
ESPN subscriber losses raise questions about the TV ecosystem - zonotope
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/12/07/one-of-disneys-most-popular-brands-has-investors-really-worried/
======
jjaredsimpson
I need to work and sleep and spend time with friends. TV just isn't a priority
because the vast majority of it is pure trash.

I can't even spend the attention required to watch TV most times. I find
myself just leaving it on in the background and then realized that I've paused
it because something was more interesting on my laptop. Sometimes it takes me
hours just to get through one episode.

There is also piracy. I don't have cable but I still watched Walking Dead.
Which I've also stopped watching. Live TV just seems so pointless. If a show
is good I can just pick it up after like 3 seasons and binge it if I want.

Paying $80 a month for TV is just absurd. And paying for sports is even more
ridiculous. I like the NBA, and occasionally the NFL during playoffs. But I'll
never watch a game live which just spreads 35 minutes of content over 3 hours
to maximize ad revenue.

TV had it's heyday, the idea that it isn't on a steady downward decline
towards some new steady state is delusion. ESPN in its current form is done.
The impact on athletes salaries should be interesting though.

~~~
wcummings
>TV just isn't a priority because the vast majority of it is pure trash.

>TV had it's heyday

I can tell you don't watch much TV. It's never been better. We're in a golden
age of TV, it's just not on ESPN. There have recently been a lot of extremely
high quality, hour long dramas, which basically amount to a movie every week.
Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Wire, arguably Westworld, to name
a few.

~~~
mercer
While I've been a huge fan of this 'golden age of TV', I can't help but wonder
to which degree I'm fooling myself by spending hours on 'extremely high
quality' television that ultimately still is primarily entertainment and
doesn't 'improve' my life in any real way.

The Wire felt like it actually taught me something and made me think about
society and my role in it. But to what extent are Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game
of Thrones, and Westworld basically same as daytime soap operas dressed up so
they're palatable to 'discerning' consumers?

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I do find that many
people, myself included, justify their TV habits by arguing that we're
watching 'quality' TV instead of the usual daytime garbage.

(I've been reading Infinite Jest and recently read Wallace' "E Unibus
Pluram"[1], so this has been on my mind.)

[1]: [https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf](https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf)

~~~
SixSigma
A long time ago I came to the conclusion :

One day I will be old and unoccupied, work will be behind me, my capacity to
produce will be reduced, I will be more inclined to consume. If TV programmes
and films of today are any good they will still be around. I shall watch them
then.

~~~
Baeocystin
You know, this is exactly what my Dad did. He's in his late 80's now, and
retired back in '92\. He job kept him busy 24/7 for most of his career, and he
never had the time to watch TV, when there were so many other, more important
things to do.

Nowadays, he uses my Netflix account waaaay more than I do. And he's catching
up on decades of shows, and quite enjoying himself. He just finished Season 3
of ST:TNG. It's been fun talking to him about episodes I watched back in the
day, too.

------
StevePerkins
Business publications and their core audience only understand business culture
and jargon. So business articles about ESPN focus on historical revenue
numbers, and talk about corporate spin-off as a means of "unlocking value",
etc.

Technical publications and forums like this are largely populated by young
people and early adopters (i.e. the groups most likely to be cord-cutting
anyway), and tend not to be sports fans. So these discussions marvel at the
fact that there are still dinosaurs who haven't cord-cut yet, and suggest that
the remedy is ESPN accelerating migration to a new technical platform.

As someone who actually is an avid sports fan, and socializes with other
sports fans, I'm going to throw out a third factor for your consideration.
The... product... SUCKS... now! It never gets mentioned, because the
"business" audience and the "technical" audience doesn't directly experience
it so much. However, applying Occam's Razor, I think changes to product
quality are usually the largest factor in changes to product fortunes.

ESPN has been on a long, slow shift from "hard" sports coverage to "soft"
entertainment filler for years. However, over the past two years this trend
has jolted toward accelerating at a breathtaking pace. For the core audience
of sports fans, ESPN is basically little more than TMZ now. It's more
discussion of off-field "drama" than actual sport.

Sports fans get tired of fake "QB controversies", manufactured by ESPN talking
heads. They get tired of endless analysis of whether African-American
franchise athletes like RGIII and Russell Wilson are "black enough". Colin
Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem was a legit story for the first
week or two, but after 14 straight weeks of talk ( _none_ of which touched the
underlying substance that Kaepernick is trying to call attention to)... I
think sports fans of all political persuasion are long past done hearing about
it.

