The new owners at SI seem to have a very poor PR plan. Yesterday was brutal in that regard, from the layoffs to the quotes they gave after it.
Gotta imagine that a lot of people's workloads are increasing exponentially without getting a significant raise... or any raise Must suck to see if you've been there for decades.
Outside of Herbstreits game, I think everyone is from a studio. I've seen games where the color analyst and pbp guy are in completely different locations
I think I read somewhere recently that Sam Ponder makes close to $5 million per? Ridiculous if that's true.
Sam Ponder reportedly makes $4.9M a year and I never see her on ESPN. Worthless. Lisa Salters has been with ESPN for a couple decades and works MNF and NBA games. Gets paid $250K. Her agent should be fired. Greenberg makes $6.5M a year to complain about the Jets and make vanilla takes. However, ESPN did save $5M by letting Golic go. Stephen A getting $10M is a ton, but they run him out there 7 days a week on multiple shows and platforms. He gets more eyes/reactions/views than any other ESPN personality.
Stephen A is worth every penny. That's all Salters makes? Wow. Ponder is still with ESPN? I had no idea. Greenie got the big money to host the new Cold Pizza. Does anyone watch?
I know I am in the minority but any time I see Stephen A on the TV I change the channel immediately. Ponder, Greenberg, etc being paid that much is fucking insane to me. There's no way they are worth that in views IMO but I think the only ESPN show I leave on the TV in the morning is Get Up and that's maybe once a week. I barely watch GameDay on Saturdays now. So other than live sports events, ESPN is utterly worthless to me these days.
I mean ESPN puts a lot of things on tv that should never see the light of day. Why should he be any different?
I know Ponder hosts Sunday NFL Countdown, no idea about anything else. At least they're not still paying Gruden $5 mil a year or whatever insane number for worthless MNF commentary.
Golic Jr being on TV in any capacity is the preeminent case for making nepotism a first degree felony. That, and Bobby Bowden making Jeff Bowden his OC.
They’ve signed some really bad ROI contracts - both league-wise and with some commentators. And Covid certainly hasn’t helped with sport TV ratings this year. Tough times.
to be clear, I don't watch or enjoy Stephen A (except his Cowboys trolling tweets) but you have to acknowledge he delivers an audience and gives ESPN value even at that super high price. He's on all the freaking time.
I hate personalities like SAS and Skip Bayless but I also completely understand their job is to create content/engage people, not to be fair and accurate sports anchors.
They're essentially bidding against themselves with commentator contracts, where the fuck else are people gonna go? I guess you could say FS1/Fox is an option but I'm sure ESPN dominates them ratings wise and a few easily replaceable commentators wouldn't change that at all.
Saying outrageous shit will get you an audience, because people want to see what you're going to say next. These two turds are making serious money because of that.
You live in a country where 64 million people voted for Donald Trump to be President and you find this to be outrageous?
Sam Ponder; One day a week, four months a year, 16 days, divided by $5M, $312,500 per day. Even if she's working 160 days a year that's still $31K per day. Wonder what Erin Andrews peak compensation at ESPN was.