Trouble at ESPN Regarding Racial Relations

Rabid Ranger

2 is better than one
Feb 27, 2002
30,997
11,013
Murica
The reality is ESPN knows they won't lose any viewers if they got rid of both Nichols and Taylor.

Agreed. No one cares. Manufacture or at least encourage a reason to get rid of both them in order to bring in their cheaper replacements.
 

johnjm22

Pseudo Intellectual
Aug 2, 2005
19,353
14,379
Much ado about nothing.

In fact, this story has so little substance, and has been so exaggerated, that it's becoming a story about how little substance it actually has.

I'm outraged, over the outrage over nothing.
 
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majormajor

Registered User
Jun 23, 2018
24,054
28,472
This is a non-story.

This is the sort of thing that companies are supposed to handle internally, as it is a purely internal matter.

Nowadays everyone gathers around and tries to get companies to do this or that with their employees. It is ridiculous that people pressure companies to fire employees, as if we're all going to be better off in a hair-trigger world where one utterance gets you axed. That's dystopic.
 
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Jtown

Registered User
Oct 6, 2010
39,610
19,666
Fairfax, Virginia
what is more problematic than ever is a failure of critical thinking and reading comprehension at the highest levels of journalism.

in what world is Nicholls being racist here.

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols said. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”
“I just want them to go somewhere else — it’s in my contract, by the way; this job is in my contract in writing,”

Nicholls is a minority herself in her area and yet here she is being cast aside after working up the ranks and was venting frustration. anyone with any sort of common sense can see this is not a racial issue.
 
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Rabid Ranger

2 is better than one
Feb 27, 2002
30,997
11,013
Murica
what is more problematic than ever is a failure of critical thinking and reading comprehension at the highest levels of journalism.

in what world is Nicholls being racist here.

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols said. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”
“I just want them to go somewhere else — it’s in my contract, by the way; this job is in my contract in writing,”

Nicholls is a minority herself in her area and yet here she is being cast aside after working up the ranks and was venting frustration. anyone with any sort of common sense can see this is not a racial issue.

It's fitting ESPN is back where hockey is concerned because there's a lot of power plays here. Each party is trying to use the leverage they have at their disposal to get what they want and get ahead. In the end I think no one wins:

* ESPN's trash reputation gets a little bit worse
* Nichols who by all accounts is a consummate professional ends up getting side-lined (pun intended) and her reputation impugned based on a private conversation that while blunt in her assessments can't be categorized as "racist" which is of course one of the current buzzwords
* Taylor, who also seems to be a professional and is staying out of the fray appears to have overplayed her hand and won't have her contract renewed. She may or may not find the grass greener on the other side of the fence wherever she ends up
 
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HisIceness

This is Hurricanes Hockey
Sep 16, 2010
40,051
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Charlotte
In what world does Maria Taylor live in that she turns down $5 million because she thinks she is worth "Stephen A Smith money". Lol ESPN is such a dumpster fire, that network died when Stuart Scott passed .
 
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Shonky

Registered User
Sponsor
Jul 2, 2017
2,326
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Entitlement is thick with some people. Nichols sucks at her job anyway, oh well. No loss.
 

StreetHawk

Registered User
Sep 30, 2017
25,481
9,391
Entitlement is thick with some people. Nichols sucks at her job anyway, oh well. No loss.
She believes that the host position is written into her contract. If that was the case then she should have had her agent talk to ESPN about enforcing her contract and that ESPN would be in breech of the agreement if that was the case. That part seems odds to me.

Didn’t find anything yet on why this conversation she had was recorded? Isn’t it illegal to do that?

Is Nichols going to get extended when her contract is up? Don’t see that happening.

Doesn’t appear that anyone involved in this matter will come out of it unscathed.
 

Fulham

Registered User
Jan 6, 2015
732
757
Cable TV is dead. The only programming where the actual commentary is worth paying for is Inside the NBA with Shaq, and Barkley. Yet they don't follow the Woke PC agenda so Charles is leaving at the end of his contract.

Also how in the world are these interchangeable personalities demanding 7 figure contracts? Nobody tunes in because of them.
 
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StreetHawk

Registered User
Sep 30, 2017
25,481
9,391
Cable TV is dead. The only programming where the actual commentary is worth paying for is Inside the NBA with Shaq, and Barkley. Yet they don't follow the Woke PC agenda so Charles is leaving at the end of his contract.

Also how in the world are these interchangeable personalities demanding 7 figure contracts? Nobody tunes in because of them.
Given what we have seen in the industry almost like pro athletes in that after a certain age and pay scale the network will cut you. O’Toole, Natasha, Wallace, etc. cut from TSN earlier in the year and these are people in their 40’s.

the host of a sports pre game show should be interchangeable. See Marek for Mallard on SN. Don’t think too many people miss Millard.
 

KevFu

Registered User
May 22, 2009
9,006
3,235
Phoenix from Rochester via New Orleans
what is more problematic than ever is a failure of critical thinking and reading comprehension at the highest levels of journalism.

in what world is Nicholls being racist here.

See, there's a key component you're missing here... they're not stupid, failing at critical thinking, or failing to comprehend... It's all deflection.