TL;DR - ESPN is a sports network. It has dramatically shifted away from
serious sports coverage over the past two years. Their core audience is
growing sour on them, and subscriptions are dropping. I believe that
everything beyond this is just ancillary factors.

~~~
ydt
You're spot on. I'm old enough to remember Sports Center when it was Patrick
and Olberman. It was smart and witty and done with subtlety and clever
cultural references. Now ESPN is 90℅ loudmouth morons yelling at each other
about the manufactured controversy of the week. Anything other than the live
events is unwatchable.

~~~
manyxcxi
I second this wholeheartedly. I used to watch SportsCenter at night before
going to bed and in the morning when I was getting ready all the way back in
high school (97-01).

I don't even watch it for more than 10 minutes a week now. I've gotten the
EXACT highlight I wanted without waiting on a bunch of crap already online,
and the rest of it is just the sports equivalent of political punditry. Just
throwing around 'hot takes' for the sake of having something to say.

For every highlight package there's like 3 sob story human interest pieces
that are so contrived (the swim team was only LOWER MIDDLE CLASS and they sold
hay bales to make it to the state tournament!) that I just get pissed and turn
it off.

Let's not even talk about how many commercials are in the middle of their
sports broadcasts.

ESPN and SC in particular were where you went for the best of the day in a
tight, smart package. You had just enough 'funnies' that something as inane as
a Scott Stuart 'Booya!' stood out, and the human interest pieces were actually
interesting tales of genuine grit and empathy.

I was barely a watcher anymore by the time all the Tim Tebow is Jesus stuff
came out, but that probably pretty much soured me forever.

I don't read the articles, I don't watch the shows, but I do feel that
(generally) their prime sports broadcasts are top notch and everything they do
has a better quality level than FS1.

EDIT: A question, since I'd imagine the VAST MAJORITY of ESPN's subscribers
come from cable package bundling, doesn't it stand to reason that as long as
ESPNs decline isn't in stark contrasts to cable/satellite subscriptions that
it's more of a condemnation of the entire ecosystem?

I, BTW, would absolutely cut the cord except for I love sports, pretty much
all the major US sports. I have kids so going to the bar or a friend's place
to watch the game doesn't always pan out, and sometimes if it's a game I'm
hugely interested in I would rather be at MY house, on MY couch, watching MY
TV and not being interrupted (any more than what 3 kids under 4 can do). Other
times I want the game on in the background while I'm getting stuff done around
the house.

------
te_platt
I cut cable tv 5 years ago after being a heavy user my whole life. The
strangest part was transitioning from watching what was on to choosing what to
watch. At first I thought it would be obviously better but it was
uncomfortable for a while. After a few months the benefits kicked in and now
if I'm ever somewhere with other people watching tv there are a few things
that stand out:

Commercials are incredibly intrusive. I am amazed at what I was willing to put
up with for so long.

Sports commentary is offensively vapid. Actual comment from the Olympic
coverage this last year: "This routine is so difficult it's been called
incredibly difficult". Even allowing for getting a little tongue tied on live
tv it was painfully bad.

Most other commentary is awful. Listening to explanations filtered through
what a reporter is willing to take the time to understand just doesn't compare
when are so many good sources from real experts in so many fields online.

Maybe I'm just to the point where I want to yell at kids to stay off my lawn
but I don't see how the "TV ecosystem" survives much longer.

~~~
nol13
Def some physiology behind that. If some random movie is on TV it's like "oh
cool this is on," if that same movie is available on demand to watch whenever
I want it's "seen it, don't need to watch again."

That and I'm paranoid about everything I watch being tracked and used to
profile me.

~~~
chipperyman573
I definitely agree that I'm more willing to watch something that happens to be
on, but might not watch the same thing on Netflix (same with the radio and
Spotify). Is there any scientific research that proves these thoughts?

~~~
elmigranto
People value potential losses more than potential gains. Loosing $10 will
affect you more intensely than finding it (or at least you judge it to be
before the fact).

So when something is on, there is a "loss" in missing it. When it's on
Netflix, there is only a "gain".

------
quanticle
The problem with ESPN isn't that it's losing subscribers. The problem is that
it's losing subscribers while it's tied into incredibly expensive exclusivity
contracts with sports leagues, like Major League Baseball or the National
Football League. These contracts form the vast majority of ESPN's expenses and
give it the vast majority of its content. This means that, unlike other
companies, or even other media companies, it's not clear how ESPN can easily
and quickly cut costs to match its declining revenue.

