Vogan Podcast: ESPN Turns 45

For the 138th episode of the Journalism History podcast, Author Travis Vogan discusses the complicated legacy and precarious future of the all-sports cable network that turned the NFL Draft and NCAA men’s basketball tournament into television spectacles.

Transcript

Travis Vogan (00:02): It has this history that suggests that it is this worldwide leader in sports. It’s the most identifiable brand in sports media. But that could only take it so far.

Nick Hirshon (00:14): Welcome to Journalism History, a podcast that rips out the pages of your history books to re-examine the stories you thought you knew, and the ones you were never told.

Teri Finneman (00:24): I’m Teri Finneman, and I research media coverage of women in politics.

Ken Ward (00:29): And I’m Ken Ward, and I research the journalism history of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.

Nick Hirshon (00:34): And I’m Nick Hirshon, and I research the history of New York sports.

And together, we are professional media historians guiding you through our own drafts of history. This episode is sponsored by Taylor & Francis, the publisher of our academic journal, Journalism History. Transcripts of the show are available online at journalism-history.org/podcast.

(00:58):

The first national sports network flickered onto TV screens 45 years ago with the self-assurance of Muhammad Ali. “If you’re a fan, if you’re a fan, what you’ll see in the next minutes, hours, and days that follow may convince you you’ve gone to sports heaven.” That was a lot of bravado for an experiment. Upon its launch in 1979, ESPN still had to build credibility with cable providers, advertisers, and a target audience of young men with disposable incomes. It started by airing the scraps that major broadcast networks didn’t want: tractor pulls, drag racing, and lacrosse. Then it made media spectacles out of mundane events: the annual inductions into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the NFL Draft, and March Madness.

Eventually, ESPN built financial relationships that allowed it to televise live games and tap into the national appetite for sports. But those entanglements also complicated its efforts to aggressively cover the leagues whose games it had a contractual obligation to promote.

On this episode of the Journalism History podcast, we dive into the complicated legacy and precarious future of the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports, from its SportsCentury documentaries to ESPN The Magazine, with Travis Vogan, a professor at the University of Iowa.

Travis, thanks so much for joining me today to celebrate the 45th anniversary of ESPN with this discussion about your book, ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire. And your book explains, in your words, the network’s place in and impact on sports media and popular culture.

(02:44):

ESPN launched on September 7, 1979. I’d like to have some context here because some of our younger listeners may not understand the significance of the introduction of all-sports TV cable network in today’s media landscape with so many regional sports networks, sports radio stations, sports podcasts, social media accounts. So, some context there about the media landscape in which ESPN was conceived. How much of a risk were the founders taking by launching this network?

Travis Vogan (03:13): Yeah, at the time, this wasn’t too terribly long after cable television became something that normal everyday folks could access. So, prior to that, you have what we call the network era, where, you know, your typical household with a television is gonna have five, maybe six channels, the major networks maybe a local independent channel, etc., PBS, and, and that was it, right? And so, folks who were producing content during that era really had to try to target the widest possible audience, and that’s partly what, you know, broadcasting stands for.

Um, and with cable, you suddenly go from having five to seven channels to having, you know, maybe up to a hundred. And we get into this era that we call narrowcasting, where programmers and content producers are able to focus on niche audiences. And so, the possibility for a network that’s just focusing on, for instance, women, right, or music fans or sports became somewhat viable. But at the time, 1979, this was still kind of a radical idea, and it was a significant risk for the folks who created it. And in fact, it was even riskier than it might seem because, initially, the idea was to focus on Connecticut-area sports, which even now seems a little bit farfetched maybe.

Um, but they wound up purchasing space on a satellite that had the capacity to transmit through North America, and so that sort of set in motion the creation of a national sports network, which ESPN became, but this was the kind of thing that was not sort of a slam dunk in terms of getting investors together and so forth. And it was a significant risk for the folks who were involved.

