPN responded to the constructive criticism by eliminating the ombudsman role altogether.
Perhaps ESPN’s huge shift to the left began when the network’s annual ESPY awards fêted Caitlyn Jenner with an award for courage despite not having competed athletically in decades (as Bruce Jenner).
The naked transgender propaganda sent ESPN off to the races, and the network continues to lose viewers.
The latest example is the most recent ESPY awards, which were a ratings failure.
Per Variety:
“Airing from 8-11 PM, the ESPYs drew a 0.9 rating in adults 18-49 and 3.9 million viewers. Compared to the 1.4 and 5.3 million viewers the 2017 awards show pulled in, this year’s show was down approximately 36% in the key demo and 26% in total viewers. This also marks the heaviest drop off year-to-year going back two years.”
The evening was highlighted by Danica Patrick’s monologue that included cringeworthy jokes about the anti-American anthem protests and Trump-Russia collusion.
Patrick joked that Stanley Cup-winning Washington Capital Alex Ovechkin was the happiest Russian she’d seen since Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki press conference.
This is the type of cheap activism that passes for journalism and comedy today, and ESPN has brought it to the sports realm.
The network has committed to several liberal-based opinion shows that have all fallen flat. The primetime SportsCenter hosted by Hill and fellow progressive Michael Smith was a ratings loser; the duo was recently replaced by Sage Steele, one of the few remaining conservatives at ESPN, and Kevin Negandhi and the ratings rebounded.
ESPN has also sunk millions into the foundering morning show “Get Up!” which has turned into a money pit.
Unless the network reverses course as it did with replacing Hill and Smith, ESPN will continue to lose valuable viewers in a changing cable landscape.