Whatever happened to good reporting???

[Diesel]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

Things have continued in that direction but SAS in place of David Aldridge was a big step in the wrong direction away from actual content and journalism.

I think the change was the change.   If you want to blame anybody for the change... Blame Jim Rome.   He was able to develop a following with his "hot takes" that had nothing to do with Journalistic integrity.    Still...  I think the Network saw what Rome was doing and got their Sports personalities who had already tried developing likable personas ala Boomer... to go one step farther. 

You try to keep DA in a special place here, but before it was all over he was giving hot takes too.

As far as SAS...  

SAS is a product of the changes that were expected by the network.  He was not the change. 

You forgot about Quite Frankly...

 

 

 

[AHF]

2 hours ago, Diesel said:

I think the change was the change.   If you want to blame anybody for the change... Blame Jim Rome.   He was able to develop a following with his "hot takes" that had nothing to do with Journalistic integrity.    Still...  I think the Network saw what Rome was doing and got their Sports personalities who had already tried developing likable personas ala Boomer... to go one step farther. 

You try to keep DA in a special place here, but before it was all over he was giving hot takes too.

As far as SAS...  

SAS is a product of the changes that were expected by the network.  He was not the change. 

You forgot about Quite Frankly...

 

 

 

He has some of the loudest, dumbest hot takes I've ever seen but I don't go so far as to say that he never does anything that is worthy sports reporting.  Those interviews / features are 1000% better than him arguing that hockey still has ties in 2012 when they hadn't been in the game since 2004 or any of the other notable positions he's taken over the years. 

One thing he did do that was fairly impressive was wrongly predict the winner of the NBA finals 6 years in a row.  There is just over a 1% chance to do that if you are flipping a coin let alone an actual NBA analyst.

But I'm fine to agree to disagree on the overall merits of his total body of work and I will grant that he and others like Skip Bayless left me to tune out ESPN years ago so he may well have improved after I stopped paying attention to anything but the occasional headline grabbing story.

 

[Diesel]

4 hours ago, AHF said:

He has some of the loudest, dumbest hot takes I've ever seen but I don't go so far as to say that he never does anything that is worthy sports reporting.  Those interviews / features are 1000% better than him arguing that hockey still has ties in 2012 when they hadn't been in the game since 2004 or any of the other notable positions he's taken over the years. 

One thing he did do that was fairly impressive was wrongly predict the winner of the NBA finals 6 years in a row.  There is just over a 1% chance to do that if you are flipping a coin let alone an actual NBA analyst.

But I'm fine to agree to disagree on the overall merits of his total body of work and I will grant that he and others like Skip Bayless left me to tune out ESPN years ago so he may well have improved after I stopped paying attention to anything but the occasional headline grabbing story.

 

That's just my point. 

I believe that the Network and what the network wanted from a lot of these sports journalist was more of the Jim Rome hot take and rush to be viral and less of the actual Journalism.  The work on quite frankly was even after he first started.   When he first started, he was a very humble reporter who would do the NBA draft and such and was not the loud mouth that the network has pandered for. 

We can agree that what he has become is nauseating and sad but can we also agree that before he morphed into that he was just as much a journalist as David Aldridge.  Had he not been, he would have never made it to the network. 

 

 

[AHF]

On 8/15/2023 at 8:34 AM, Diesel said:

That's just my point. 

I believe that the Network and what the network wanted from a lot of these sports journalist was more of the Jim Rome hot take and rush to be viral and less of the actual Journalism.  The work on quite frankly was even after he first started.   When he first started, he was a very humble reporter who would do the NBA draft and such and was not the loud mouth that the network has pandered for. 

We can agree that what he has become is nauseating and sad but can we also agree that before he morphed into that he was just as much a journalist as David Aldridge.  Had he not been, he would have never made it to the network. 

 

 

I can’t go there with you just based on my exposure to him.  I think his loud personality and enthusiasm to push personality over content was precisely why he was elevated at ESPN in the first place to push more of that kind of content.  That was around the same time they were pushing out people like David Aldridge who was never going to do the reality TV garbage.  I remember being very frustrated by it from very early in his time with ESPN.  

I will grant that he may have done some great reporting in Philly that you consumed and I didn’t and that this colors my perception of things.  If he was a great substantive reporter before becoming a caricature of that then that is sad but the caricature did not take long to take hold once he was firmly on my radar and it defines his career for me. 