And the fact that it was targeted mostly at adult men made it a little bit more attractive to advertisers because that’s a demographic that’s traditionally or notoriously challenging to reach, and a demographic that traditionally has, you know, significant buying power. So that element made it attractive as a kind of gambit, but it was by no means a kind of sure thing. And it definitely had no idea that it was gonna become the kind of cultural force that it did become within, you know, 10 years or so.

Nick Hirshon (06:10): And speaking about those target demographics, your book opens kind of comically at one point talking about how ESPN was concerned that people might start naming it in lawsuits where women might be upset that their husbands are so addicted to watching ESPN nonstop, they’re no longer talking as much, and that actually came to fruition where a woman actually named ESPN. So, we saw how there was truly an appetite for this. So, what were some of the key moments in the early history of ESPN that made it into such a force? Because it could have really gone off the rails early. It could have just been one of those other failed experiments in sports media. So, what kind of turned the tide for them?

Travis Vogan (06:51): Well, as far as content goes, they were able to create certain events that didn’t necessarily exist before and that there wasn’t necessarily an appetite for. And a big one of those was the NFL Draft. The NFL Draft at the time, you know, draft occurs, but it was basically a business meeting with all of the different franchises, owners, and general managers. They kind of got together in a conference room and sort of hashed it out.

It wasn’t a kind of ceremony and entertainment kind of focus, spectacle that it is now where you have everybody dressing up and the sort of, you know, the pomp and circumstance of people coming up to the dais and, and giving the commissioner a high five and a hug and holding the jersey up. It was nothing like that. It was basically just, you know, folks were talking to the commissioner and the league officials and saying, “Okay. It’s our pick. We’ll take this person from Alabama,” and then the next team is up and they’re like, “Okay. We’ll take this person from Notre Dame,” or whatever.

(07:55):

And, and ESPN decided that it could try to turn this into something that was, you know, suitable for television. And so, they started airing the draft. And the NFL at the time, they weren’t selling the rights to it, and so it seemed like (laughs) they really had little to lose by contracting with ESPN to televise the draft.

And that became something that people were interested in and it, and it sort of embodies a lot of what ESPN was doing with the kind of year-round sports, because all of a sudden, you know, football is something that we’re thinking about in May, right, and not just thinking about between the months of, whatever it is, August and, and February or, or September and February. And, and that’s partly what ESPN was trying to do is create appetite for these kinds of sports stories year-round, right? And obviously, the leagues and the—who are their clients had a lot to gain from this, too, right, keeping people engaged. And that’s partly what, you know, the NFL had been really invested in that for a long time with their own subsidiary, NFL Films.

So, we have the NFL Draft. And another big sort of moment early on was the first rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which we now know as March Madness. And those first two days now are some of the most popular days of sports viewing in the United States, right? They’re highly anticipated. There’s programming surrounding them. They also have their own little programming, Selection Sunday, surrounding the seeding of the tournaments, but before that, those games weren’t necessarily televised. They’d be televised locally, you know, for, you know, the teams that were competing, but they weren’t nationally televised. And so, ESPN started televising those games and kind of helping to set the foundation for what is now one of the most, you know, highly anticipated annual sporting events that we have.

(10:08):

And one of the reasons that they did this is because early on, with March Madness and the NFL Draft, is because early on in their history, they didn’t have the money or the prestige or credibility to just go to the NFL and say, “Hey, we’d like to broadcast games on Sunday,” right? Even if they had the money, the NFL at that time probably would have said or definitely would’ve said “no,” because, first of all, not everybody had cable, and so their advertisers weren’t going to be able to reach their maximum audience. And secondly, ESPN didn’t really have the credibility or the gravitas at that time to gain the trust of an organization like the NFL or Major League Baseball or, or something like that.

And so, it had to kind of create these, these new sorts of events that weren’t necessarily popular before, and those were two of the big ones, and, and then gradually as ESPN started to accumulate, you know, more credibility, it started to get better content, partners, and eventually was able to work its way up to where it was able to broadcast some of the more marquee events.

