Bryan Curtis, David Shoemaker question ESPN ‘eventizing’ its layoffs

Another summer, another round of ESPN layoffs that has drawn outsized scrutiny and commentary from across the industry.

While Ryan Clark, Karl Ravech, other on-air talent, and dozens of behind-the-scenes support staff walk away from the network, the larger factors at play and the fallout from the moves have become their own story.

Part of this is because ESPN is a very forward-facing, accessible arm of Disney’s media behemoth; part is, as The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker noted in the latest episode of The Press Box podcast, that the Worldwide Leader has seemingly chosen to “eventize” its own talent cuts.

“If I were a decision-maker at ESPN, I would, not just from a moral perspective, get away from this eventizing firing,” Shoemaker said. “I know it’s not deliberate necessarily, whatever. But now, ESPN layoffs have been targeted and politicized and it becomes this much bigger, more ridiculous issue than it needs to be. From ESPN’s point of view, they would be really smart to get away from people scoring political points on the backs of their unnecessary layoffs.”

The hosts suggested the total cost savings from all the moves is likely less than $10 million, and argued it hurts ESPN’s reputation and leaves the network open to criticism when it makes all these moves at once. And while they also noted it can be hard on individual talent to bear the weight of such moves themselves, ESPN saw this round coming a mile away.

“They’ve been much more canny about just quietly letting contracts expire, and not taking this weird PR hit, not ‘eventizing’ it … but I think the thing that happens here is, they bought the NFL Network last year, and the deal got approved in January,” Curtis explained.

“And then that starts the clock, because you’re saying, ‘OK, are we going to employ all these people as NFL training camp starts here in a number of days? Are we still going to have dual staffs?’ Because these layoffs mostly impact behind-the-scenes people at NFL Network in L.A. People that you and I could have guessed were in jeopardy as soon as the deal went through.”

This time, ESPN also stepped in it by botching its communication with talent such as Clark and Ravech, who both found out they were being let go in part due to media inquiries.

But as has been reported before, Disney’s (and therefore ESPN’s) fiscal year ends in late September or early October each year. For ESPN, this nicely lines up with the start of the football season, which is the most important part of its calendar. So layoffs tend to come toward the end of the summer.

Perhaps, as The Press Box hosts suggested, ESPN could be more strategic about the communications around these moves so as to avoid backlash and confusion. The narrative has already begun, for instance, that Clark was pushed out for an on-air argument with Peter Schrager nearly a year ago, while Cam Newton is gone because of a recent beef with Stephen A. Smith. Plenty of others believe the layoffs are coming so that ESPN can “afford” to pay Pat McAfee.

Whether that is all entirely accurate or not hardly matters when it generates an outsized focus on the company and contributes to audiences’ preconceived ideas about what ESPN represents.

For now, the timing of the company’s accounting reports seems to outweigh its control of the narrative.