ESPN May FINALLY Have Some Competition In 2010
storm888
Posts: 11,701 ✭✭✭
The stuffy protectors of puffed-up sports stars and team owners - and multi-million buck
broadcasting contracts - need to be brougt to their knees.
Warner Bothers and Levin may be just the team to crush the corruptniks.
sportsbybrooks reports
Folks Who Bite Get Bitten. Folks Who Don't Bite Get Eaten.
0
Comments
I wouldn't be surprised if ESPN gets the next Olympic package.
///////////////////////////
That might change, soon.
For years, we have watched ESPN fail to report stories
that might be "damaging" to their partners AND to players
the network needs to interview.
ESPN has a top-down news flow. If a story is not already
in the MSM, ESPN will usually NOT go with it.
The new competition will work bottom-up. Leads and tips
from ALL sources will be confirmed and reported. Since
the MSM already relies on the TMZ infrastructure, ESPN
will be forced to go with the stories OR be exposed as
the cover-up-PR machine they actually are.
<< <i>In a way, isnt all media the same way?? >>
////////////////////
Only when their personal and/or financial interests
conflict with their job to report and inform.
Most of ESPN's money comes directly from the very
sources they are expected to report on.
Right now the NFL licenses its games to 4 Networks (NBC, CBS, ESPN, FOX) and has a few games/year on NFL Network. The reason they do this is that the revenue from television contacts is so vast and has created such wealth in pro sports that it is delaying the inevitable. But, in the very near future, assuming this Comcast deal goes through I could envision there being 4-5 major vertically integrated entertainment companies (companies that own Motion Picture Studios, 30 television stations, direct to consumer broadcast outlets - meaning cable, 40 print pubs , internet etc - heck, most of that exists now). That is all assuming that deregulation continues and monopolies are allowed. When that happens, the NFL will surely be able to launch a subscription based service to someone like Comcast or direct to consumer and will control all advertising revenue from all of it's content and show NFL games on channels NFL1, NFL2, NFL3 etc.
My thought is that ESPN obviously knows this. They've seen the death of newspapers coming for awhile, so they're certainly forward thinking. These regional based websites that they're launching will be the replacement for local sports sections within five years. They know that the sports leagues will one day be able to create enough revenue from direct interaction with the consumer that they don't need to license their product to anyone. I believe this is why they're trying to become more regional now. They're doing it because they know the future of National Sports are in the hands of the leagues themselves.
Storm, I know you'll have a good link or take on this. Anxious to hear it. Having lived in Hollywood for years, vertical integration has been increasing on a J curve here. That surely has to be the case for the sports leagues as well, no?
My Podcast - Now FEATURED on iTunes
........................................
Currently, there are HUNDREDS of pretty good sports blogs.
Almost NONE of them have had ANY success at breaking their
scoops through to the MSM.
Local/regional ESPN blogs/sites may well be perceived as feeders
to ESPN, but they will actually be as heavily censored/controlled as
ESPN is today.
.................................
COMPLETE "vertical integration" - even if it had NO other benefits -
would at least give consumers a chance to LEARN about what is
actually happening in the sports world. Network media would no
longer be able to masquerade as truth gatherers/reporters, while
they slurp at the contract-broadcasting trough.
Allowing the leagues to spin their own carp is OK by me. I want to
buy the products of those leagues, but I want to get my news about
those leagues from free and independent sources.
Once ESPN is out of the broadcasting mix, they can start telling the
truth OR they can vanish as the TRUE independents start breaking
through.
Remove the incentive to lie, and the truth comes to light.
...................
While I hope for the best, it is UNCLEAR to me whether Warner's
move anticipates "broadcast opportunities via contract," or if they
simply want to attract internet/cable eyeballs by offering "sports
reporting."
Levin's background may mean he envisions the pairing as a chance
to compete with ESPN in ALL venues; including acquiring contracts to
broadcast sporting events through WB's existing and new channels.
Because the teams/leagues are JUST as greedy as the rest of the folks in
the mix, it is likely that they will inadvertently do what is best for consumers
and pursue the goal of TOTAL control via vertical integration.
A separation of "sports news reporting" from product-offering/distribution is
critical to assuring that consumers hear the news that is most useful and
most interesting to them. When leagues/teams start delivering their products
DIRECTLY to consumers, news-gatherers will be able to better inform us about
the inside workings of our fave sports and games.
The current broadcasters will raise heck, but that will hopefully be done with their
dying gasps.
....................................
wiki....
"The Antitrust Paradox"
The Antitrust Paradox is a 1978 book by Robert Bork that criticized the state of United States antitrust law in the 1970s. A second edition, updated to reflect substantial changes in the law, was published in 1993.
Bork argued that both the original intent of antitrust laws and economic efficiency required that consumer welfare and the protection of competition rather than competitors, be the only goals of antitrust law. Thus, while it was appropriate to prohibit cartels that fix prices and divide markets and mergers that create monopolies, allegedly exclusionary practices such as vertical agreements and price discrimination did not harm consumers and should not be prohibited. The paradox of antitrust enforcement was that legal intervention artificially raised prices by protecting inefficient competitors from competition.
From 1977 to 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States repeatedly adopted views stated in The Antitrust Paradox in such cases as Continental T.V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania Inc., 433 U.S. 36 (1977), Broadcast Music Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., NCAA v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Oklahoma, Spectrum Sports Inc. v. McQuillan, State Oil Co. v. Khan, Verizon v. Trinko, and Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., legalizing many practices previously prohibited.
This book is in the top-five of ALL books that I have
EVER read. It has the answer to just about every
question that I have ever had about anything. Lucky
for me, I first read it in 1979.
..........................
herbert hovenkamp on VI and its benefits to consumers
wiki.......
Herbert Hovenkamp
Herbert Hovenkamp holds the Ben and Dorothy Willie Chair at the University of Iowa College of Law. Hovenkamp is a recognized expert and prolific author in the area of Antitrust law. He received a BA from Calvin College and earned an MA, PhD, and Doctor of Jurisprudence from The University of Texas at Austin.
Hovenkamp was previously Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law. Professor Hovenkamp is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Hovenkamp is generally regarded as "the most influential antitrust scholar of our generation. "He is the sole surviving author of Antitrust Law, the most cited legal treatise on the subject, and currently consisting of 20 volumes.
In each of the last ten antitrust cases heard by the United States Supreme Court, either the petitioner or the solicitor general pointed to Hovenkamp as supporting the position the justices were being urged to take. By 2005, Professor Hovenkamp's writings on the Robinson-Patman Act had been cited in approximately 70 federal court decisions and over 100 law review articles.
Thomas Hungar, deputy solicitor general of the United States from 2003 to 2008, has called Hovenkamp one of the prime shapers of antitrust legal interpretation by U.S. courts.
In 2008 Professor Hovenkamp received the John Sherman Award from the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. The award is presented approximately once every three years to "a person or persons for their outstanding achievement in antitrust law, contributing to the protection of American consumers and to the preservation of economic liberty."
30