Ombudsman's Final Column Encourages ESPN To Cut Back On Excess
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Schreiber Encourages ESPN
Personalities To Tone It Down |
In her final contribution as ESPN Ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber set out to "leave one last message to ESPN from the fans" and "find the taproot of discontent from which the whole blooming variety of complaints emerge" against the net. Schreiber: "When I cast my mind back over two years of mail, searching for that taproot, the first word that came to mind was 'arrogance.'" The solution for this "would be as simple as ESPN asking the loudest and most self-smitten of its many personalities to tone it down." Schreiber: "I'm convinced that measure alone would cut the ombudsman's mail in half, but I'm not convinced it would be the solution to what ails ESPN's fans most deeply. ... Excess is not the word my correspondents used most frequently, but it is the root of all the 'too much' mail I received." When a sports media outlet "repeatedly turns fans off some of sports' most talented players, both established and emerging, something is wrong." Yet the message from fans Schreiber has "found hardest to impress on ESPN's executives and talent is this: The predictable day-after-day dominance on ESPN of certain marquee teams and players is making a lot of fans both heartsick and cynical."
CUT THE OVER-COVERAGE: Schreiber noted ESPN resists that message because it sees "strong counter-evidence in what matters most: event telecast ratings." Schreiber: "I can't argue with that reality, and the fact is, most fans don't argue with it, either." But fans object to "announcers or analysts or anchors who place grossly disproportionate emphasis on one superstar's performance." Fans "don't object to ratings-driven decisions about what games to telecast, but they do object when that selection dominates other kinds of programming, in the form of excessive advance promotion or postgame hoopla" on "SportsCenter." ESPN's postgame attitude "seems to be: We have the footage and the crew there live, so why not make the most of it, whether or not the game warranted it?" Over-coverage of the "favored few teams and players not only kills joy through its sheer tedium, it is also the root of fan grievances about bias, about cross-promotion, and about corporate conflict of interest." Schreiber: "I suspect the perceived arrogance of particular ESPN personalities would become a small-potatoes complaint if it were not magnified in fans' minds by the consequences of other forms of excess." Schreiber added, "So what's the one last message I want to leave ESPN? I guess it would have to be: Don't be so predictable. Subtext: Stop trying to make the publicity-rich ever richer. Spread the wealth around before fans turn on ESPN the way investors have turned on bankers" (ESPN.com, 3/16).
FOND FAREWELL: AWFUL ANNOUNCING's Brian Powell wrote, "I don't think anyone has ever 'gotten' the state of those frustrated with ESPN more than Schreiber, and ESPN would certainly benefit from keeping her on in some capacity. A new view, and new person in the role, is what makes the position of Ombudsman work. But if someone takes the job as seriously, and provides an unbiased view you can't get from the inside, they definitely deserve to be listened to." ESPN has "improved over the past year immensely," and "hopefully some of that was due to the extremely good work put in by" Schreiber (AWFULANNOUNCING.com, 3/16). In Dallas, Barry Horn writes, "She was a good as it gets in her 24-column stint" (DALLASNEWS.com, 3/17). SPORTS MEDIA JOURNAL wrote ESPN "has yet to announce a successor for Schreiber. Let’s hope he or she builds upon the work Schreiber was able to on behalf of the fans of ESPN" (SPORTSMEDIAJOURNAL.com, 3/16).
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