~~~
in_cahoots
I've never understood this argument. Contracts are a two-way street; why
should the NFL demand ever-increasing fees for a product that's being watched
by fewer and fewer people? Network rating have been down for years, it's only
recently that ESPN has been following the same trend. At some point the sports
leagues will have to realize that declining viewership means smaller
contracts, it's just a question of whether ESPN can survive until that day.

~~~
quanticle
>I've never understood this argument. Contracts are a two-way street; why
should the NFL demand ever-increasing fees for a product that's being watched
by fewer and fewer people?

Exactly. As bad as this is for ESPN, it's even worse for the NFL. Ticket
prices cannot sustain the league. Merchandising cannot sustain the league. The
only thing that can sustain a league as rich as the NFL is massive television
royalties. I predict that the next few years are going to be very
uncomfortable, as the NFL and TV networks have some very tense negotiations
over how much the product (football games) is actually worth.

~~~
SixSigma
Those $100-330m college stadiums are going to look pretty stupid with 20k
people in an 80k stadium too, if RL audiences shrink the same way.

[http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/college-
foot...](http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/college-footballs-
most-expensive-stadiums/)

~~~
freehunter
Eh, attending a football game and watching one on TV are two different things.
My wife would never watch NASCAR on TV, but she loves going to races. She'd
never watch football on TV, but she loves tailgating and sitting in the
stadium. She absolutely hates baseball, but we're season ticket holders for
our local minor league team.

------
CptJamesCook
On every comment thread about ESPN's subscriber losses, I see comments like
these, which are attached to this Post story:

"I stopped watching both ESPN and the NFL because of their liberal politics."

"What a shock.ESPN pushes it's liberal agenda at every turn alienating half
your audience and are suprised subscribers are canceling in droves."

"Way more than half. Most ESPN viewers are/were male. You'd expect common
sense to prevail at some point and lead them to restrain themselves from
committing ratings suicide, but leftists just can't seem to help it."

"ESPN has driven millions of viewers and subscribers away because of their
incessant shoving of their leftist politics in our faces. Whenever I want to
watch a game on ESPN, I'm instead subjected to lectures about gay "marriage,"
Castro, alleged "police brutality," and Bruce Jenner's constitutional right to
shower with other people's teenage daughters. ESPN can now be easily mistaken
for a rerun of the Democratic National Convention, why bother to watch it?"

"Amazing, not one single word about what is by far the biggest reason for
ESPN's current demise. It has become PMSNBC. Every talking head, show host,
etc. knows that if they do not toe the Liberal fascist party line, they will
be Schillinged."

"ESPN has become a liberal voice in politics. I no longer listen but on watch
sports. It has failed its mission."

The conservative half of our country is not happy with ESPN.

~~~
poink
Is it just me, or does it feel like "conservatives" have finally discovered
the internet? Over the last few months, it feels like friggin _everything_ has
become Obama's fault, or suddenly "leftists" are responsible for _X_.

I'm not trying to be combative, or start a political argument. I have my own
political leanings, sure, but I derive no joy from bitching about it on the
internet. I just know that everything I read on a daily basis has veered to
the right in the last few months.

Is this a cultural shift, or a demographic that was relatively unheard in this
medium asserting itself for the first time? I'm not making a value judgement
either way, just wondering.

(Don't get me wrong, shit like Conservapedia has been around for years now.
But most of the stuff I read, for better or worse, has been pro-social
justice, pro-multiculturalism, etc. until now. Do fewer people buy into that
nowadays? Or is what I'm seeing the result of more people participating?)

~~~
burfog
Remember where conservatives tend to live. Getting anything better than a 28.8
kilobit/second modem isn't easy. Eh, for you city folk, that's a 0.0288
megabit connection. The decimal point is 3 or 4 places to the bad side of what
you are used to getting.

As tolerable internet makes it's way out to rural America, you can expect to
see a change in the average political view on the internet.

~~~
patrickg_zill
Your view is accurate. As of 10 years ago.

I think if you chose a random red state area, you would find that they have
high speed Internet access there.

For instance Atlanta Georgia has a huge concentration of datacenters, went
heavily for Trump, and there is high speed Internet all over the state.

~~~
yardie
Georgia went nominally Trump. Atlanta, Savannah, and smaller cities are still
predominantly blue.

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/georgia](http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/georgia)

------
superquest
It's funny - my couch potato father just retired 3 weeks ago.

After 10 years of trying, I had totally given up teaching him to watch YouTube
or Netflix.

When I called him a few nights back and asked him what he did that day, he
told me he spent _all day_ watching YouTube.

Made me wonder how many other baby boomers might do this once retirement gives
them more energy to try new things ...