And the, one of the jokes about ESPN early on and is that, you know, it was doing like tractor pulls and drag racing and lacrosse, and all of these sort of minor sports that the networks weren’t really that interested in, right? And so it could get the rights to these sports and showcase them, but it wasn’t showing, you know, the NFL, the NBA, college basketball, college football, Major League Baseball, etc., but a way to connect to some of those marquee sports was by creating events surrounding them at a material that hadn’t necessarily been broadcast in the past like the draft and the early rounds of March Madness.

Nick Hirshon (12:00): I feel like this connects to a theme that comes up in your book about that. ESPN definitely does solid sports journalism, but at the same time, as you’re describing, is involved in creating a media spectacle around an event like the NFL Draft, and that can be an uncomfortable concept for a journalist to consider and say we’re actually involved in building anticipation and excitement around an event. Is that really the role that sports journalists should play as opposed to we’re just supposed to be in the background and, you know, this ideal, maybe unrealistic idea of a journalist being totally objective, but it seems like ESPN was growing along with some of these leagues in this concept of March Madness and the NFL Draft and all that. So, in those early years, was there any conflict between some of these longtime sports journalists who may have been in a more traditional kind of a mindset of we cover things but we kind of let them present themselves as they are versus like this excitement institutionally about growing the brand and so we want to make this into a big event so we attract a bigger audience?

Travis Vogan (13:09): Yeah, that’s crucial. You know, ESPN has always been as much, if not more, a promotional vehicle than a journalistic vehicle. And the company line is that they have their journalistic operations separated from their entertainment operations, right? So, the folks who are doing a show like an Outside the Lines or something like that aren’t going to be impacted at all by the tangible financial arrangements that ESPN has with, for instance, Major League Baseball or, or college football or something like that, that’s their sort of line on that conflict of interest.

(13:56):

Realistically, it’s hard to believe that a partner or a client as powerful as, for instance, the NFL or as powerful as Major League Baseball would be comfortable allowing ESPN to step over certain kinds of journalistic boundaries. It’s really tough and, you know, things get pretty murky in there and it’s tough to kind of tell sometimes when promotion ends and journalistic coverage begins. Um, but I think that to consider ESPN’s journalism as something that is unaffected by the clients that it has, uh, would be kind of a naïve reading of how ESPN works.

And one of the—this is one of the things about sports journalism in general, not all sports journalism, but a lot of sports journalism is very closely related to promotion, you know. One of the things that sports journalism does is it helps to build interest in scheduled events. Not all sports journalism, but a lot of like the kind of traditional beat reporting and whatnot is very much wrapped up in the promotion of sporting spectacles and anybody who’s been involved in journalism knows that access is, is sort of – is not guaranteed, right? And it happens at different levels depending on how highly an organization thinks of the person who’s covering them or the entity that they represent or the relationship that they’ve had. And, of course, this happens with individual players, too.

(15:41):

You know, if you burn a player in a game report or in a column or something like that, you know, that player might still talk to you, but they might not necessarily give you any more time than they have to. And journalists keep that in mind when they decide on whether to include this detail or that detail, and that’s something that’s generalizable to all sports journalism.

And I think when your organization, whether it’s ESPN or even a newspaper or a magazine or something like that has an established financial relationship with the organization you’re covering, that makes it even more complicated and even murkier. I think, yeah, anyway, so to say, (laughs) to say that the journalism in ESPN is, is completely impartial, idealized, sort of objective journalism would be to – would mean to ignore an awful lot about the sort of financial and economic and institutional realities surrounding how ESPN operates with relation to sports.

