Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [336]
I’m not some shill. It’s a big corporation. As I said earlier, it’s an aircraft carrier, not a sailboat. The turning radius is slow and gradual, and sometimes you have to wait for stuff, and you’re, like, “Can’t we cut through the red tape?” But that’s just corporate America. It’s different than a law firm with eight guys or gals. So that is just innate in a company of our size.
JALEN ROSE, Basketball Analyst:
The funny thing about athletes and even entertainers is that they all say the same two things: first, they don’t care what the media says about them—they never watch or read anything about themselves and it doesn’t matter or motivate them at all; and second, it’s not about the money. Well, they’re lying on both.
VENUS WILLIAMS, Tennis Player:
I don’t listen to a lot of what’s said about me, especially if I’m playing. I find it never helps to evaluate someone else’s opinion of you. So when I watch my matches, I usually watch with the sound off. When I do listen, I hardly ever agree with anything they say, to be honest with you. I sometimes think, “Don’t they know the game at all?” There are very few commentators who I actually agree with. But then I’ve never done a commentating job. You probably have to find some way to keep the conversation going, so you might end up saying anything.
Not even ESPN can win them all. Of ESPN’s misfires, there is probably no better example than the great Mobile Phone Runaround of 2006, a case of ESPN trying to branch out in a forest where it was a complete stranger—and so quickly that it promptly got lost. It sounded good: a mobile phone that supplied not only the basics of a telephone but also, for the sports fan, nearly instant access to scores (five whole seconds before they’d appear on a TV screen!), breaking sports news, columnists, and other assorted jock poop. A specially designed phone seemed a handsome creation in black with red buttons. It had a retro aura, but if anything, viewers of ESPN are accustomed to high-tech glitz—bold graphics, futuristic displays.
But design was only a small factor in the phone’s failure—and it definitely did fail. When 240,000 customers are projected for a service, and only 10,000 show up, that’s not success. Disney also had a troubled mobile phone division, and in fiscal year 2006, the combined loss from the Disney and ESPN phones was $135 million.
The story goes that ESPN president George Bodenheimer attended the first Disney board meeting in Orlando, Florida, just after the company had bought Pixar, the innovative animation factory, and spotted Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a hallway. It seemed like a good time to introduce himself. “I am George Bodenheimer,” he said to Jobs. “I run ESPN.” Jobs just looked at him and said nothing other than “Your phone is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever heard,” then turned and walked away.
STEVE BORNSTEIN:
The phone was a stupid idea. I told that to George and to Skipper. It was a big bet that was bound to fail also thought it was off-brand, because I get very angry at my cell phone when it doesn’t work. When the phone doesn’t work—which is every fucking day—I don’t want to be angry at ESPN. I’d rather get angry at Verizon. That’s what I mean by off-brand. I didn’t want to have to call ESPN and say, “From my house to my office, it’s six point six miles, can you just make it so I can make a fucking phone call on my way to work?”
JOHN SKIPPER:
Going into the mobile phone business, there were a few fathers, despite it being a failure, and I was one of them. But there were a number of other people. The strategic planning guys at Disney had identified that going into the mobile phone business might be a good idea. Remember you had a model in Europe and Asia where these things had been big business, and we have the philosophy at ESPN that we are not going to allow ourselves to be flanked