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An open letter to ESPN/ABC Sports President George Bodenheimer:

Dear Mr. Bodenheimer,

As the leader of the self-proclaimed "Worldwide Leader in Sports," not to
mention one of the most powerful men in two industries (sports and
broadcasting), you probably think you don't need much advice in running your
company.

Maybe you're right. After all, ESPN is the dominant force in sports media and
has been for a generation. There are literally millions of sports fans who can't
imagine life without your television channels, your radio network, your website,
your magazine, your award shows and your restaurants.

OK, so the restaurants didn't quite work out so well, but that's still an
impressive record of success you have there. You guys have a hand in every nook
and cranny of sports, and it is an extraordinary empire you lord over, to be
sure.

But like every good empire, it's showing signs of decay, signs you might not be
able or willing to detect from your castle in Bristol, Conn. There is growing
unrest among the sports masses, and it's not just coming from the handful of
nattering nabobs of negativism in sports media that don't work for you.

More and more, fans are expressing dissatisfaction not only with your product,
but with how it's delivered. The sense I get from a lot of people is that they
take in your product not because they want to, but because they have to. You
guys are sort of like a utility, in that everyone has to use your services, but
no one's especially thrilled about it. In the long run, that's not where you
want to be.

The phrase "Must See TV," in its best sense, stems from providing shows and
content that consumers take in because they're compelling, not because they're
forced down their throat.

The easy thing for you to do, of course, would be to sit back, watch the profits
roll in, and dismiss the criticism as so much chirping from the uninformed.

It would be easy, but it would also open the door to competition. One of the
more open secrets in the industry is that once the NBC Universal/Comcast merger
goes through, the Versus channel is going to be molded into something that could
go head-to-head with ESPN.

Being the astute leader you are, I'm guessing that you don't want to give anyone
reason to seek out a worthy, well-funded challenger with the distribution of
Comcast, the leading cable operator.

What follows, George (and I can call you George, right?) is a list of changes –
some subtle, some not – that you might consider making at ESPN.

The Decision should have been 'No':

It's been a little over a week since LeBron James made
known his choice to "take his talents to South Beach" with the Miami Heat this
fall. In case you hadn't noticed, his method of delivering The Decision --
namely a one-hour special -- didn't go over so well.

But while James has understandably taken most of the, um, heat, your channel,
which gave him the forum to deliver the news, as it were, has been taking on the
chin too, albeit to a lesser degree.

And while the numbers (10 million viewers) suggest that you did the right thing,
people in your newsroom would tell you that the James special might turn out to
be the most embarrassing moment in the more than 30-year history of ESPN.

How bad was The Decision, from both yours and James' vantage point? Consider
these words, uttered earlier this week: "But this decision was
ill?conceived, barely produced and poorly executed."

That didn't come from a Cleveland columnist or a New York media critic, but from
NBA commissioner David Stern, the ultimate marketer, and while the
"ill-conceived" part clearly was aimed at James, the rest was likely fired right
at your company.

Just to recap: You cannot hand over an hour of time to someone that you cover.
You cannot let that person dictate where the proceeds from that hour will go,
and you cannot let that person make the call on who will interview him.

At some point, George, you, and not one of your lieutenants, need to come
forward and apologize for what happened last Thursday and pledge that, under
your watch, it will never happen again, ratings be damned.

Bring back "SportsCenter":

You say "SportsCenter" never went anywhere? You'd have a hard time convincing
anyone who watched the show in the 1980s or '90s that the current edition has
any connection to what they used to watch, besides the name.

"SportsCenter" is the rock upon which your church is built, the first place, in
theory, where people tune in to find out what happened. However, its reputation
has been sullied by the fact that it too often has become a promotional vehicle
for whatever event is coming up. To wit, the three hours before The Decision.

How about if you stick to news and highlights, get rid of the product-sponsored
segment (a la the "Coors Light Six-Pack") and leave the extraneous
interpretations and commentaries to the sport-intensive shows ("NFL Live,"
"Baseball Tonight," et al)?

Oh, and lose the screaming guitar music beds underneath the highlights. This
ain't MTV.

Lose the attitude:

NFL reporter John Clayton is one of the best in the business, and provides
quality information to viewers/listeners on a regular basis. So, why should such
a respected man be regularly subjected to having someone yell insults at him?

This is standard practice on "SportsCenter" and all the sport-intensive shows,
where every subject becomes a debate topic and the screaming commences between
analysts after the host throws out the question.

It turns those shows into low-rent versions of CNN's "Crossfire," and if we're
lucky, Jon Stewart will come on and kill those shows the way he did that
monstrosity.

Branding is for sodas and cows, not sports channels:

We know that the letters in ESPN don't stand for anything anymore, but that
hasn't stopped some wags from imagining that it means Endlessly Self Promoting
Network.

In hindsight, we should have known that we were in for the relentless
attempt to turn ESPN into a brand 15 years ago when Disney, the ultimate in self
promotion, bought ABC, your parent company.

On the morning the sale was announced, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner went on
"Good Morning America" to affirm that the most important part of the sale was
ESPN.

In the nearly 12 years since you completed your meteoric rise from the mailroom
to the boardroom, George, you've endorsed the approach to never miss a chance to
hype your company, often attempting to make ESPN more important than the sports
it covers.

For goodness sakes, you wiped out the most prestigious name in sportscasting,
ABC Sports, a name that was home to such revered broadcasters as Jim McKay,
Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel and Howard Cosell, and replaced it with ESPN's.

This strategy may be smart marketing, but it's wearying, because sports aren't a
commodity like sodas or hamburgers. Or at least they shouldn't be.

Leave the manufacturing to GM or Honda:

Before last Thursday, the previous nadir at ESPN was the November, 2005 days
where former New York Mets general manager Steve Phillips, who currently works
here at FanHouse, pretended to be the GM of different teams and fielded
questions about their respective needs from real reporters.

Come to think of it, that's really no worse than the ESPY Awards, the
annual attempt to marry the red carpet with the red zone, as if the two need to
be joined.

By chance, who was in the meeting when poker was deemed to be a "sport"
warranting extensive time? And why, when the suggestion was made, didn't
someone, preferably you, roll up a newspaper, swat that person on the nose and
say, 'No"?

And then there are the movies and series like "Playmakers", "3", the Yankees'
miniseries, the Pete Rose film and the upcoming Vince Lombardi biopic starring
Robert DeNiro. With all the naturally occurring drama inherent in sports, why do
you perceive the need to create some?

You're not the only game in town. Don't act like you are.

Did you know that the Arena Football League is back in business with games going
on? And did you know that the Chicago Blackhawks recently won the Stanley Cup
for the first time in nearly 50 years?

Fans of both the AFL and the NHL wouldn't be surprised to hear that you didn't
know either fact, given the paucity of their highlights on your air. From the
outside, it appears that if a sport doesn't have a relationship with ESPN, it
doesn't merit a mention.

Oh, and, from a journalist's perspective, there are few more insulting phrases
heard on sports news broadcasts than "ESPN's (fill in name here) has confirmed
that..."

The implication that flows from that statement is that news isn't news unless
ESPN says it is or unless one of its reporters who has been beaten on a story
has caught up. It's really bad form.

Well, George, that's about it from here, There's probably more, but your time is
valuable. There's a house on a block in Uzbekistan that doesn't get ESPN 3-D and
you'll want to do whatever you can to rectify that ASAP.

Do me a favor, though: Just don't forget about keeping your American audience
happy too, huh?

Sincerely,

Your biggest fan

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