Nick Hirshon (16:49): And any new media enterprise, of course, is especially reliant on these kinds of relationships and, uh, making sure that it’s building that audience. So, as we go through ESPN’s history, I know we’re gonna be jumping forward here a few decades, but in 1998, you mark that in your book as a very significant moment for ESPN ’cause this year they famously or infamously, depending on how you look at it, nicknamed themselves “the worldwide leader in sports,” and you say the network became, quote, “increasingly diversified and persistently self-aggrandizing.” So I’d like to look at a few ways that ESPN branched out into different platforms and different types of programming around the dawn of the new millennium. SportsCentury came out around this time, a series of documentary profiles that were counting down the top 40 North American athletes of the 20^th century. So, can you describe how did SportsCenturychange ESPN and sports media at large?

Travis Vogan (17:46): This was happening around the, the turn of the century, right? And a lot of folks were doing these sort of lists like the best of, you know, the top one hundred things of the century, whether it was music or, or, uh, you know, uh, political figures or whatever. And ESPN decided that as part of its kind of mission to assert its brand identity as this so-called worldwide leader, it would be uh, beneficial to suggest it’s an authority on what matters in sports and in sports history.

And so, SportsCentury was this effort to kind of organize the history of sport through a framework that was defined by ESPN. And one of the interesting things about SportsCentury, it was this series of documentaries. They’re actually pretty interesting documentaries, pretty straightforward, biographical, linear kinds of documentaries about, you know, folks like, like Hank Aaron, Billy Jean King, and, and so on. Um, but one of the things that ESPN does throughout this process is it, you know, has its own talent as interviewees and it uses ESPN footage as some of the historical footage.

(19:02):

And so, throughout this entire process, it’s, you know, inserting its own brand into this history that it’s constructing and it’s suggesting that this history would not be possible without ESPN, this worldwide leader. And so, while it’s doing this whole thing where it’s creating this, you know, history of sports in the 20th century and I don’t think its list was particularly different from any other list. In fact, it was a pretty generic kind of exercise. Um, there weren’t many surprises. It was like, you know, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. It’s like big, big shocker there.

Um, but what it was doing a little bit more in a more clever way was it was really inserting ESPN into that story, right, as being this thing that facilitates sport history and this thing that without which sports history would not exist, or would not exist in the way that it does. And so, it was kind of this exercise in branding.

(20:02):

It was also this way to try to, you know, reach out to new audiences. One of the things about documentary programming is that it’s traditionally reputed as like a little more sophisticated, a little more learned, a little slower paced than your typical sports television, right? Um, and so it was reaching out to that more PBS-style, HBO-style audience and trying to kind of establish some market share within the context of documentary.

Another thing that’s interesting about documentary programming in sports television is that when you’re broadcasting a game, you can slice it up and distribute it through highlights afterwards and play ’em on SportsCenter, but it’s basically the game footage is more or less valueless after the game goes. You might, there’s a possibility you might use a piece of it for a documentary later on or something like that or a year-end recap, but that’s it, you know. And they’re very expensive, too. That’s the most expensive thing that ESPN pays for is rights to live games. But with documentaries, you know, you own that content, so you could schedule it whenever, right? And ESPN has twenty-four hours a day that it needs to have stuff on the television and at this point it had, you know, additional channels as well, ESPN2 and ESPN News.

And so, there were what we call like evergreen programming that can go whenever. And ESPN Classic, which is basically, entirely consisted for a while of SportsCentury stuff and then afterwards, 30 for 30 material. So, it’s kind of cost effective as well, but the big thing was kind of branding ESPN as this authority in sports.

Nick Hirshon (21:55): And also, it seems like ESPN was then trying to differentiate itself between other sports brands that were maybe geared more towards older audiences. You explain in the book that ESPN was rattled by the collaboration between Sports Illustrated and CNN on the sports news cable TV channel CNNSI in 1996. So, besides SportsCentury in 1998, ESPN also launched ESPN The Magazine, which it marketed as a youthful contrast to Sports Illustrated. And at the same time, ESPN.com launched a website with what you called culturally aware opinion and analysis that included the up-and-coming blogger Bill Simmons, who would be a big part of sports media culture for years and still is. So, how did the creation of ESPN The Magazine and some of the features on ESPN.com appeal to youth and cement ESPN as this sports leader?

