ESPN Insider: R.I.P.

It is official. I am no longer a paying member to the ESPN/ABC/Disney Corporation Cash Trough. It has been a rough few weeks for Disney, first Hamas puts them on the defensive and now Mac G has turned of their Insider spigot. Please do not call me a supporter of Hamas either.
I love the Jews.

I have canceled my ESPN Insider subscription. Sports Blogs 1, ESPN 0.

The Mickey Mouse company will still get some of my loot indirectly through my Direct TV cable package but no longer am I shelling out 40+ bones a year to read Chad Ford's newest international prospect crush or Jerry Crasnick's take on the new Drays closer.

I am 100% confident in my decision. I have been trying to do this for the past few years but they kept renewing my subscription automatically.

I am sure 20 of my friends that use my account are going to be disappointed. My advice to them: Life will surely move on without reading Lenny P's Arizona Cardinal's draft recap or Buster Olney's riveting analysis of the Cub's closing woes. Trust me, it will.

Honestly, I can get my info and sports insight opinion without the WWL hostage charges. And No, I will not be texting any Handgun pix to ESPN.com either. Even though it is tempting, Crazy DUKES has cornered that market. And I might add, Very WELL.

The subscriber business model on internet content charges has been an awful decision. It is not sustainable long term and consumers will find equal or better informational outlets for less money. The results are decreased web traffic, diminished time spent on a particular site and less Internet ad revenue. For example, Google's success has largely been defined by offering their services for little or no money and collecting their enormous Ad revenue.

I stopped reading NY Times Opinion pages after they starting charging for their Times Select Membership. It has been about 2 or 3 Friedman Units since I have read a NY Times columnist. The Times has relented sort of, offering Times Select Membership for free to college students.

ESPN continues with this type of behavior. I just read about their heavy handiness to ISPs. From the best Football blog out there. Pro Football Talk.

And we'd love to see the Intergoogle broadcast of the Thursday PTI show. So we waded through the alphabet junkyard on ESPN.com for 10 minutes until we finally decided to do a site search for "PTI." We then were informed that our ISP doesn't support ESPN360, and we were told that we should contact our ISP and let it be known that we don't know what it is, but we want it.

And that suggests to us that Bristol, Inc. is trying to impose a cable-style fee on ISP's throughout the land for the right to view video content online.

Hey, we've got no problem with people making money. But at a time when more and more companies are realizing that free content coupled with advertising is the best way to reach the broadest possible audience, it seems odd to us that ESPN is still trying to milk more and more cash out of the ever-narrowing subset of folks who are willing to pay, directly or indirectly, for Intergoogle material.

I could easily produce a long indepth manifesto on this topic after a few hours of research. However, I am just too lazy on a Friday before a holiday weekend.

For those of you who still want to get your Insider freebie fix on.

Login: panicbombs Password: orioles Expires:June 1, 2007

Yo Stu Scott, Stop Drop, Shut Em Down, Open up Shop!

Mac G

Mac Gs World