~~~
6stringmerc
I wonder if there's a case to introduce Boomers to The AV Club "Wiki
Wormhole"[1] series to show the internet isn't all memes and cats and uh,
things we don't want to show them they can find for themselves if they really
want...

[1] [http://www.avclub.com/features/wiki-
wormhole/](http://www.avclub.com/features/wiki-wormhole/)

------
JumpCrisscross
Macroeconomically, this is good. Between stadiums and college sports and the
Super Bowl we, as Americans, place too much value on sports and direct too
much economic (and political) power to its mechanisms. Do not underestimate
the power of shifting cultural sands.

There was a great article a few years ago, in the _New Yorker_ [1]. It
compared Michael Vick, the exploiter of dogs' eagerness-to-please for profit,
with Michael Vick, the football player trying to break out of a low
socioeconomic bracket by concussing himself for our enjoyment. It was
substitled "how different are dogfighting and football?"

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-
play](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play)

~~~
Trill-I-Am
Why are you sure that this signifies a shifting of cultural capital to more
civically and educationally worthwhile pursuits?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Why are you sure that this signifies a shifting of cultural capital to more
> civically and educationally worthwhile pursuits?_

The logic behind a carbon tax is it dissuades destructive behaviour. Implicit
is that investors will choose better options.

That is not because every carbon-tax redirected dollar will bear angels. It's
just that burning coal is just so bad for us, almost anything else will be a
step up. (Don't mean to make this partisan; feel free to substitute cigarette
taxes or gun restrictions for a carbon tax.)

Concussing (mostly) poor teenagers hoping for a short shot at the big life
followed by guarantees neurological degradation is gladiatoresque in its
macabre.

------
chrisherd
TV is where music was in the early 2000's. Technology, and streaming in
particular, has advanced to such an extent that it's a no brainer. Like music
executives were, TV producers are archaic and they've presided over its demise
because they have had a monopoly which was so good for so long. They've
accepted the way things are as the way they will always be without cognition
of the change they were witnessing.

TV is dying because you have to pay more money to have no control over the
schedule of things you watch, in comparison to streaming.

In the UK, for sports at least, it is even worse. Up to £90/$120 a month for
the full TV package yet I can't even watch the soccer game I want to watch
it's picked for me, it's absurd. Yet I can go online and watch an
international stream of the same game for free.

Spotify emerged and changed the paradigm, the same will happen to TV but with
one critical evolution; the extinction of garbage television.

Programming outside of live television is dead, it makes no sense to persist.
The film and TV series market have been sewn up. The greed of sporting
government/TV corporation has prevented this so far with Live TV but they'll
fall or face the same problem the music industry did, which they already are.

The death of satellite Television is the first step to a better, economically
efficient, world for consumers.

If you follow the natural path, advertisement on Satellite television may be
the most wasteful form of advertisement imaginable. It's a small step to
imagine a world where advertisements around a sporting event are tailored
specifically to an individual, if you subscription is linked to your Facebook
account or Google search history. It therefore must be assumed if more
targeted advertisement could be achieved live events would be subsidised to
reach the appropriate audience.

~~~
SixSigma
Would you rather have advertising that you might be interested in or for soap
powder ?

I assume we'd both rather have zero advertising while trying to watch
television. I do find a real difference between general broadcast TV adverts,
which I just mute, and the advertising on Eurosport (I subscribe to it online
though it is on cable/satellite) which is usually more tailored e.g. when I
watch cycle racing, many of the ads are for cycling equipment, travel, &
sporting goods i general. When I watch motorbike racing it's tyres, motorbikes
& equipment etc.

It's like when buying a magazine. I actively look through the adverts in my
interior design magazine because they are all interior design releated.
Whereas the ads in the TV guide, to pick an example, are actively avoided.

------
capkutay
It speaks more about ESPN as a product. It's a terribly inefficient way to get
info about your favorite sports teams. Most of the time its just 2 talking
heads arguing and going on irrelevant tangents. Its especially bad with their
radio station.

Other than live games, ESPN simply isn't competitive with the other ways
sports fans follow their teams. You can watch highlights on youtube (without
watching an hour long program), follow the good beat writers on their blogs,
and get instant updates and breaking news from twitter.