Travis Vogan (22:46): Yeah, it’s kind of funny thinking back on it that they were trying to appeal to a younger group of folks through starting a magazine. It seems kind of quaint now. But what they were doing is they were really trying to kind of capture a younger audience, and they were mimicking Rolling Stone, in particular, and through the sizing of ESPN The Magazine and through the frequency with which it was published. And they were trying to kind of do a sports equivalent to something like Rolling Stone and really trying to make it sort of youthful, right?

And they were differentiating themselves in this sense from Sports Illustrated, which they kind of implicitly were framing as kind of like your dad’s sports magazine, right? And this is the one for the younger people and so forth. And then of course with ESPN.com, you know, that was sort of primitive for a while, but what they were trying to do was also reach out to these more youthful kinds of demographics.

(23:57):

They also had—but at the same time, they were reaching out to very specific readerships as well. They had Hunter S. Thompson reporting—or not reporting but writing for ESPN.com. David Halberstam did a lot of work for them and Ralph Wiley. So, they hired some really respected and interesting people to work for ESPN.com. They also would publish some of their stuff in the magazine as well to really try to cast this wide net. So, it wasn’t just about younger folks. It was about really trying to expand that brand in multiple directions so from everybody from, you know, folks who like the gonzo journalism style of Hunter S. Thompson to people who were interested in David Halberstam who’s, you know, a very kind of traditional and respected journalist.

And then in the midst of a lot of this, you have somebody like Bill Simmons emerge, who was kind of positioned as the kind of a fan-type correspondent. He was sort of the everyman writing about things from an intentionally biased perspective, from the perspective of kind of a normal guy watching sports and enjoying sports and having, being open about his fandom and so forth. And that really was kind of a crucial moment in how ESPN adjusted to kind of internet discourse, which is quite different from the style of like a Halberstam. It has a lot more in common with how Bill Simmons was writing at the time.

Nick Hirshon (25:40): Yeah, it’s an interesting mix of people, like you say, when you have Hunter S. Thompson and David Halberstam writing in the same publication or on the same site as Bill Simmons. ESPN also has a lot of critics, as you’ve kind of alluded to, in some of its coverage and the conflicts that it produces. And towards the end of your book, you mentioned an incident in 2013 when ESPN had partnered with the PBS documentary series Frontline to produce a documentary on the NFL’s failure to protect its players from concussions, health risks, and expose the league’s efforts to discredit research that discovered links between concussions and brain damage.

But even though this looked to be a partnership that would solidify ESPN’s reputation for serious journalism, shortly before the documentary was set to premiere in fall of 2013, ESPN removed its brand from the documentary. And critics said, “ESPN must’ve fallen to pressure from the NFL.” So, it seems that that series, which was titled League of Denial, represented a conflict at ESPN between, as you put in the book, cultural ambition and institutional priority. So, how does that reflect that era, as we get into the new millennium, of ESPN still grappling even though it is now in a much stronger position to kind of take some of this stance and maybe not risk as much of losing some of its audience but is still tied to these contracts with major sports brands like the NFL, and that’s affecting its editorial decisions?

Travis Vogan (27:14): Yeah. I mean, I think it just shows that ESPN is still, for as much as it does and, and for as interesting as a lot of the material it produces is, that it’s still kind of beholden to its clients. And there’s no client that’s more powerful to ESPN than the NFL, which is the most popular sport in the United States. And so, just like any other kind of business that runs, if you have a client that you’re especially reliant on and that’s especially important to your business, you know, you want to try to keep them happy.

And in a business sense, that makes total – that checks out and that’s not something that I think people are going to really question. But when you’re a business that says that you’re also producing reliable journalism on this partner, that makes some of those claims a little bit more difficult to believe, right? Should we really trust that this organization is going to be able to ask the difficult questions or search for these interesting elements that might be obscured or hidden by this very powerful institution when it’s reliant on that same institution for, you know, its revenues? It’s a tough – it’s a tough pill to swallow.