[Diesel]

4 hours ago, AHF said:

I can’t go there with you just based on my exposure to him.  I think his loud personality and enthusiasm to push personality over content was precisely why he was elevated at ESPN in the first place to push more of that kind of content.  That was around the same time they were pushing out people like David Aldridge who was never going to do the reality TV garbage.  I remember being very frustrated by it from very early in his time with ESPN.  

I will grant that he may have done some great reporting in Philly that you consumed and I didn’t and that this colors my perception of things.  If he was a great substantive reporter before becoming a caricature of that then that is sad but the caricature did not take long to take hold once he was firmly on my radar and it defines his career for me. 

I think there's a timeline that you need to discover...  Here's Stephen A. Smith...

"Smith started his television career on the now-defunct cable network CNN/SI in 1999.

In August 2005, Smith started hosting a daily hour-long show on ESPN called Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith. After the show was cancelled in January 2007, he mainly concentrated on basketball, serving as an NBA analyst. He also appeared on other ESPN shows, including the reality series Dream Job, as well as serving as a frequent guest (and guest host) on Pardon the Interruption, Jim Rome Is Burning, and as a participant on 1st and 10. He appeared as an anchor on the Sunday morning edition of SportsCenter. On April 17, 2009, Smith announced on his website that he would be leaving ESPN on May 1, 2009.[18] The Los Angeles Times reported that ESPN commented that, "We decided to move in different directions."

Smith later returned to ESPN, and it was announced on April 30, 2012, on air that Smith would be joining First Take on a permanent, five-days-per-week basis under a new format for the show called "Embrace Debate" in which he squares off against longtime First Take commentator Skip Bayless."

Now.. let's take a look at David Aldridge....

"Before joining TNT in 2004, Aldridge reported for ESPN for eight years, primarily covering the NBA while occasionally doing NFL pieces. He wrote for ESPN.com and contributed to ESPN Radio. Aldridge frequently appeared on SportsCenter as well as NBA 2 Night (now NBA Fastbreak) and NBA Today. Aldridge conducted interviews for the SportsCenter "Sunday Conversations" with LeBron James, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O'Neal, Karl Malone and many others. He worked as an NBA sideline reporter both for ABC and ESPN in 2003 and 2004."

 

Aldridge went on to TNT in 2004.  Was he pushed out?  Maybe.  What I can see is that ESPN wanted a certain type of personality. 

From the Athletic, here's how First take evolved.  The one thing that you can see is that they molded debate style shows in Sports and they molded Stephen A. Smith into what they needed him to be...  That fact that he was fired in 2009 by ESPN gave them all the control to make Stephen A into the persona that you see now. 

Quote

In 2011, TV producer Jamie Horowitz was put in charge of “First Take,” the fledgling, two-hour morning show on ESPN2. Horowitz wanted to learn more about “First Take” and its audience, but first he had a problem.

At the time, ESPN provided ratings information in 15-minute increments and the topics on “First Take” changed too often for those ratings to offer any meaningful insight into audience habits. So Horowitz enlisted the help of Barry Blyn, a bookish researcher who had come to ESPN from Comedy Central. Horowitz asked Blyn for minute-by-minute ratings of every show for a month. He didn’t know what he was looking for; he just wanted to lift the hood and poke around. 

“First Take” had a long history before Horowitz. Originally called “Cold Pizza,” the show launched in 2003 and was more in line with “Good Morning America” or “Today” than traditional ESPN programming. The show featured news, guests and a short, recurring debate segment called “1st and 10,” where Bayless squared off against a rotating cast of pundits like Woody Paige, Jemele Hill and Rob Parker. After four years and middling ratings, ESPN rebranded the show in 2007 as “First Take,” but not much else changed.

What the show lacked, thought Marcia Keegan, an ESPN VP who oversaw daytime content on ESPN2, was an identity.

“I remember asking some of the people who were working on it: ‘What is ‘First Take’?'” Keegan said. “And they said, well, it’s not ‘SportsCenter.’ I thought, ‘That’s not really a good way to define a show.'”

Keegan and Bayless had long discussed infusing “First Take” with more debate, but they always met resistance. With that in mind, when Keegan turned “First Take” over to Horowitz in 2011, she offered broad vision to pursue: “This can’t stay the way it is. It needs more debate.”