------
alistproducer2
I finally cut the cord thanks to Kodi, Amazon Instant and a DTV receiver. I
realized last earlier this year that $150/mo. for TV when everyone in my
family was literally watching one channel a piece was a massive waste of
money.

I love it. The only things I watch are things _I_ want to watch. I don't have
my thoughts and opinions shaped by talking heads anymore. Most of all, I'm
spending over $1000/year less. The money I'm saving is enough to pretty much
cover the note on the brand new car I just bought. Can you believe that? I
literally could buy a car with what I was paying to fill my head up with
nonsense.

------
exabrial
This will likely be an unpopular opinion, but it is just my opinion.

In the Midwest, the Kappernick debacle, and the downstream protests from nba
players, lends itself as a figurative rotten egg on network's reputation.
Nobody here disagrees with his motives, but they see his methods as
despicable. Furthermore if people speak out against him, they're accused as
being racist, which they aren't (false dichotomy). All of this ends up
poisoning the brand. Getting constantly accused for something you're not, and
then having to be reminded about it when you just want to relax leads to
viewers migrating elsewhere.

~~~
edmccard
>the Kappernick debacle

Earlier this year, ESPN had 10 million fewer subscribers than they had in
2013; they lost 1.5 million of them between February and May of this year[1].
That was months before Colin Kaepernick's first anthem protest in late August.

[1][http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-1-5-million-
sub...](http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-1-5-million-subscribers-
as-cord-cutting-accelerates-052816)

~~~
heisenbit
There is an accelerating trend of cord cutters. Any event upsetting a specific
subsection of the remaining subscribers triggers a small cutting avalanche.
But focusing on the trigger of the month is missing the root causes. The
reason people cut is that the bundle makes less sense than competing
offerings. The bundle is also so expensive that some loss of content is now
tolerated.

------
strictnein
I'm actually one of the strange ones who's recently added cable tv, but I
would jump at the chance to dump ESPN if I could. Garbage sports entertainment
with the most annoying people imaginable discussing sports like they're
debating federalism.

~~~
cortesoft
Do you just not like sports, or espn in particular?

~~~
strictnein
Not as big of a sports fan as I used to be, but I dislike ESPN in particular.

~~~
6stringmerc
I started enjoying some US sports broadcasts better in two ways: 1) Switch to
SAP for Spanish, or 2) Put on 5.1 surround and turn down Center channel to
Zero, which usually eliminates the Commentators and leaves the ambient crowd
and on-field noise.

------
nickysielicki
Paywall-removed:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20161210041940/https://www.washi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161210041940/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2016/12/07/one-of-disneys-most-popular-brands-has-investors-really-
worried/)

(The "web" link method doesn't work when the title is changed.)

------
nradov
Ultimately the whole concept of a "channel" like ESPN is an unnecessary path
dependence legacy of a time when we only had limited TV bandwith on broadcast
spectrum and analog cable systems. In the long run I expect sports fans to be
purchasing streaming video access directly from teams or leagues, or perhaps
via an aggregator like Apple iTunes / Google Play.

------
Johnny555
It will be interesting to see what happens to the NFL if TV viewership
continues to decline and networks can no longer pay huge amounts for TV
rights, ESPN alone pays around $2B/year.

Can ESPN make up the loss of cable viewers by online subscription fees?

------
jrnichols
"SPN, too, has a streaming app of its own - but it is limited in what cord-
cutters can view there. The app reserves its best programming for traditional
TV subscribers to prevent too many cable customers from migrating away"

This says a lot to me. They are holding on to the cable dinosaur ways and then
crying when people move on to other services.

"Eventually, ESPN may conclude that its subscriber losses are so great that
the only way to retain those customers is to begin offering cable content more
widely on the app, said Jan Dawson, an analyst at the market research firm
Jackdaw Research."

Ding ding ding.

------
pfarnsworth
I just signed up for DirectvNow, so I'll see how I end up using it. I thought
I would watch it more than I would but I've only seen about 2 episodes in 2
weeks.

------
davidgerard
This is a more general problem.

Radio and television finally admit, in 2016, that they’re competing with the
whole vast Internet.

[https://rocknerd.co.uk/2016/09/29/radio-and-television-
final...](https://rocknerd.co.uk/2016/09/29/radio-and-television-finally-
admit-in-2016-that-theyre-competing-with-the-whole-vast-internet/)

I literally had no idea the Olympics had actually started until occasional
posts about it showed up on Tumblr. Nor did I realise it was in Rio until
then.

The media hegemony broke _absolutely the moment_ we could escape them.

------
hbcondo714
I remember taking pride in having cable tv and enjoying watching live sports
on ESPN. Now I've noticed the amount of actual sports coverage has decreased
and in its place is their original content. I used to watch tennis tournaments
on ESPN2 now those matches have also decreased and moved to their online
portal, WatchESPN which still requires a cable tv subscription to access.

If I really want to watch tennis, I need to pay more and subscribe to my cable
tv's sports package that includes The Tennis Channel. Maybe I should take up
Golf, that's already included in my basic cable subscription.

------
relics443
Maybe the issue is that some guy using YouTube Live in his basement, is able
to stream games at a higher quality and with less latency than WatchESPN...

------
szul
Local team blackouts on streaming services like MLB.tv are the only thing
keeping most people (who don't understand proxies and VPNs) from cutting live
TV.

------
bdavisx
As a (almost) 50 year old dinosaur, the costs of ESPN and other sports related
networks are what caused me to cut the cord - over 10 years ago.

------
gabomagno03
Is interesting to see how in countries like mine, where almost everyone buy
everything digital pirated. Services like Netflix are booming.

------
detaro
previous discussion of reports about the Nielsen estimate of ESPNs subscriber
loss:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13076812)

------
bsder
Gee, supply and demand has a really good solution for this last time I
checked.

It's called _LOWER YOUR PRICES_.

Funny how people don't like capitalism very much when it works against them.

