An inside look at the bloodbath at Foxsports.com

Pompous Elitist

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I'm no expert on digital media but the following seems like a textbook case of managerial chutzpah, shortsightedness, and miscalculation. As an avid fan, I couldn't care less what Shannon Sharpe or Bayless say. I do really enjoy the opinions and insight of people like Stew Mandel and Bruce Feldman and they are being laid off from their writing jobs (I believe Feldman still has TV work).

From Awful Announcing

The room (and those watching via a stream) were absolutely shocked by the admission that written original content would now have little to no place at Fox Sports and that social news, which was a huge driver of the group’s recent turnaround, was now being signaled out as something to specifically avoid. The reaction from staffers was universal.

“I don’t know how my ears didn’t bleed during the presentation.”

“Everyone who saw the presentation was devastated. Absolutely devastated”

“I knew I didn’t have a job going forward. I just wish he waited closer to the end of people’s contracts or the planned layoffs to tell us we’re all worthless. These last six months have been miserable.”

“He put up examples of content that he said didn’t work for Fox anymore. The writers of that content were IN THE ROOM and a lot of the examples he showed performed quite well. It was more than apparent that Jamie didn’t know what he was doing on the digital side. It was degrading. It was surreal. We were crushed.”

“I don’t think it was done out of malice. When Jamie presents, he thinks he is Don Draper and everyone just thinks he is a genius. He’s not Don Draper, though, and we joke that he’s Donald Trump. He’s totally oblivious.”

“Nobody embraced his vision because it’s ****ing stupid. Anybody other than his lackeys can tell you that. Everything we had built and accomplished was getting thrown away for THIS ****ing guy?”

When told that employees had expressed misgivings on FS1’s content strategy and the new direction with digital, Horowitz replied with “The philosophy at FS1 and and Fox Sports Digital is to super-serve avid sports fans. That is our philosophy.”


http://awfulannouncing.com/fox/jamie-horowitz-fox-sports-digital.html
 

Wow, what a gong show. Sad, sad development over the last decade (and even more so the last 1-2 years) for true sports journalists and reporters. We can scoff at the "dying industry" but good, journalism and good reporting is necessary and important. I hope Fox Sports' "strategy" as laid out in this article bombs.

Go Gophers!!
 

Yes, there is nothing reading a well-researched story (or book) so the evolution/death of column-driven websites like the old ESPN and foxsports has been sad to watch. I don't know the answer. It is the next in a long line of industries that have gone the way of the buggy whip manufacturers (and it isn't too hard to think of many more to come - nobody is really immune to the repurcussions) although I think there is still a market of people willing to pay for thoughtful content. Perhaps the internet will be the great democratizer: cut out the middlemen and go straight to the people with content. Cut out the suits like Horowitz. Cut out the enormous "suit" overhead that these writers and artists really don't need.

Someone like Mandel could probably start a youtube channel and easily gain hundreds of thousands of watchers, maybe millions. Advertisers will pay large sums for access to his show similar to the obscene amounts paid to the likes of Kim Kardashian.
 

Funny how there was such an uproar on social media about ESPN becoming a Left-Wing news site, causing them to lose subscribers and thus making the layoffs necessary. When Fox Sports has massive layoffs you barely hear a word
 

Follow the money trail I guess. Nowadays, that is the benchmark. Advertisement revenues drives it.
 




Check out their website - bizarre to say the least. Maybe Horowitz's plan is so advanced it is beyond my ability to comprehend. Like magic, or the derivation of E=mc^2. Now that this creep Horowitz is history perhaps the writers will have a road back-if the bridge isn't in flames.
 

Funny how there was such an uproar on social media about ESPN becoming a Left-Wing news site, causing them to lose subscribers and thus making the layoffs necessary. When Fox Sports has massive layoffs you barely hear a word
I doubt this is a vast right wing conspiracy, it is more likely that to non-sports fans , or non-sports media, ESPN is sports broadcasting and Foxsports is a wannabe.
 



Mandel tweet today

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