The "ruining" of NBC Sports Philadelphia is a story of "corporate shortsightedness, missed opportunity, and a fundamental misunderstanding of Philadelphia sports fans," according to Mike Sielski of the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. Once, the net was "poised to become, by a wide margin, the dominant sports-media entity in the Philadelphia area." It "could have owned the market." It is to its leaders' and decision-makers' "shame that it doesn't, and that its falloff has been so steep." Last Wednesday's news of as many as 15 employees being laid off was "part of a larger trend" at the net, "and little of that change, if any, has been for the better." From its debut in '97, then-CSN Philadelphia was the "best kind of product." But once Comcast acquired NBCUniversal in '11, the net "immediately began to drift from the philosophies that made it so successful." Sielski: "Somewhere along the way, someone forgot how much sports matters here -- and how much speaking honestly, even critically, about sports matters here." The channel allowed its content to "veer into unrepentant and excruciating homerism and cheerleading." NBC wanted its RSNs to be "more homogeneous, to be as similar in their programming as possible regardless of the tradition and collective disposition of each city" (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 8/8).
