Finally, someone went and broke down the reality so that even all the self-appointed social media mavens can understand it. S-PIN is a broadcast network you see, one that sells ads to advertisers, and has increasing enshrined pleasing advertisers as its primary mission. Not programming, not reporting, not informing. S-PIN wants the lowest-common denominator, not breaky break-neck tweets out in the wild.
Sports-by-Brooks explains:
You would think that the network would want on-air staff to get breaking sports news out there as soon as possible. But if you are managing with a sales perspective, you know that individual personalities don’t drive revenue at ESPN anymore. All you want to do is keep your clients happy, so why chance having a Tweet go out that, though true, could be damaging to one of ESPN’s broadcast partners and/or advertisers?
This same don’t Tweet the golden goose mentality is behind the NFL’s moves to clamp down on player Tweets, a move that so flummoxed Jeff Elder he almost applied for another Silicon Valley fellowship to have it all explained to him. The NFL is so concerned about the presentation of its product that it has its own broadcast network. The NFL is amazingly profitable precisely because it limits its exposure and controls access to its players. Another common-sense angle, gambling. Otherwise why the emphasis on game-day tweets?
Ultimately, this is not about Twitter, technology, or social media. It is about cash and control. For the last 30 years at least if you wanted sports to deliver lots of the former you needed even more of the latter. Control of the message started to break down in past 10 to 15 years, starting ironically with S-PIN’s irreverent SportsCenter, which began as a smart-ass outsider looking in, and continuing through sports blogs like Brooks and Deadspin, whose motto of “Sports News without Access, Favor, or Discretion” precisely captures what S-PIN, the NFL, the NCAA etc. want to keep at bay.
Given that such entities make their employees rich and famous, how hard to you think it will be to convince them to lay off the 140-character blast texts and keep the system intact?