Still, when Horowitz received the initial minute-by-minute audience ratings from Blyn, they were hard to decipher. Each episode occupied one page in a binder, with a series of rising and falling lines like an EKG. As Horowitz flipped through the binder, however, he noticed spikes in viewership during every show. It wasn’t that audiences were tuning in then; they just weren’t leaving. He needed to know why.

Richelle Markazene, a producer, put the topics and segments from each show on the X axis, then cross-referenced that information with ratings on the Y axis. In almost every instance, whenever a spike occurred, there was one reason:

Skip Bayless.

A former newspaper reporter and columnist, Bayless seemed created in a lab to argue about sports on TV. He cut his teeth in the golden days of print journalism, when local columnists were king. He wrote a series of controversial books about the Dallas Cowboys, dipped his toe into radio in the 1990s and wound up at ESPN, where his abrasive persona on TV belied his off-screen vibe. Bayless was the kind of guy who bought a Camaro for the horsepower but said he only accelerated to the speed limit.

“Skip is a church mouse,” said Parker. “That’s his personality.”

Bayless was obsessively committed to his work. On his first date with his now-wife, Ernestine, he told her: “You will never be more important than my job for me.” Once, before debating Woody Paige on “1st and 10,” Bayless asked staffer Gabe Goodwin for research help. But first, Bayless sized up Goodwin and asked, “Can I trust you?” Goodwin was confused. “Can I trust you’re not going to tell Woody what I’m asking you to look up?” Bayless said.

Sunday through Friday, Bayless lived at a Residence Inn in Connecticut. He watched sports day and night and took copious notes in small handwriting that looked, Parker said, “like a doctor’s prescription.” He maintained a strict diet of chicken and broccoli, a shock of blonde hair and a morning exercise routine that he believed was essential for the job.

“There’s not a single person that prepares more for their job than Skip Bayless,” said Kevin Reeder, longtime “First Take” producer.

Above all, he formed arguments that forced people — whether out of agreement or anger — to react.

Horowitz knew the show needed to center on Bayless, but he asked Blyn if they could conduct qualitative research to back up the quantitative. So in 2011, they embarked on a multi-city tour with focus groups. At each stop, Blyn and Horowitz played episodes of “First Take” to hardcore sports fans while Horowitz sat on the other side of the glass with pen and paper.

The focus groups expressed strong opinions about Bayless when he appeared on the screen. Many said they disliked him and his opinions, but they all seemed to know — and care — about what he said.

There was something else: No one in the focus groups ever talked about Bayless’ debate partners on the show.

Armed with his trove of research, Horowitz transformed “First Take” into all debate, all the time. It wasn’t as if debate shows were new. CNN’s “Crossfire” aired for decades, while ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” was a descendant of the network’s original take-fest, “The Sports Reporters.” But those shows ran for 30 minutes; “First Take” was two full hours.

“I thought it was a little too much,” Crawford said.

“I was pleasantly stunned,” Bayless said.

Horowitz and the producers used the minute-by-minute studies to inform topics for the show. What caused a jump on this day? What led to an increase here? “That became the Bible, or the gospel, of the show,” Parker said. “Anything that made it spike, you couldn’t get enough of it.”

In 2011, time and again the cause of the spike was Tebow, the polarizing quarterback then in his second season with the Denver Broncos. While most pundits questioned Tebow’s ability to start in the NFL, Bayless extolled Tebow’s virtues and winning mentality.

Backed by Blyn’s research that showed the average viewer watched “First Take” for only 30 minutes, Horowitz nixed standard topics that didn’t rate — baseball or Wimbledon — and pushed Bayless to talk more about Tebow or the Dallas Cowboys. The way Horowitz saw it, the person watching Bayless talk about Tebow at 10:15 a.m. wasn’t the same person at 11 a.m. He likened “First Take” to a coffee shop that pumped out lattes all morning. Starbucks would never worry about selling too many lattes; each customer was new and different.

The ratings jumped again.

