Even while suspended, Simmons is still the only person with his face on the ESPN home page at all times.
Weird seeing as he is not even in the conversation as being their biggest star. :dubious:
I gave my wife a book by Bill Simmons for her birthday a couple years ago. Now that’s “reach.” :).
I have no doubt that Greeney’s book has more crossover appeal to women than anything Bill Simmons has ever written.
I’ll grant that he’s their biggest online star. I still think Mike & Mike are bigger unqualified stars, as is Tony Kornheiser and possibly Wilbon. Chris Berman is likely the biggest star of all.
No need for you to grant something that is transparently obvious. Simmons is paid more than Mike and Mike, or the PTI guys, and about the same as Berman and Tirico according to online sources. There are few better judgements of how much an entity values an employee than their salary.
More importantly, Simmons is the centerpiece of their marketing efforts and contributes more than most of their other stars. He has shows, writes books, produces many podcasts including The BS Report (usually in the top 20 podcasts), produces movies that air on ESPN, and has a ESPN backed separate website. Did ESPN give Berman money to start his own venture? Does it fund Wilbon’s latest idea? No, and there is a good reason for that. Neither of them have the fanbase, ability, skill set. or star power to create a successful separate entity.
Why don’t you just admit you were wrong?
Because I watch a fair amount of ESPN and have virtually never heard of the guy. How is that possible if he’s the centerpiece of their marketing efforts? If he’s the superstar you’re saying he is, that would be like watching a bunch of Comedy Central but not really knowing who Jon Stewart is.
This is possibly the most depressing line i have ever read.
mhendo thought he’d beaten his depression, but now it’s back, back, back, back, back…
The whole affair is not the most uplifting: which talking-head-person with nothing resembling sports-related qualifications is the biggest celebrity of talking about sports for the people that run basically all sports-related media?
I think covering sports for 15 or 20 years counts as a qualification. If it doesn’t, that throws out a lot of people at ESPN and elsewhere- some of them useless, others with interesting things to say. I read Grantland all the time, and some of the pieces are too long or too heavy on pop culture-fluff, but many are great.
This is a you problem. ESPN is a much more sprawling entity than Comedy Central, which essentially has one channel (the marketing term, not actual TV channels). ESPN is more analogous to Fox Broadcasting, this is basically you saying you have no idea who Bill O’Reilly is even through you watch a ton of The Simpsons, Louie, It’s Always Sunny and the Star Wars and Alien move franchises and Hulu as rationale for saying O’Reilly is not a key talent. The analogy admittedly breaks down a bit since O’Reilly isn’t nearly as big relatively as Simmons is within Fox and Fox is far less successful in the new media space. But, the point is that you not being a consumer of ESPN’s vast new media efforts isn’t evidence against their strategic importance.
I realize I’m just piling on at this point but, Simmons is as big as they come at ESPN. It’s not about viewership. The MNF guys and the Countdown guys are ultimately replaceable and people aren’t tuning in for Michaels, Berman, TJ or Ditka, they are tuning in for the NFL. With Simmons and Grantland, people are largely coming specifically for him and the talent who work for him. THAT is why he’s the most valuable person ESPN has.
Simmons, if anything, is an important example of a place where ESPN can create value and content out of whole cloth without being beholden to the NFL, NBA and albatross broadcasting agreements. Simmons, Grantland, 30 for 30, and FiveThirtyEight (and to some degree ESPN.com) are strategic plays to eventually differentiate themselves from NBC, FOX and their key competitors and also cushion against the coming shift away from cable TV. ESPN is dominating while all the old print sports outlets like SI, USA Today and Tribune are folding up, ESPN was decades ahead of Fox, NBC and CBS when it came to expanding their 24 hour cable sports channels, and Simmons is the vanguard of their efforts to also outlast the shift away from broadcast TV and further leave them in the dust.
If you don’t think Simmons is insanely valuable, wait until you see how much Fox or Yahoo will pay him if he decides to leave ESPN.
How does what you are paid have to do with who is the biggest star? Biggest star means “most famous.”
So you’re basically advocating for a sports new media world that employs nothing but more KeyShawn Johnsons, Jalen Roses, Shannon Sharpes, Magic Johnsons, Charles Barkleys, Tom Jacksons, Trent Dilfers, Mike Ditkas and Terry Bradshaws? You want Deion Sanders conducting all your hard hitting interviews?
I don’t want to live in your world.
Says who?
Because, as a general principle, media outlets are in the business not of selling entertainment to viewers, but of selling viewers to advertisers.
The more people who watch a particular personality, the more people are watching the advertising associated with that person. This, in turn, makes that person’s shows more attractive to advertisers which, in turn, means that they are willing to pay more to place their advertising. This brings more revenue to the media outlet which is, in turn, willing to pay more to the personality. So, “most famous” will often correlate closely with “best paid.”
The correlation is not always perfect, but you can be sure that an organization like ESPN has a pretty damn good idea of how much each of its on-air employees are worth to the network, and you can be sure that the agents working on behalf of those ESPN employees at contract time also have a pretty good idea.
Don’t worry; you must not.
I agree, mostly. It’s just that they’ll put Wilbon and Simmons on at halftime of an NBA game, for instance, and it’s very hard for me not to just mentally add “as far as I know” to everything either one of them says. They just offer opinions about stuff – which is what columnists & podcast dudes are supposed to do – but at some point they became the analysts. I have a hard time with it. Sports broadcasts that are successful as general-purpose entertainment, it turns out, are pretty awful as sporting events. Even though Dick Vitale became a cartoon character a long time ago, even he always had the foundation that allowed him to point out when a team was doing something really terribly against a press.
You’re right that guys like Zach Lowe and Barnwell are also “just” journalists, but what they do is different because they actually know things. They’re qualified as “experts” in my mind, I guess, whereas the personalities are much more like… well, I was going to say morning talk radio hosts but then I realized Mike Greenberg is one of the guys we’re talking about. Put Zach Lowe on at halftime and he’ll say “the Spurs are doing something really effective in transition offense, watch this.” Which is better than “I am amazed by amazing Tim Duncan. LeBron really needs to get angry and be amazing, do you think he will? I bet he will.”
They just have different jobs. Lowe is an analyst and a very good one, but he doesn’t break a lot of news. Adrian Wojnarowski is a very good reporter who (I think) doesn’t do a lot of original analysis. Simmons and Wilbon are commentators, and that’s supposed to be more of a general big-picture thing. One of the best things that has happened in sports journalism/viewing over the last 10 years or so is that a lot of commentary-driven stories about the character and morals and narratives of players and teams have been scotched or at least subjected to rigorous factual analysis.
As others have pointed out, ESPN is about entertainment and not news. Not to go all CT but I wonder if “suspensions” are used to generate more controversy and viewers and lets the “journalist” take a vacation. Odds are they’re still getting paid.
I’m looking for an ESPN/WWE joint venture soon.
This is still a meaningless statement in the context of sports. Or any other type of entertainment, really.
Right; they’re ideally different jobs. But now Simmons’ job includes being at the draft, during the draft, telling us how mad he personally is going to be if the Celtics whatever whatever.