The best unified theory of Trump I’ve come across is by Sally Jenkins, the legendary Washington Post sports reporter and columnist. Here’s Sally’s explanation of Trump from a tweetlast week “An old sports strategy: foul so much in the 1st 5 min of the game that the refs can’t call them all. From then on, a more physical game.”
.. What Trump is doing by taking on so many controversial subjects so quickly is defining the landscape on which his presidency will be judged. He’s seeing how far he can stretch the system before it breaks and, in so doing, setting the outer limits of what he can do very, very far out.
.. What Trump is doing by taking on so many controversial subjects so quickly is defining the landscape on which his presidency will be judged. He’s seeing how far he can stretch the system before it breaks and, in so doing, setting the outer limits of what he can do very, very far out.
.. (One major difference with that basketball analogy: Paul can foul out of a game. It’s much harder for Trump to be taken off the court for his boundary-pushing.)
.. But if Jenkins is right — and I suspect she is — then that outrage, those protests, those skittish Republicans will all dissipate, or diminish, as Trump’s presidency goes on. What feels like line-pushing now will seem normal sometime soon. By pushing so hard so fast, Trump is redefining what he can do and how the political establishment, and the country at large, will react.
One of Disney’s most popular brands has investors really worried
But ESPN remains one of the world’s most profitable sports networks, and its struggles raise troubling questions about the entire TV ecosystem. Long considered the linchpin of the traditional bundle, live sports is often what compels viewers to stay with their cable provider rather than cut the cord. But as more consumers defect in the face of growing cable bills, what is happening at ESPN could end up affecting channels up and down the lineup.
.. ESPN and its siblings, such as ABC, account for the biggest chunk of Disney’s businessby far, pulling in $24 billion in revenue this fiscal year. The company’s next biggest segment, theme parks, made $17 billion.
.. It wasn’t that long ago that observers were calling ESPN “the most valuable media property in the United States,” estimating its value at 20 times that of the New York Times Co. and five times the size of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
.. analysts say ESPN faces a steeper challenge than most because of the rapidly rising cost to the network of acquiring sports broadcasting rights.
.. The rights to broadcast live sports cost cable companies a collective $16 billion last year, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers — up 50 percent from 2011. That figure is expected to grow another 30 percent by 2020.
Simmons vs. Gladwell: The Future of Football
Sagging ratings, national controversy, horrifying head injuries, shameless greed: The conversation about the NFL has officially changed. Is it too late to fix it?
By Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell
ESPN: Strong Options makes Cost-effective Programming
At some point, ESPN concluded that strong opinions and impassioned arguments made for the most cost-effective programming, and Pardon the Interruption begat Around the Horn, which begat Stephen A. Smith, Colin Cowherd, Skip Bayless, Bill Simmons . . .
When your “beat” shifts from offering in-depth coverage of sports to offering controversial (“hot take”) opinions on sports, the tone will shift and the previous audience will grow irritable.