Follow me on Twitter Follow @TheJeremyLaura
When Yzerman left Detroit, it was rough. Talking to a former player that fall I found out that several within the organization didn’t take it well at all. The reality was that Holland had no real interest in moving on from GM. We found out how real that desire to keep doing the work was for KH as he moved on to Edmonton quickly after Yzerman was given the title.
Some of us have seen this happen in the workplace. Your upward mobility is held back by someone who isn’t going to move on unless forced. Well, what if that company called you for help years after you left and were successful creating an ad consultant agency? It happened quietly this week for ESPN’s parent company. Two former candidates for the CEO position were brought in. One of the specific tasks was to start the move of ESPN to full streaming.
I’ve talked about this, but things got weirder. Someone internally leaked information that once Disney buys Hulu, they are merging it with Disney. It sounds like ESPN will become a tab in the app as well. All this as Bally is working on cutting ties with as many markets as possible. Just like Youtube TV, other stations are being prepped to leave cable and regular tv (ABC) all to join in this bizarre conglomerate that has raised its sub rates twice this year.
The ESPN/HULU/Disney bundle returned at 12.99 (which is an ad tier). The dirty secret, the ad tier has more potential revenue than the ad free tier. Youtube has started shutting down ad blockers and limits users to 2 videos if they use one.
Now, all the way back around. Where do we watch Detroit Red Wings games? Bally - bankrupt. ESPN and ESPN3 - merging into streaming. USA and TNT - merging into streaming. All of this could be in place in 6 months or less. We don’t actually know how the season will start.
The earnings report is next Wednesday and more of these announcements are going to be made. One very good source had pages off of internal documents that showed some other issues that I’m not getting into. In the weirdness, Samsung’s newer smart tv has a Netflix, a Youtube, an Amazon and a Disney button on the remote. No Hulu or anyone else.
We are going to find out a lot numbers wise, and I’ll put a warning on the article. My hope is that Detroit is on top of all of this. The NFL already has a deal with Youtube. DirecTV is trying to move people off of satellite and into an app (it just showed up on our TV). Buckle up, if you weren’t around for the Big 10 shut down with Dish it was not pleasant (about 20 years ago).