ESPN unofficially vacating efforts to conquer local Dallas-Fort Worth sports news
ESPN’s original ambition to overtake the sports pages like the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Dallas Morning News and other local sports news platforms has officially gone bust.
What began 17 years ago in the DFW market with ESPN Dallas radio and ESPNDallas.com is dead.
ESPN made the same mistake countless other organizations do: In an effort to grow the monster it over expanded, and now it shrinks. As a result, more good people will lose their jobs.
Changes at ESPN KESN 103.3 Radio
In a Zoom call on Friday, Aug. 14, employees at KESN 103.3 FM in DFW were told that effective Oct. 8 the station will no longer be run locally by Cumulus.
In October of 2013, Cumulus Media signed a local marketing agreement (LMA) with ESPN to manage KESN/103.3 FM. Cumulus owns and operates KESN’s competitor, 1310 KTCK The Ticket/96.7 FM.
It is expected that ESPN Radio will discontinue all local programming on KESN 103.3 FM and will air national ESPN shows, and broadcasts of games.
“We are giving the station back to them [ESPN Radio],” Dan Bennett said in a phone interview; Bennett is the regional vice president of Cumulus radio in Dallas.
“We had a seven-year agreement with ESPN, and we could not come to an agreement on a new contract. As far as local programming [ending], I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
It is.
KESN had been home to local sports talk show hosts Jean-Jacques Taylor, Steve Dennis, Tim Cowlishaw, and others. Cowlishaw left the show in late July.
A station that with former Fort Worth Star-Telegram sports columnist Randy Galloway as its main host briefly challenged local ratings monster The Ticket in the ratings will essentially function as a place holder for ESPN Radio in a major market.
ESPN Radio said in a statement to the Star-Telegram: “Our relationship with Cumulus in Dallas will be ending in early October. We will announce our plans for KESN-FM shortly. Listeners will continue to hear the top-notch programming they expect to receive from ESPN.”
With rival sports talk stations housed in the same building in downtown Dallas, the pairing was odd from the outset. For obvious reasons, the priority was 1310 The Ticket.
“This was nothing really new,” Bennett said. “You see competing news talk stations all over the country do this.”
After Galloway retired, the station never really tried to be a competitor against The Ticket in the traditional sense.
It was there with original content, but the priority in the building was The Ticket.
Where will the Dallas Mavericks go?
This move will have an impact on the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavs have three years remaining on their contract with KESN to be their radio home.
It is doubtful that the Mavs will want to remain with a station that will have no local presence, or a local sales force.
Come October, DFW will have two sports talk show stations with local programming: The Ticket, and 105.3 The Fan.
Entercom, which owns 105.3 The Fan, has been aggressive in acquiring radio stations that have play-by-play agreements with pro sports franchises of late.
The Fan may not be an ideal landing spot for the Mavs since it already has the radio rights to the Texas Rangers and Dallas Cowboys.
The Ticket carries the Dallas Stars.
A logical landing radio home the Mavs would be 97.1 The Eagle in DFW. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has a good relationship with The Eagle hosts Ben Rogers and Jeff “Skin” Wade. The latter is a member of the Mavs’ local telecasts.
ESPN sticking with national
Assuming ESPN does not continue any local programming in DFW, the move will be consistent with the network’s trend.
Around the turn of the century, ESPN tried to grow its empire by penetrating local markets with specific regional content. It is now increasingly focuses on bolstering its national brand.
In 2009, ESPN launched ESPNDallas.com and hired a staff of reporters who were based in the area to cover all of the local teams, as well as high schools; among the names it hired came from The Dallas Morning News, among them Todd Archer, Tim MacMahon, and Calvin Watkins.
“As much as I like ‘em, newspapers are struggling,” Watkins said in a 2010 interview with GQ about ESPN’s expansion plans into local markets. “They cut our pay. I’m a guy when you cut my pay and then you ask me to do more? Come on.”
Watkins currently works for ... The Dallas Morning News.
ESPN tried this in other large markets such as New York, Boston, Chicago, etc. with the hope that readers and viewers would leave the more established local news platforms, such as the Morning News and Star-Telegram.
The ESPN regional sites existed for a few years before ESPN cut back, and essentially eliminated all full-time staffers there. The few that remained did so in a national capacity.
What happened at ESPNDallas, and so many other similar ventures, is the money is not there to justify what is essentially brand enhancement for the larger platform.
The ESPN regional sites retained their web domains, but serve to funnel web traffic to ESPN.com.
With viewership increasingly scattered and people transitioning to streaming based alternatives for sports, the cable subscription model that ESPN thrived on to become one of the most profitable networks in television has changed forever.
Don’t fool yourself; ESPN still makes money, but just not the way it once did.
The losers in all of this are, of course, the employees, and fans who have one less alternative for local sports content.
ESPN still owns the sports’ world, but unlike Wal-Mart it failed to overtake your hometown as well.
Thank God.
(knock on wood)
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
