ESPN Cancels ‘Barstool Van Talk’ Further Showing Us That They’re Lost
ESPN doesn’t even know what ESPN is.
Less than two weeks ago the world learned that ESPN was bringing Barstool Sports’ PFT Commenter, Big Cat and their producer Hank to the mothership for a 30 minute show called ‘Barstool Van Talk.’ Today ESPN announced that the show has been cancelled after just one episode.
When the show was announced, most realized what ESPN was doing, whether they agreed with it or not. After the Jemele Hill situation and just about every single person on the planet recognizing that they lean left politically, ESPN went out and signed two of the biggest names from one of the more controversial, non-censored and opinionated sports/lifestyle websites out there.
In the simplest of terms Barstool Sports is the exact, if not anti, ESPN.
It was a very surprising move and in looking at it, it was nothing but a win-win situation for Barstool.
Here’s the statement about cancelling the show:
Sidenote, ESPN welcomed back Jemele Hill today after her two week paid suspension.
This statement is odd from ESPN President John Skipper. He clearly had no idea what Barstool was really about or he had absolutely no say in the move to partner with them. Either way, he looks foolish.
He literally states “I erred in assuming we could distance our efforts from the Barstool site and its content.” In reading between the lines, Skipper and the rest of the team at ESPN thought that by signing two of the biggest online personalities on the Internet to a 1 AM time slot show on ESPN 2 then Big Cat and PFT would all of the sudden not be Big Cat and PFT. Big Cat and PFT are Barstool content, the most listened and watched on the entire website.
ESPN also thought that by putting the two biggest Barstool personalities on ESPN would keep the cult-like following of Barstool away from ESPN? You can’t take the №1 sports podcast on the planet and its two hosts and simply distance yourself from Barstool; it’s not going to happen.
Whether you hate Barstool or love Barstool there is absolutely no denying that they don’t change for anyone, not even the biggest sports network on the planet. Barstool has become one of the more powerful and followed platforms on the Internet because they stick to their guns. They start fires, they take on fires but at the end of the day you know what Barstool is; it’s been exactly the same for years. Some people will agree with that approach while others hate it, but that’s how Barstool has become what it is today.
Now there is no way we can talk about the show’s cancellation without mentioning Sam Ponder who put Barstool, specifically Big Cat and founder Dave Portnoy, on blast when the partnership was announced. The NFL Sunday Countdown co-host pointed out a 2014 blog post on the site which had a soundbite of Portnoy telling her to ‘go f — herself’ and calling her a ‘slut.’
Ponder reportedly wasn’t the only one inside the company that didn’t agree with the partnership and one would assume backlash within the company had a huge role in the show’s cancellation.
Below is Portnoy addressing the news today in an emergency press conference. You’ll notice that he states that he totally understand why ESPN cancelled the show. After all, ESPN is owned by Disney and is worth $40 billion with share owners and has a ton on the line when they make any sort of move.
Our own Connor Ulrey sums it up pretty well:
So, in summary of the cancellation, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Is it surprising the show lasted just one episode? Yes. On the other hand, the first episode drew in 88,000 viewers not including streams. That’s 88,000 actual televisions turned on at 1:00 AM watching Big Cat and PFT on ESPN 2 with their own show and most importantly being themselves. Barstool fans tuned in and they tuned in with pretty strong numbers.
With the cancellation and statement, ESPN showed the world that not only is it not going to bend or try something new for more than one 30 minute episode, but that it doesn’t know what it is right now. Well, other than a left-leaning network that shows some sports highlights.
Some may say that its unknown identity is fine as media is changing drastically, but the network is running out of time at discovering what the hell it really is these days and what it will be moving forward. Is it a sports network or a political network that shows highlights?
ESPN won’t ever make everyone happy, but right now they are one extremely unstable ground and lost.
As we wrap this up, I keep coming to the thought that neither party here made a mistake outside of ESPN cancelling the show after one episode, but they’ll live. I also keep coming back to the fact that both of these networks are ‘escapes from the real world’ for most people. Barstool remains an escape while the other, not so much.
