The left-wing ESPN has lost a whopping 7 million subscribers in just two years. The MSNBC of Sports (hat tip), once available in 99 million homes, is available now in only 92 million homes. That is still a lot of subscribers but to say that no one expected such a massive drop in such a short period of time would be the understatement of the year.
From a macro perspective, this massive dip in subscribers is a problem for all of cable television. These 7 million losses are cord-cutters; people who canceled their overall cable package. ESPN is singled out for a couple of reasons: 1) ESPN has sold itself to cable providers as the top reason people want cable TV. 2) ESPN makes a ton of money off cable TV.
Whether you watch ESPN or not, if the Social Justice Warrior Sports Channel is on your cable package, to the tune of $6.61 a month, out of your own pocket, you are handing ESPN $80 a year to trash and smear you and everything you believe in.
A loss of 7 million subscribers is an annual loss of more than a half-billion dollars; $560 million, to be exact. Even when you are owned by a multi-national like the Walt Disney Company, that is not chump change.
ESPN used to be an oasis for America, a place where fans could converge to lose themselves in the competition and gamesmanship of professional sports.
At the exact wrong moment, though, ESPN decided to become a left-wing propaganda network. Smug in the left-wing con that is bundled cable — a con that forces every cable customer in America to pay exorbitant fees for dozens of channels they never watch and sometimes hate (MSNBC, CNN, MTV, Comedy Central, ESPN) — ESPN thought it could tell us how to think and vote.
And I say “exact wrong moment” for a reason. For some suicidal reason these idiots decided to launch their agitprop just as the streaming revolution began — a much cheaper, commercial-free, politics free alternative to the utter awfulness that is bundled cable.
Suddenly, for less than $20 a month (about 20% of your cable bill), you could subscribe to the streaming services provided by, among others, Netflix and Amazon. Best of all, unlike cable television, there are not 15 to 20 minutes of commercials every hour … because there are no commercials. Better still, you choose what you want to watch when you want to watch it — so no left-wing sucker punches from the likes of ESPN.
What’s damaging ESPN is what is damaging ObamaCare and what eventually destroys almost everything the left wants: Freedom. Freedom of choice. Free markets. Alternatives.
The entire bundled cable racket was designed to remove the free market. Cable television, including ESPN, cannot survive on merit. Networks like CNN, MSNBC, MTV and Comedy Central are wholly dependent on you being forced to fund them through your cable bill — through you being forced to accept a cable package with their network on it, whether or not you watch that network.
If these networks had to survive in a free market, meaning based on advertising revenue that is itself based on viewership, they would wither and dies, especially ESPN, which has enormous overhead.
I know it’s not easy, America. You don’t want to give up your Fox News and your Turner Classic Movies and your Sports Center… I get it.
But you are being robbed by left-wing propagandists to pay for their left-wing propaganda.
Cut the cord, America.
For America.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC