One of my all-time favorite jokes (which may or may not be the untold “joke” from Big Shield) is a simple one that was told by David Letterman during a week of shows from Las Vegas in 1987.
It went like this. (And, yes, I found the episode on YouTube.)
“Something really odd happened to me this morning,” Letterman said. “I’m coming here to the hotel . . and I see this guy standing in front of the casino. Seemed like a nice enough guy. I don’t know, like mid 30s or so. And he’s kind of depressed, and he comes up to me, and he says, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Letterman, can I borrow from you like $100?’ He said, ‘Because my wife is not well, and I need the $100 for some medicine, and hopefully, thank God, maybe she’ll improve if we have the money to buy the medicine.’
“I said, ‘Geez, you know, of course I would love to help you out. But what guarantee do I have now, if I give you the 100 bucks, that you won’t take it right there into the casino and spend it on gambling? Just blow it completely? Gamble it away?’
“And the guy looks at me and he says, ‘Oh, I got gambling money.’”
ESPN, which has the money to pay many millions of dollars per year to select talent, is showing multiple other employees the door, based on money. And ESPN is specifically blaming the move on the decision to acquire NFL Network.
ESPN poobah Jimmy Pitaro sent a memo to employees on Tuesday morning explaining the ongoing turmoil.
“Over the past several months, we’ve made significant progress integrating the NFL assets that we acquired into ESPN,” Pitaro wrote, via Joe Reedy of the Associated Press. “Throughout this process, we have taken the time to carefully evaluate our collective teams, resources and organizational structure to best position us for the future. As a result, we had to make some difficult decisions about job impacts that we will be communicating today.
“While most of the job impacts are tied to the acquisition, we will also notify colleagues in other parts of the company today that their positions have been impacted. We are committed to treating employees with compassion and respect and to providing support as they navigate this transition.”
The “compassion and respect” portion of the memo didn’t register with the in-house chatterboxes who shared information about several of the moves with the media. Which resulted in multiple employees finding out that they’d be former employees from outsiders, or (in the case of Ryan Clark) learning of their fate while on the air.
It is, as previously mentioned, a crappy way to run a media company. Beyond the P.R. and H.R. misadventures that continue to unfold, the fact remains that, while ESPN doesn’t have the money to pay a long list that includes more than a few long-time employees, it’s got gambling money.
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