Um, the folks who were producing League of Denial, they were ESPN reporters. And it does, you know, they continued with the project and so forth and they were very involved. They wrote a book on it. So, they did have the ability to kind of follow through with that project. But at the same time, the fact that ESPN distanced itself from this, and it was a good documentary, it did really well, it was critically acclaimed you know, it was produced by, in part by PBS Frontline, a very well-respected entity. It wasn’t just a fly-by-night kind of thing. Makes a thinking person wonder, you know.

And, and it wasn’t the first time that ESPN had kind of come into a little bit of a conflict with the NFL. There was actually this fictional scripted series called Playmakers that ESPN produced earlier on about a fictional professional football organization that was very clearly based on the NFL that it was ridden by scandals of all types, right, from performance-enhancing drugs to domestic abuse to you-name-it. And it was promoting Playmakers during broadcast of what was Sunday Night Football at the time. ESPN had Sunday Night Football. And the NFL basically told them to stop.

And so, they stopped and they canceled the show after the first season even though the show did pretty well. It’s actually a very—it’s sort of a forgotten, a little footnote in the history of sports media. But Playmakers is a totally fascinating show that I would recommend people take a look at, and folks who are teaching classes on sports media, it’s a really good teaching tool, too. So I’d highly recommend folks check that out. It’s revealing if you haven’t seen it.

Nick Hirshon (30:37): Yeah, I feel like your book has so many of these moments in sports media history that were snapshots in time that now are – may have unfortunately gotten forgotten in this cacophony of all the other media that we’re inundated with all the time, but with the miracle of the internet and streaming services and all of that, we’re able to access them. Um, so that’s wonderful. So, as we kind of catch up to modern times, you know, your book came out in 2015 and there’s been nearly a decade since then. So, I’m wondering some of the developments that have happened in ESPN’s history and just in culture at large. Uh, so one of the things that struck me, your book begins with a quote from Bill Rasmussen, the co-founder of ESPN, saying, quote, “We believe that the appetite for sports in this country is insatiable,” end quote.

I wonder if you think that still holds true. Obviously, we see ginormous audiences for sports, but we’re also seeing fragmentation of audiences and a lot of cord-cutters. And, uh, we’re seeing the proliferation of streaming services that are taking over. Um, so do you still think that there’s that insatiable appetite that remains, that keeps ESPN, for example, as strong as it was when I was growing up, when SportsCenter was the only place where you could really get sports highlights? So, you were watching it every night to make sure you caught up on the day’s news as opposed to today there’s a million Instagram and Twitter-slash-X accounts and other sorts of things that have this kind of content constantly. So, how has that landscape changed since your book came out?

Travis Vogan (32:15): You know, I think Rasmussen’s statement is still more or less valid, but I don’t think there’s an insatiable hunger for sports television, if that makes sense. I think people are still consuming sports as ravenously as they can, and I don’t think there’s any short—there’s no shortage of content. There’s more sports out, content out there than there ever has been, and it just seems to be increasing. Um, but they’re not necessarily watching kind of linear television coverage of sports.

And, you know, you are — people still watch games, it seems like, but not in the same way. You know, a lot of folks, you’ll be watching it on your phone through some kind of league-oriented app, or you’ll be watching bits and pieces of it as it goes, or you’re kind of following it through some kind of betting app. Um, and so I think ESPN has had a real challenge to kind of stay relevant. And I think that its live game coverage is still doing pretty well, you know. It’s still doing reasonably well. But all the stuff surrounding it is the stuff that seems to be struggling.

Sometimes it seems like, at least it seems to me sometimes, that Stephen A. Smith is like the only person (laughs) who works there. I feel like he’s on the television so much for ESPN and on social media and he’s their biggest star right now. And you know, I think that says something about where ESPN’s at. I think Stephen A. Smith is really good at what he does, but they have basically, they’re kind of clinging to this known property, a pundit, you know, somebody who’s a provocateur and so forth.

