This is in addition to Fred's post of 150 ESPN'ers getting the holiday axe, below. I think they're trotting this stuff out in dribs & drabs in an effort to contain the damage / bad P.R.
[AwfulAnnouncing] Big changes are coming to ESPN’s SportsCenter. Executive vice-president (production, executive editor) Norby Williamson took over responsibility for that franchise back in September, and soon afterwards, multiple reports from October and early November indicated ESPN was planning large layoffs that could impact SC, with Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch writing that over 100 staffers would be laid off and "The SportsCenter franchise is expected to be hit hard‐including on-air people." The layoffs that occurred Wednesday affected around 150 staffers, but didn’t hit on-air talent after all.
But it looks like ESPN is still planning to lower its numbers of SportsCenter anchors, and they’re certainly going to be cutting back on the numbers of editions of SportsCenter they air, ending their evening ESPNews editions as of Thursday. Williamson detailed that in a memo posted to the company’s own ESPN Front Row site Wednesday: |