One Sunday in November 2011, the “First Take” crew was on the road in San Antonio, gathered inside a meeting room at Fort Sam Houston. Bayless sat beside Ernestine, but he was agitated. The Broncos were losing. Bayless tried different seats, but nothing helped to jumpstart Tebow and Denver’s offense. Eventually, Bayless found a spot in the far corner of the room that felt right. The Broncos came alive. As Bayless fixated on the game, Ernestine rubbed his shoulders and the rest of the crew hovered nearby. Tebow completed the comeback, and the room exploded with delight. Everyone knew what the game would mean for ratings.

“It was the real feeling of a team,” Reeder said.

Five weeks and five Tebow wins later, the Monday after a Broncos overtime win, “First Take” had its highest-rated show ever. Horowitz brought in champagne and cake to celebrate.

Still, there was one problem. The research from the focus groups had made it clear that audiences wanted a worthy full-time foil to Bayless. One day Horowitz approached Bayless and asked if he knew anyone who might be a good match. Bayless told him he had someone in mind right away:

Stephen A. Smith.

Sixteen years younger, Smith had grown up in Hollis, Queens, attended Winston-Salem State (where he spent time on the basketball team) and embarked on a career in newspapers.

While a cub reporter in North Carolina, he called Parker, then a baseball writer in Cincinnati, and told him he was quitting the business and going to apply for a job with Wachovia. They had met years earlier at a National Association of Black Journalists convention (“He was Steve Smith back in the day,” Parker says). Parker saw Smith’s natural talent and told him to rip up the Wachovia application so loudly that he could hear it over the phone. Parker understood what others would learn: Smith was young, hungry and unapologetically himself.

“Probably the hardest working individual I’ve had the pleasure of working with,” said current ESPN executive Dave Roberts.

Smith landed at the New York Daily News before moving to the Philly Inquirer, where he covered the NBA, became a general columnist and began eyeing television. In 2000, according to his memoir, Smith was offered more than a million dollars to co-host “The Best Damn Sports Show Period” on Fox Sports Net, but he turned it down, worried that working alongside comedian Tom Arnold would hurt his credibility. Smith finally moved to ESPN in the mid-2000s, where his bombastic style became the foundation for an interview talk show — “Quite Frankly” — that ran for three years before it was canceled.

By 2012, Smith was back doing local radio at ESPN New York when Horowitz called, and in their first conversation, Smith told Horowitz he “loved” Bayless. They had debated on various shows over the years, and had once shot a pilot together for a Fox Sports Net show called “Sports in Black and White.”

“We were naturally opposed on so many topics that we just had an instant sort of combative alliance,” Bayless said.

“We’re just allergic to agreeing with each other in most instances,” Smith said.

“First Take” rolled out Smith on a trial basis on Wednesdays. Reeder, the show’s lead producer, saw the ratings climb with Smith opposite Bayless on Wednesdays, but he still had doubts. “These numbers justify more Stephen A.,” Reeder told Horowitz, “but will this work for five days?”

“We’re sure as hell going to give it a shot,” Horowitz said.

Soon Bayless and Smith were sitting opposite each other on a set in Bristol, flanking Jay Crawford, who wanted to give the new “First Take” a chance.

“Guys,” Crawford said, “it’s time to embrace debate.”

In the control room, Horowitz’s ears perked up.

“That’s it! That’s the show!”

 

 

[AHF]

You just confirmed my instincts.  Per what you cited, they had SAS doing a literal reality TV show along with other "deliver big opinions for controversy" types of things like Rome is Burning along with the items you highlighted nearly from the beginning.  With first take, they weren't looking for good content.  They were looking for people to "spike ratings" with controversial takes that pissed people off and Skip Bayless and SAS were the perfect pairing for that.  Bayless is even worse than SAS for stupid takes designed to bait people and drive ratings so if you are trying to sell me on Skip being a great reporter or something that is a lost cause.  It is like the internet algorithms that push people into more and more BS content and conspiracy theories because they get more clicks which is all that the algorithms are designed to produce.  In the same way, ESPN abandoned sports reporting for a "more clicks" mentality and SAS was a successful driver of that change.

ESPN absolutely wanted a certain type of personality.  They wanted a reality TV culture to drive controversy and ratings.  And now they see the results of having gotten exactly what they were looking for as so many hardcore sports fans have lost interest in them over the years.