(34:08):

And the other stuff that used to be really helpful in driving viewership isn’t nearly as effective anymore. SportsCenter, not really something that people seem to care about that much anymore. It’s kind of irrelevant, and not to say that it’s not a good show, I think it’s a fine show, but, like you said, you know, we get that information immediately after it happens, and there’s no real sense in waiting. And they’ve kind of tried to revamp it as more of like a talk show, sort of like a, you know, a kind of Tonight Show sort of model sort of programming. And it hasn’t really worked that well.

Um, but you do get some of these programs like the punditry programs that seem to have people watching, but the thing about those punditry programs, it’s interesting, is that I think people are mostly just watching kind of the most salacious clips, you know, and they’re kind of mining those programs for the best quips that Stephen A. Smith might have and then migrating those things either to ESPN.com or to Instagram or whatever, and that’s, I think, how most people are watching him, not necessarily watching on ESPN and then of course seeing all the advertising that people are buying to put on ESPN.

And so that’s how, that has ESPN really scrambling and they recently unveiled this new betting application that they’re – have been working on. And so that’s an effort to really try to stay relevant. Their involvement with fantasy sports and so forth you know, are kind of where they seem to be turning now. But yeah, they’re not in nearly the kind of (laughs) place that they were 20 years ago, let alone five years ago.

Nick Hirshon (36:02): Yeah, definitely a different landscape. Um, and ESPN also now, I think what you’re describing, the punditry moves them away from some of the claims of journalistic integrity and a solid reporting vehicle. There are still some very good journalists who work at ESPN, but there is fewer of them and maybe not as much highlighted as they had been in previous iterations.

So, ESPN, you know, again, as we’re wrapping up here, has experienced a lot of change and 2018 marked the debut of the subscription streaming service ESPN+, which allows cord-cutters to now access live sports and all these other ESPN documentaries. ESPN has faced a lot of criticism for putting so much money into contracts for a lot of personalities like you were just talking about with Stephen A. Smith and promoting those folks, whether it be Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, the Manning brothers, Peyton and Eli. And last year, they announced they would reduce seven thousand jobs either through not filling positions or layoffs.

Um, meanwhile, they shook up their NBA coverage. They dismissed popular broadcasters Mark Jackson, a former NBA player, and Jeff Van Gundy, former coach of the New York Knicks. They also let go of Suzy Kolber and Steve Young. Sage Steele, the longtime SportsCenter anchor, left last summer in order to, in her words, “exercise my First Amendment rights more freely.” So, they’re losing a lot of the traditional journalists or popular broadcasters that audiences have come to enjoy. Uh, I wonder what you think about—I know there’s a lot of different names I just threw out there, but in general, the kind of changes when they’re reducing staff by that much, when a lot of those journalists that folks might remember from the powerhouse ESPN of the ’90s and early 2000s, when they’re retiring, leaving for other positions, getting laid off, how does that affect the history, as you see it, as it’s still unfolding, of ESPN?

Travis Vogan (38:02): Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it shows that, well, one, ESPN is, you know, I think for a long time it was kind of relying on the fact that it was ESPN, right, which I think did a lot for it. It has that brand and it has this history that suggests that it is this worldwide leader in sports. It’s the most identifiable brand in sports media. But that could only take it so far. And at a certain point, as you’re alluding to, you know, either they couldn’t, didn’t want to pay for contracts for these big, celebrity-type broadcasters who weren’t necessarily moving the needle for them, or they decided they needed to move in another direction, or as you see with somebody like Sage Steele, we also saw this with Jemele Hill they’re trying to exert an uncomfortable amount of control over people who they ostensibly hired to give, you know, their opinions on sport, right?