This reminds me so much of back in like 2007 or 2008, Mets catcher Paul LoDuca called out the media for interviewing all the white guys every night and not talking to the Latino players. And every single one of the media members wrote that "Paul LoDuca calls out his Latino teammates" for not talking to the press. They made "Is there a racial divide the clubhouse" the story, because the actual story was "The guy writing this column doesn't like interviewing the Latino players." So the made LoDuca out to be the bad guy in the story, because THEY were really the bad guy.


ESPN is going to cover that Rachel Nicholls "said something inappropriate" and make her look bad so they don't look bad by following the old TV adage of "one minority at a time"


And the Woj thing is just as dumb, because it's no different than the Nicholls thing, other than he happens to be a white guy. The guy on the throne will cut throats to keep the throne. Doesn't matter who it is coming for you.
 
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Look Up

Don't be a scan tool
Oct 3, 2013
1,292
1,227
Settle it this way. Let SAS do the play by play.
iu
 
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Rabid Ranger

2 is better than one
Feb 27, 2002
30,997
11,013
Murica
See, there's a key component you're missing here... they're not stupid, failing at critical thinking, or failing to comprehend... It's all deflection.


This reminds me so much of back in like 2007 or 2008, Mets catcher Paul LoDuca called out the media for interviewing all the white guys every night and not talking to the Latino players. And every single one of the media members wrote that "Paul LoDuca calls out his Latino teammates" for not talking to the press. They made "Is there a racial divide the clubhouse" the story, because the actual story was "The guy writing this column doesn't like interviewing the Latino players." So the made LoDuca out to be the bad guy in the story, because THEY were really the bad guy.


ESPN is going to cover that Rachel Nicholls "said something inappropriate" and make her look bad so they don't look bad by following the old TV adage of "one minority at a time"


And the Woj thing is just as dumb, because it's no different than the Nicholls thing, other than he happens to be a white guy. The guy on the throne will cut throats to keep the throne. Doesn't matter who it is coming for you.

Right, with both Nichols and Taylor the subtext is actually how terrible ESPN is to work for as a minority (woman and or/POC) but instead of a positive culture change they are engineering the blame game. Hilarious!
 

JelloPuddyPops

"Gotta support the team."
Oct 9, 2018
78
89
Pacific Northwest
Couldn't happen to a better network. Eventually ESPN is going to explode into a supernova and all of the squabbling parties will wonder what happened.

No, it won’t. ESPN will continue to be the dominate sports broadcast entity in the US for the foreseeable future. What entity is gonna take over? Fox Sports? NBC? CBS? Amazon? Maybe in twenty years. Maybe.
 

timorous me

Gristled Veteran
Apr 14, 2010
1,770
2,680
Said this before, their (ESPNs) NBA coverage sucks, even the games they broadcast tend to be boring. TNT is worlds better at everything.

It's unreal that they still employ Mark Jackson as part of their No. 1 crew. He's so bad he was one of the reasons I stopped watching the league (mostly)--and that was years ago! But that seems sort of typical of ESPN; they just keep trotting out really annoying personalities that are mostly reviled (for any soccer fans, just look at Taylor Twellman's consistently prominent role). They're in their own bubble, so certain of themselves and self-obsessed with their own mystique as the "worldwide leader," that I can't help but still worry about what their NHL coverage might turn out to be like.
 

golfortennis

Registered User
Oct 25, 2007
1,878
291
It's unreal that they still employ Mark Jackson as part of their No. 1 crew. He's so bad he was one of the reasons I stopped watching the league (mostly)--and that was years ago! But that seems sort of typical of ESPN; they just keep trotting out really annoying personalities that are mostly reviled (for any soccer fans, just look at Taylor Twellman's consistently prominent role). They're in their own bubble, so certain of themselves and self-obsessed with their own mystique as the "worldwide leader," that I can't help but still worry about what their NHL coverage might turn out to be like.

The mentality is not that ESPN covers big events, but that events are big because ESPN is covering them. They really believe their own crap doesn't stink.
 

golfortennis

Registered User
Oct 25, 2007
1,878
291
See, there's a key component you're missing here... they're not stupid, failing at critical thinking, or failing to comprehend... It's all deflection.


This reminds me so much of back in like 2007 or 2008, Mets catcher Paul LoDuca called out the media for interviewing all the white guys every night and not talking to the Latino players. And every single one of the media members wrote that "Paul LoDuca calls out his Latino teammates" for not talking to the press. They made "Is there a racial divide the clubhouse" the story, because the actual story was "The guy writing this column doesn't like interviewing the Latino players." So the made LoDuca out to be the bad guy in the story, because THEY were really the bad guy.


ESPN is going to cover that Rachel Nicholls "said something inappropriate" and make her look bad so they don't look bad by following the old TV adage of "one minority at a time"


And the Woj thing is just as dumb, because it's no different than the Nicholls thing, other than he happens to be a white guy. The guy on the throne will cut throats to keep the throne. Doesn't matter who it is coming for you.

Yep, the media always covers up for themselves. Go through history you can see examples of them twisting a story to make someone calling them out look bad.
 

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