Author James Andrew Miller today joined Richard Deitsch’s “SI Media Podcast,” where they discussed all things ESPN. Deitsch noted ESPN is “currently embarking on significant layoffs with the emphasis being on those in front of the camera,” and the budget cuts "will be in the tens of millions.” Miller: “For many, many years, ESPN was this place that was just about unbridled growth and expansion and expansion and ... if you think back to a couple of years ago when 300 people were laid off, that was such a disruption to the culture, not only to the people that left, but to their colleagues, and it was kind of an earthquake and a significant one at that. What it did was it showed everyone within the entire ESPN ecosystem that the rules were changing -- that they were no longer on terra firma like they used to be and it wasn’t just about more, more, more, more.” Miller said the pending layoffs are in “some ways not as difficult, because this is on-air. ... These on-air people, though, are going to be missed.” With reports of 40-50 on-air people possibly being let go, Miller said, “There’s a lot of uncertainty about who’s it going to be and why.” Miller: “If you’re an agent and you’re negotiating for some of this talent, how aggressive can you really be, knowing the fact that they’re looking for names?” Deitsch noted ESPN is “open to people renegotiating current contracts to bring down what they believe were inflated salary contracts that were made a couple of years ago when things were going really well, but that’s very hard for talent to do." Miller said renegotiating a contract “might save you,” but in terms of going to other networks, “there’s not a lot of money out there.”
UNKNOWN FUTURE: Miller: “This is a time of tremendous experimentation at ESPN, there are not a lot of known certainties. The only certainty is that (Disney) has said, ‘Stop spending money like a drunken sailor. We need to figure this out, we’re losing households and by the way, you better start saving up for 2020 when some of these rights come up.'" Deitsch said if there is a “winner in the latest universe," it is CAA, which has "figured out a way, even with cost cutting, to cut some deals" for ESPN talent like Stephen A. Smith, Michael Smith, Jemele Hill and Mike Greenberg. Miller said CAA has "done a very good job representing their clients,” but there are “some places though that have not figured out how ESPN makes its decisions, money-wise, and when you try to play hardball with ESPN, if you really don’t have the goods and if you really don’t understand what’s motivating them and what kind of leeway you have, they’ll turn on you, and that happened a couple of times.”
WHAT ABOUT BOB? Miller said Disney extending the contract of Chair & CEO Bob Iger is “comforting in the sense that if you’re ESPN, you have somebody who's running the parent company who understands what you’re doing, understands the history of your company and understands the financial challenges.” But Miller noted ESPN is "never going to get the multiples they got before with cable fees,” and Iger is a “planning guy." Miller added, "There’s always been some concern from (Disney) and other places about (ESPN President) John Skipper’s successor.”
HOOKED ON THE NFL: Miller also noted in the next few years the broadcast rights to several sports properties will be up for renegotiation and said, “Is ESPN going to be able to afford it all, as much as they have now? Maybe not and if that’s the case then you got to do triage, and you start with the fact that the NFL is ESPN’s crack cocaine. They have to get in there, they have to keep the NFL, but at the same time they’re paying way more than anybody else right now and they have the fourth-worst schedule. So how patient are they going to be about that?” Miller noted Skipper moved Samantha Ponder to “Sunday NFL Countdown” to replace Chris Berman because Skipper has been “very, very committed to diversity and to expanding the role of females" (“SI Media Podcast,” SI.com, 3/30).
