MLB Commisioner Rob Manfred said he is confident MLB will "continue to get outstanding coverage on ESPN." His comments come in the wake of layoffs at the network that reached several baseball personalities, including Jayson Stark and Doug Glanville, as well as the planned cutback in frequency for "Baseball Tonight" (Eric Fisher, Staff Writer). In Boston, Chad Finn writes ESPN's baseball coverage "took a significant hit" this week, as the net "slashed at least eight notable baseball personalities." Meanwhile, MLB Network's "Intentional Talk" is "not a strong addition to ESPN’s overall baseball lineup." But the partnership with the league-owned net that was "presumed to be a competitor does help fill the content void." However, Finn notes he has "heard from a couple" ESPN staffers who are "angered by the arrangement with a competitor" (BOSTON GLOBE, 4/28). YAHOO SPORTS' Mike Oz wrote ESPN "decided that 'Baseball Tonight' just isn’t as essential as it used to be," and the show as "we know it is dead." While the brand "will live on," the "nightly show that helped make so many people baseball fans, that’s gone." Oz: "If you’re a baseball fan born in the era of cable but before Twitter, then 'Baseball Tonight' no doubt had some role in the game’s courtship with your heart" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 4/27).
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES: SI.com's Jon Tayler wrote, "That 'Baseball Tonight' has seen its standing wane is no surprise given both the state of things at ESPN and in the world of sports media as a whole." ESPN’s acquisition of additional live sports broadcast rights over the years, as well as the network’s "inexorable shift into increased NFL and NBA coverage, slowly but steadily ate away at the space" that "Baseball Tonight" had. A show that was "always on at least once a night soon found itself appearing spottily on the calendar, sometimes absent for days at a time." The "final nail in the coffin was the creation of the MLB Network and its flagship nightly show" in '09 -- "MLB Tonight." That show "offered everything that 'Baseball Tonight' did but for longer and in more detail." Taylor wrote of the impact of "Baseball Tonight," "I don’t know if I would have become a full-blown baseball fan had it not been for the ease with which I was able to follow the league thanks to 'Baseball Tonight'" (SI.com, 4/27).
ICED OVER? In DC, Dan Steinberg writes he "can't imagine any sport is more rattled" by ESPN's layoffs than hockey. Writers Scott Burnside, Pierre LeBrun and Joe McDonald, all let go, were "so central to ESPN’s relatively small hockey footprint -- the sign that America’s most powerful sports outlet still cared, a signal that marked certain hockey events as Big and Important." AP hockey writer Stephen Whyno said, "It almost doesn’t feel like the playoffs, because those guys aren’t here." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Penguins beat writer Jason Mackey said, "They decimated their hockey coverage by taking some of the most respected voices that we have." Capitals radio announcer John Walton said ESPN "obviously decided that hockey coverage is not a priority." Steinberg write that while nobody believes ESPN is giving up on baseball or college basketball in the wake of certain layoffs, in hockey, these dismissals feel like "more than just a tremor" (WASHINGTON POST, 4/28).
APRIL SADNESS: In Louisville, Rick Bozich wrote ESPN was "built on college basketball." But ESPN.com this week "announced it has as much interest in backgammon and marbles as it does in the game that made sports fans pay serious attention to the network more than three decades ago." The decision to "eliminate at least half of its college basketball Internet lineup has to be viewed as a snapshot into what ESPN.com research and philosophy is about serious college basketball coverage." Bozich: "It doesn't matter" (WDRB.com, 4/27).
