Oh, Lord.
I quit watching ESPN because I quit subscribing to cable. But I started to “go off” ESPN in the 80s because it evolved into sizzle. The network seemed to be more about the hosts than the news.
Then…with the internet…ESPN became completely pointless except as a delivery of live sports programming. I don’t really care about the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. And that seems to be about 10% of ESPN’s programming. Then there’s all the other teams and sports. You watch ESPN for four hours, you might get one or two minutes of coverage of your favorite team, and due to the internet, you already know it anyway.
I think ESPN has just been eclipsed by The Rams Huddle, basically. Seriously. Nobody here relies on ESPN for sports news. We go to ESPN once in a while to check in on what the National Perception is of the Rams, but they never tell us anything we don’t already know, and often they’re wrong, or incomplete. So what use does ESPN have?
ESPN prospered when the only competition was the 6-minute sports segment on the local news. Compared to that, ESPN was great. Once the internet became widespread, ESPN became too general and too bloated in comparison.