ESPN suspends Grantland

[fpliii]

Sad to hear. Hoping GOAT Lowe continues in the same capacity for ESPN, or joins up elsewhere ASAP.

[fpliii]

ESPN has been looking to sell the idea of Grantland even when Simmons was an employee, now that he's gone the price of the site has been dropping (a.k.a. they're losing money). Simmons leaving really devalued the site.



Bill Simmons was the heart and soul of Grantland, and with him leaving and finding common ground on a network with more freedom (in HBO) he's gonna attract followers to join him. HBO has already snagged a bunch of editors from Grantland already, others are leaving for careers in with other companies.

In ESPN's eyes, the only valuable assets Grantland has are the Jalen & Jacoby podcast (which has made its way to a live ESPN Radio slot) and Zach Lowe columns/podcasts. Neither of those products need a site of their own, both can be transferred to ESPN's main website and not miss a beat.

I'm not as big an NFL fan as I was a few years ago, but Barnwell is pretty good too. They also have some guy who did a few oral histories (80s Rockets, 90s Magic, Kings-Lakers series, possibly others in forgetting)

[Fallen Angel]

Two week old article on Grantland's coming demise.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/...ntland-problem

You guys would have known this if you logged on Twitter on Oct. 16 and you would have seen Grantland trending in America. It was made sense back then that the site will be closing its doors soon.

[SwishSquared]

Jalen is under contract with ESPN.

I think only through this NBA season. Or maybe 1 year after that.

He was on the SI Media pod (pretty good listen btw) and the host brought it up. He hinted, somewhat, at maybe being able to work with Bill in the future.

Lowe, I would think, will surely get an offer to write for ESPN NBA but I'm sure he feels spurned.

Again, it's not surprising it shut down, but maybe the staff shouldn't have to find out via Twitter. They did that to Simmons (unclassy imo) but the employees didn't deserve that.

[Foster5k]

The bottom line is that the average sports fan doesn't even know what Grantland is. Grantland caters to a niche of sports fans that want more insight into the game, their team, favorite player, etc. Majority of sports fans just want to watch the game, drink beer, cheer when their team scores and boo when their team loses. Occasionally, they will like to know why their team lost, and then listen to maybe 5-10mins of ESPN talking heads trying to explain, to the layman, why their favorite team failed to win the game. Then, they can go off to work and bark about what they heard from so and so analyst and act like they have a clue to what's really going on in professional sports.

Bill Simmons is a good sports writer. I liked his podcast, books, articles, etc. However, he isn't great enough to warrant some huge contract that he wanted. ESPN didn't lose ratings because Bill Simmons is gone. Also, HBO suddenly didn't gain a bunch of ratings because they acquired Bill Simmons. Simmons is good but not great enough to shift ratings to a point where his services justify a huge payday.

Lowe is also good but he falls into that Simmons category. ESPN will do fine without both for the reasons stated above. In a time where people's attention spans are super short, Grantland, no matter how great the content, was falling on deaf ears. That's the bottom line.

[Fallen Angel]

Speaking of Twitter, Grantland is trending right now.

https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/stat...63657460875265

[SwishSquared]

ESPN has been looking to sell the idea of Grantland even when Simmons was an employee, now that he's gone the price of the site has been dropping (a.k.a. they're losing money). Simmons leaving really devalued the site.



Bill Simmons was the heart and soul of Grantland, and with him leaving and finding common ground on a network with more freedom (in HBO) he's gonna attract followers to join him. HBO has already snagged a bunch of editors from Grantland already, others are leaving for careers in with other companies.

In ESPN's eyes, the only valuable assets Grantland has are the Jalen & Jacoby podcast (which has made its way to a live ESPN Radio slot) and Zach Lowe columns/podcasts. Neither of those products need a site of their own, both can be transferred to ESPN's main website and not miss a beat.

That's bad corporate development though that Simmons was able, within 10 pods, to be establish an annual pace that would be within ~85% of Grantland's revenues. He has no ads he can sell on a site and only 1 podcast right now. ESPN has the personnel to help lands advertisers on podcasts and websites. Internet ad prices are perpetually decreasing, but that seems like there's more blame to go around for poor financial performance.

I get that Simmons provided a ton of the value for a site like Grantland, but he had an awesome staff creating high quality content that could have been monetized.

I'm not trying to stick up for Simmons b/c he did plenty of things wrong and acted arrogantly. I think ESPN really has botched a smooth transition of letting people go.

Sidenote- they lost like 3M subscribers last year. They'll be reeling if people can stream most games over the internet in the future w/o them.

[TonyMontana]

ESPN is honestly so ****ing bad. You got to remember it's owned by Disney too, which explains why their so concerend with their "Goody" image.

you can see why they got rid of Bill Simmons. Not that he would curse, or get out of control, but you can see that he would make some "adult" style comments.

local sportstalk radio stations do this too. ESPN is just TOO "goody". Can never have humor. i cant believe peepole still go to them with the options we have today.

[Fallen Angel]

Thinking back, I wonder if there was anything that could have hinted to this situation when Bill Simmons was suspended back when he made comments on the NFL back in like 2014.

[Foster5k]

Sidenote- they lost like 3M subscribers last year.

Don't know the exact figures, but that had little to anything to do with Bill Simmons. People aren't just going to subscribe to something they basically can get for free on the net.

[SwishSquared]

Don't know the exact figures, but that had little to anything to do with Bill Simmons. People aren't just going to subscribe to something they basically can get for free on the net.

That had almost nothing to do with Simmons. ESPN losing cable/satellite subscribers is a huge loss to their top and bottom line, though, which is critical to their business.

They spend billions on TV rights and if people keep cutting the cord, then ESPN has a smaller base from which to broadcast content.

There's an exodus of high-paid talent from ESPN because they're cutting costs and only focusing on money-making programs. That makes sense for the masses but can alienate those small groups that tune-in to their employees who make better content.

[Heavincent]

Wonder where Zach Lowe will end up.

[aj1987]

ESPN is a shit show. Having to layoff, what was it like 4 percent of their staff? Their tv shows are more TMZ than actual news. Their supposed actual "news" shows, like SC and OTL, constantly use false information... **** off ESPN.

I hope in my lifetime I see their fall.

ESPN is a $50B+ company and the casuals LOVE their pathetic excuses for 'articles'. I doubt it ever happens.

Grantland was the bomb though. **** ESPN.

[AnaheimLakers24]

Shit was garbage along with espn as a whole.

[outbreak]

When is Bill making his own site? I heard he took a bunch of grantland writers with him when he left.

grantland was the only decent thing ESPN do