~~~
fernly
There are a bunch of legal obligations that make that impossible, at least in
the short run. As somebody noted above, ESPN itself is locked into very
expensive exclusive-carriage contracts with various leagues. And the providers
like Comcast and DirecTV are locked into contracts with ESPN and other content
providers. There's just no price flexibility, and won't be until things get so
bad companies start failing.

~~~
Retra
It's not unheard of for contracts to be renegotiated, especially when it is so
obviously beneficial to all parties involved.

~~~
heisenbit
You are right but my reading of the situation is that there is a systemic
imbalance and counter-parties in the business are also under pressure making
them unwilling and worse unable to be flexible.

Renegotiation can work well if there are deep mutual dependencies e.g.
manufacturing chains. If the cord cutting dynamic accelerates there will be
little time to hammer out such deals. The quickest and fairest route may well
be bankruptcy court.

Sports has been in financial bubble territory for some time. Huge escalating
contracts. Rampant corruption. Often a collapsing phase follows.

------
Pocketsnakes
I thought the ESPN tank was specifically about players kneeling during the
national anthem.

~~~
bdcravens
Perhaps, but ratings drops aren't necessarily directly correlated with
subscriber drops.

------
tmptmp
>>(Don't get me wrong, shit like Conservapedia has been around for years now.
But most of the stuff I read, for better or worse, has been pro-social
justice, pro-multiculturalism, etc. until now. Do fewer people buy into that
nowadays? Or is what I'm seeing the result of more people participating?)

I am a liberal too and multiculturalism is good to some extent but I hope you
don't want to bring Islamic sharia based barbaric culture (e.g. honor killing,
stoning women, throwing gays off buildings) in the name of multiculturalism.

But what I have discovered is the left/liberal failure to address the rational
fear of Islam (the barbaric, vicious ideology) that is grappling the minds of
most sane people.

Liberals and leftists are failing to address these issues. Their response to
this threat of Islam is utterly dishonest: they shun even legitimate criticism
of the barbaric ideology of Islam under the phony reason of
Islamophobia/racism. People have fed up with this.

I don't support Trump to a large extent. But I see that many people see only
Trump making an attempt to address this issue in a meaningful manner. No
surprise, he cashed on it.

Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about
Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M)

~~~
alistproducer2
From tmptmp's profile:

>Am I against Muslims? No, I do have many Muslim friends...

"I have many [insert ethnic group here] friends" is always a red flag. I'm
just trying to figure out how you managed to get 700+ karma on here?

There are most definitely better places to wage your Internet crusade. Please
don't junk up HN with this copypasta drivel.

~~~
grzm
You make a very good point about the thread going off topic (though you're
doing it a bit yourself upthread) and rightly bring it up. Please do so
civilly, though. _Please don 't junk up HN with this copypasta drivel._ isn't
constructive.

~~~
alistproducer2
>though you're doing it a bit yourself upthread

I know, and I do feel a bit guilty lol. I suppose I should've just let his
comment sit in the greys. You're right, there wasn't much point in being
nasty.

