ESPN had no use for Hill on any of its programs after her ill-fated 6 p.m. “SportsCenter” with her former partner, Michael Smith, failed to deliver ratings. She first left Smith behind by quitting the show before the executive in charge of the program, Norby Williamson, had a chance to replace her. She would have been removed.
Nearly one year ago, on Sept. 11, 2017, Hill called Trump “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself [with] other white supremacists.” Though it broke ESPN’s social media rules about commenting on politics unrelated to sports, then-network president John Skipper failed to suspend Hill. The White House called for Hill to be fired.
A little more than a month later, Skipper decided to suspend Hill after she criticized Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ anthem stance by tweeting, “Change happens when advertisers are impacted. If you feel strongly about JJ’s statement, boycott his advertisers.” She was off television for two weeks. ESPN called it a second offense. Hill said she regretted that she had “painted ESPN in an unfair light.”
Pitaro recently said he thinks the biggest misperception of ESPN is that it is political, and now he is putting action behind his words. Though the network’s on-air programming is mostly apolitical, it is hard to ask viewers to disassociate stances they read on social media when ESPN personalities are on TV, radio or writing for its website.
Get woke, go broke.™