And so, Jemele Hill calls out Trump on Twitter and winds up getting, you know, suspended from ESPN, and then that sort of cascades and, and winds leaving. And you know, that’s the kind of thing that I think says something about how ESPN’s place kind of in popular culture has sort of shifted, you know. I think that they’re a little bit concerned right now, and they’re in a sort of more precarious spot than they have been. And so, they’ve really kind of winnowed things down. And then the fact that they’re, a lot of the folks who they’re eliminating or who they’ve laid [off] or not renewed their contracts are some of the folks who were producing the more interesting kinds of journalism also says something too, you know, where they’re kind of heading in terms of their priorities.

It’s not (laughs) and this shouldn’t be a real surprise, but it’s not, you know, investing in journalism. That’s for sure, and in fact, it’s going more in the other direction, right, and becoming even more of a promotional kind of adjunct to its main content providers whether it’s through increasing its engagement with the NFL or partnering with gambling services to create its own kind of in-house gambling service or, or so forth.

Nick Hirshon (40:38): And historians often say we usually have to wait at least a few decades to see how all of this will turn out and how it will be perceived in the public and a lot of these folks who right now may be reluctant to talk about ESPN ’cause they’re still working there or have colleagues who are working there, maybe they’ll start opening up in the years to come and they’ll leave some of their materials to archives, and we’ll get a lot more context about what’s happening.

Travis Vogan (41:05): I would love that, yeah. (laughs)

Nick Hirshon (41:06): I mean, I think that often happens eventually, but it takes some time, so we unfortunately have to be patient for that to all transpire. Um, as we finish today’s episode, I want to pose to you a question that we ask all our guests on the podcast: Why does journalism history matter? And you can answer this in the context of journalism history of ESPN, although we’ve talked about it’s somewhat of a promotional and not truly journalistic. Um, but why do you think journalism history matters?

Travis Vogan (41:36): Well, I mean, I think that it’s incredibly crucial for not just for journalism students, but for any informed citizen, you know, of our country or even of the world. We have this idea that we live in a democracy where differences of opinions are fostered and encouraged, and we see constantly over the course of our history folks trying to quash that kind of free discourse, folks trying to limit that sort of discourse, trying to punish people who are speaking out, and journalism has played, you know, an important role in trying to preserve this sort of democratic society and the free exchange of ideas. But it’s also played an interesting role in kind of partnering with some of those entities that are trying to quash it as well.

(42:29):

And so, I think if you pay attention to journalism, you’re able to, over time, you’re able to kind of trace the process and pitfalls of the democratic experience in a really interesting way. And I don’t think there’s any better way to—I’m obviously biased—to study, you know, American society than to pay attention to journalism and all the transformations that it’s gone through over the years, whether they’re political, whether they’re technological, whether they’re cultural, etc. It’s invaluable, I think.

Nick Hirshon (43:05): And I think particularly in sports, ’cause as someone who studies sports journalism myself, and you mentioned this in the book, the idea that sports journalism is often considered the sandbox, it’s not taken as seriously, and even viewed as low culture, unsophisticated. So that’s why at times people are maybe reluctant to even study it so much or, uh, but I think it’s very important because it is a great reflection of how our culture changes. It is impossible to ignore the impact of ratings for sports programs and the crowds that still attend live events. So anybody who kind of mocks that and says, “Oh, we should study something of higher culture,” you know, I think we should do all of that, but I think sports has been very important to keep in mind.

(43:50):

So, the book again, we’ve been talking about, is ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire, published in 2015 by the University of Illinois Press. The author we’ve been speaking to is Travis Vogan. So, thanks again, Travis, for joining us on the Journalism History podcast.

Travis Vogan (44:04): Appreciate it. Thank you.

Nick Hirshon (44:06): Thanks for tuning in, and additional thanks to our sponsor, Taylor & Francis. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast. You can also follow us on Twitter at @JHistoryJournal. Until next time, I’m your host, Nick Hirshon, signing off with the words of Edward R. Murrow: Good night, and good luck.