[Diesel]

10 hours ago, AHF said:

You just confirmed my instincts.  Per what you cited, they had SAS doing a literal reality TV show along with other "deliver big opinions for controversy" types of things like Rome is Burning along with the items you highlighted nearly from the beginning.  With first take, they weren't looking for good content.  They were looking for people to "spike ratings" with controversial takes that pissed people off and Skip Bayless and SAS were the perfect pairing for that.  Bayless is even worse than SAS for stupid takes designed to bait people and drive ratings so if you are trying to sell me on Skip being a great reporter or something that is a lost cause.  It is like the internet algorithms that push people into more and more BS content and conspiracy theories because they get more clicks which is all that the algorithms are designed to produce.  In the same way, ESPN abandoned sports reporting for a "more clicks" mentality and SAS was a successful driver of that change.

ESPN absolutely wanted a certain type of personality.  They wanted a reality TV culture to drive controversy and ratings.  And now they see the results of having gotten exactly what they were looking for as so many hardcore sports fans have lost interest in them over the years.

Yeah.. that's what I've been telling you.  SAS didn't come to ESPN as the Blowhard we see today.   Even from  Quite Frankly, he was subdue and more of a journalist.   They MOLDED him into a Jim Rome type made for Debate with Skip.   And those short pops worked for ratings. Moreover, I think Aldridge was out of the door before Smith was even a thought.. so you can't say that Aldridge was pushed out by SAS Style.  Aldridge may have seen the bus coming but he left in 2004.  First take didn't take until 2012... that's 8 years after Aldridge was gone.   It was the first truly debate style show.   I think there was other stuff in the atmosphere that didn't jive with Aldridge...

Such as every broadcaster needed a catchphrase.  That wasn't SAS though, that was Boomer and Scott and Wingo and all those guys.  The DA never was a catchphrase kinda guy.. he was a Sports discussion with Lupica kind of guy. 

 

[AHF]

13 hours ago, Diesel said:

Yeah.. that's what I've been telling you.  SAS didn't come to ESPN as the Blowhard we see today.   Even from  Quite Frankly, he was subdue and more of a journalist.   They MOLDED him into a Jim Rome type made for Debate with Skip.   And those short pops worked for ratings. Moreover, I think Aldridge was out of the door before Smith was even a thought.. so you can't say that Aldridge was pushed out by SAS Style.  Aldridge may have seen the bus coming but he left in 2004.  First take didn't take until 2012... that's 8 years after Aldridge was gone.   It was the first truly debate style show.   I think there was other stuff in the atmosphere that didn't jive with Aldridge...

Such as every broadcaster needed a catchphrase.  That wasn't SAS though, that was Boomer and Scott and Wingo and all those guys.  The DA never was a catchphrase kinda guy.. he was a Sports discussion with Lupica kind of guy. 

 

I'm actually not on board with you because SAS was known for his bombastic style when they hired him and they dropped him very quickly into reality TV garbage that Aldridge would never have done.  Aldridge was pushed out a matter of months before SAS was brought on board.  So while I thank you for the background, I still see his being brought on board as a key step in this process of embracing the attention hungry reality TV type of model of "entertainment."  DA was not a catchphrase guy but the catch phrase people were focused on people who primarily did the sportscenter clips where they'd drop those repeatedly over highlight reels.  Where we may disagree is that you seem to think SAS wasn't doing reality TV/hot take/look at me garbage until he became a fixture on First Take whereas I saw that very early in his time at the Network.  I've moved towards you in terms of the fact that he was doing more than that early in his ESPN career but I don't think it is a coincidence that he (as you describe above)  "also appeared on other ESPN shows, including the reality series Dream Job, as well as serving as a frequent guest (and guest host) on Pardon the Interruption, Jim Rome Is Burning, and as a participant on 1st and 10."

Where I'll agree with you is that he wasn't all about that when he first came to ESPN and that it ramped up over time until it overtook almost every bit of substance he had.

[Diesel]

9 hours ago, AHF said:

I'm actually not on board with you because SAS was known for his bombastic style when they hired him and they dropped him very quickly into reality TV garbage that Aldridge would never have done.

Nah... Don't remember it that way.   I recall Less volume and less talkative guy on the NBA draft nights... and fans used to heckle him about Cheese Doodles. 

 

[JayBirdHawk]

Since you guys are discussing SAS...how did I not know he has a recurring role since 2016 on General Hospital as Brick - surveillance expert for the mob boss Sonny.