{"id":231466,"date":"2017-04-28T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T16:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=231466"},"modified":"2017-05-01T15:56:13","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T19:56:13","slug":"espn-could-mix-sports-and-politics-successfully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/04\/28\/espn-could-mix-sports-and-politics-successfully\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN Could Mix Sports and Politics Successfully"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: No, ESPN can fix this. ESPN is in deep trouble because they are purposely injecting left-wing politics into sports. They have people doing it that don\u2019t know how to do it. I\u2019ve often said, “Don\u2019t try this — you know, what I do — at home.” If ESPN wants to bring politics back — and if they want to do it right and if they want to win with it — they should ask me how to do it. If you\u2019re gonna bring politics into sports, the politics better be about sports. People watching ESPN don\u2019t care what any of these numskulls care about Donald Trump or Paul Ryan or any of this.<\/p>\n

\"\"But I\u2019m not gonna give the answers away. Well, Linda Cohn — who I met, by the way. She was at WABC when I first started. She was in the news\/sports department there before she went to ESPN. She\u2019s got a piece in the New York Post or an interview in the New York Post where she says <\/a>(paraphrased), “Hey, it\u2019s not just cord cutting that is causing people to leave and not watching ESPN. The layoffs are not just happening because they\u2019ve overpaid for rights to televise the NBA — like $24 billion to broadcast NBA games.”<\/p>\n

She said they\u2019re turning people off with content by injecting uber-left-wing products. She\u2019s exactly right. If they want to do it, they need to talk to somebody who knows how to do this, and that would be somebody like me. They\u2019re clearly a bunch of rank amateurs over there. Sportswriters are already pretend journalists. They wish they were on the news beat, but they\u2019re not. So this is how they\u2019re trying to stake their claim to being real journalists, by injecting politics into what they do so they get noticed by the big boys at news journalism.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Do you think people at ESPN know why they\u2019re losing subscribers? Let me ask you a question: Do you think the people at CNN know why they have no audience? And they\u2019re proud! Does CNN make any change whatsoever to try to change and grow an audience? No! Because they\u2019re being given awards and accolades for being true to the liberal cause. Advertising agencies are taking care of \u2019em.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: This story we mentioned this at the top of the program — Linda Cohn, who I met when I got to New York at WABC, she was in the radio news and sports department there. And it was long after that she went to ESPN as an anchor. She has a piece in the New York Post, she either wrote it or is being quoted here, “ESPN sweeping staff cuts –” they just laid off a hundred people, and more are coming — “– are not just the result of ambitious TV rights deals and an overburdened budget, popular ‘SportsCenter\u2019 anchor Linda Cohn suggested Thursday.<\/p>\n

“The network may be losing subscriber revenue not just because of cord-cutting, Cohn allowed, but because viewers are increasingly turned off by ESPN inserting politics into its sports coverage.” Oh, she was on WABC. This happened I guess it was yesterday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"\"She said, “That is definitely a percentage of it. I don\u2019t know how big a percentage, but if anyone wants to ignore that fact, they\u2019re blind.” She\u2019s not wrong. The president of ESPN\u2019s a guy named John Skipper and he\u2019s just like Phil what\u2019s his name at MSNBC, Phil Griffin. I mean, they\u2019re dyed-in-the-wool. And they\u2019re doing this on purpose.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a couple of ESPN anchors who happened to slip up one day and announce a political opinion. This is a purposely done strategy, because these people think that they are relating to the majority of Americans. They think a majority of Americans hate Trump. They think a majority of Americans are liberals and hate racist, pig Republicans, what have you. They\u2019re totally misjudging their audience.<\/p>\n

There was a shareholders meeting — you know, ABC owns Disney, and Iger got up there and there were some shareholders asking about the politicization of ESPN, and Iger denied it. No, you\u2019re crazy, there\u2019s none of that going on. I don\u2019t know why you would ask that. Denied it.<\/p>\n

I think you\u2019ve got a bunch of rank amateur sportswriters trying to do politics that don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about. Like I said, ESPN, if you want to put politics into sports you need professionals like me to be able to do it and do it the right way. You guys are throwing politics here into every discussion and half the time, if not more, it\u2019s irrelevant to the event, to the players, whatever you\u2019re talking about. Once it starts becoming gratuitously anti-Trump or anti-Republican, you\u2019re not helping yourself here.<\/p>\n

And in many instances these left-wing sports anchor reporters, broadcasters, whatever are pretend political thinkers. They\u2019re hacks just trying to get along with whatever they think the majority of their business thinks. You need seasoned professionals. And I of course am the trailblazer here. I got blown out of ESPN for being accused of doing what ESPN is now promising and trying to do. You talk about trailblazer, you talk about pioneers taking the arrows, I did. And it wasn\u2019t even that political. It was cultural. It never got conservative-Republican, Democrat-liberal, any of that. It was pure cultural. For two days nobody noticed. Then they did and all hell broke loose. He-he-he-he-he-he-he. If you want to know how to do it, ESPN, give me a call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: If ESPN wants to bring politics back — and if they want to do it right and if they want to win with it — they should ask me how to do it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nESPN Could Mix Sports and Politics Successfully - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/04\/28\/espn-could-mix-sports-and-politics-successfully\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"ESPN Could Mix Sports and Politics Successfully - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: If ESPN wants to bring politics back -- and if they want to do it right and if they want to win with it -- they should ask me how to do it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ESPN-Whitehouse.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"George Prayias\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/04\/28\/espn-could-mix-sports-and-politics-successfully\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ESPN-Whitehouse.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ESPN-Whitehouse.jpg\",\"width\":585,\"height\":270},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/04\/28\/espn-could-mix-sports-and-politics-successfully\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/04\/28\/espn-could-mix-sports-and-politics-successfully\/\",\"name\":\"ESPN Could Mix Sports and Politics Successfully - 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