ESPN pays $2 billion a year to the NFL for Monday Night Football and one NFL wild card playoff game. I've written for the past couple of years that as ESPN's business collapses that ESPN's decision on whether or not to bid to keep Monday Night Football would be the first big test of how rapidly that business is deteriorating.
What's a deteriorating business look like? In the month of October ESPN lost over 15,000 subscribers a day in October per the latest Nielson estimates.
15,000 a day!
Losing 15,000 subscribers per day is a lot, but is that because of the NFL anthem protests or because cord-cutting has finally reached a tipping point?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:48PM
Considering how the answer to declining viewership has been to shrink the 42-minute-per-hour towards 38 minutes (i.e. going from 18 to 22 minutes of ads per hour, including automatically dropping frames in old reruns), I wouldn't bet on the US execs admitting that they have a real problem.
With the likes of PAI at the FCC, and the power of the **AA, The Great FireWall of Trump could become a China-like reality. Because who needs freedom when there's money to be made, and Children To Think Of?