Yeah, worst-case scenario this is incoherent and poorly acted but still a joy to watch, which is a pretty high floor. I'm excited despite myself.

It's way more the second reason than the first. The 500,000 people who cancel their cable subscriptions every month aren't doing so because ESPN is too left-wing, they don't want to pay $120 a month for a bundled cable package when they watch only 4 channels.

They've lost 10 million subscribers in the past 3 years and are losing over half a million every month now. Live sports were a moneymaker because advertisers wanted access to a giant and dedicated viewership; if the size of the audience is cut in half adding more games/sports programming isn't really gonna help you.

I feel like the NBA should still be on the upswing due to its international popularity, but yeah, the days of the NFL being able to name its price are probably over after this deal's up.

I'm shocked at how fast the bottom fell out for ESPN. Live sports were considered the only sure bet in cable TV as recently as a few years ago but then people who don't watch sports realized they could watch their shows without paying for a full cable package and people who do watch sports realized that illegal online…

No maybe about it, a bunch of hockey writers were part of the layoffs.

Nah, I think in its own way its more faithful to Chandler's Marlowe than the books themselves.

Nah, Little Sister and Farewell, My Lovely are both outstanding.

Buy better jeans, dude. A pair of broken-in jeans are some of the most comfortable things you can wear

Interesting, I would've guessed Jamarcus Russell would've been the first guy to come to mind but Jolly's a nice deep cut

Wait, the piece cites Bieber as the one who pushed purple drank into wider cultural awareness? What?

Nah, look at how his kid walks into the room– that's not how somebody with a humorless disciplinarian father's gonna act.

lmao dude there is no money to spend on writers, the entire point of this is to increase ad revenue

The new system is secondary to the scrolling thing, which is in place to boost page views and ad revenue. Read between the lines and you can see that the ad-based free online content ecosystem is fucked and there's no easy solutions for anybody.

Real subtext here is that the era of free online content is on its last legs and the scrolling thing is a way to boost page views. I'll live with the comment changes, but it's dispiriting to realize how precarious this all is.

Yeah, but that equals more page views and ad money. The online media infrastructure is fucked and boosting page views comes above catering to a tiny commenting community.

Yep, boosts readership stats. Also it's supposed to be easier for mobile users who can just keep swiping down.

Less than that; typing this reply I can't fit more than 3 words on a line. It reminds me of when I would try to read full-length articles on my tiny nokia phone.

Maybe other people can better judge where the line is when it comes to ripping it off, but it seems to me it'd be hard not to appear pretty similar when you're working off the same public figure.

PWC is one of the Big 4 firms– it's bad publicity, yeah, but it's not affecting their bottom line one iota. Secondly, their names were out there before the ceremony began, and the dude was tweeting on his public account during the ceremony. He doesn't really have any standing from which to sue anyone.