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04/4 2011

DL548: Final Four, Logistics, MLB Openers & Is Mark Cuban Wrong About ESPN Tweeters?

Posted by Dan Levy.

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We start with a conversation about the Final Four and marvel at the fact that the UConn men’s team got to the title game and the women’s team didn’t? You know what I blame…Logistics. (if you haven’t been bombarded with the UPS Logistics ads featuring coaches — especially UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma — you’re one of the lucky ones. I can’t wait for those ads to go away.)

We talk about VCU and Butler and wonder why some media folks suggested the ratings would be higher if VCU were in the game. Don’t we know the Butler players? Isn’t the fact that a team like Butler is in the title game the best story in college basketball in years? Isn’t the UConn run in March (and April) another great story? I’d be shocked if people were turned off by this title-game matchup.

Talkin’ Baseball

If the season ended today…

In all seriousness, should Boston and Tampa be worried at all? The season is a grind, but being in a division where every single game matters, is this the kind of start either team wants? Heck, Boston just lost three games to the defending AL champs, it’s Tampa who lost its star player for a while.

Oh, and which Phillies starter is going to get the first loss? If it’s Blanton, I don’t want to listen to sport talk radio that day.

Is Mark Cuban Wrong About ESPN’s Twitter Problem?

Is Mark Cuban wrong about ESPN’s Twitter issue? Darren Rovell tweeted a link to Cuban’s blog where he wrote, in part, this about ESPN’s tweeting strategy:

ESPN.com reporters havent had a lot of success getting followers on Twitter. Some columnists like Bill Simmons have. The vast majority of their reporters have under 100k followers and many of those, as best I can tell, have under 10k . Which in a nutshell means, the world wide leader in sports doesn’t have much in the way of muscle to drive traffic from twitter users to their sites. That is a risk

Cuban’s point is that straight news isn’t driving traffic back to the website, and some “reporters” have gone more for commentary on their twitter feeds to engage an entice the audience. While I certainly agree with that, I completely disagree with his thought that ESPN doesn’t have a lot of high-follower tweeters. Maybe Cuban’s just not following the right people.

Here’s an impromptu list I put together this morning that has some — but certainly not all — of the ESPN people on Twitter. Most of these people are reporters or news anchors, while some are columnists. Yes, the columnists usually have a bigger following. But look at the bottom list of ESPN news services (again, just a sample). Everyone one of those Twitter feeds sends out breaking information, driving traffic to the site. Also, to compare the Twitter reach of the NFL people, know that Jay Glazer of Fox (the biggest competition to Mort and Schefty) has just over 111k followers, which is an insane amount of followers but nearly 1/5th of Schefter and less than half of Mort. Jason La Canfora, who took over for Schefter at NFLN has over 65,000.

I don’t see how ESPN has a problem on Twitter and I certainly don’t see “many of those” under 10k. Best I can tell.

ESPNer – Followers

NFL

Adam Schefter 528,558
Trey Wingo 414,787
Chris Mortenson 280,868
Michael Smith 80,017

NBA

JA Adande 131,159
Chris Broussard 112,941
Ric Bucher 81,900
Mark Stein 71,249
Chad Ford 63,449
John Hollinger 40,909
True Hoop (Henry Abbott) 25,252
Brian Windhorst 20,628

College Sports

Erin Andrews 432,731
Jay Bilas 96572
Andy Katz 76,901
Pat Forde 64,019
Bruce Feldman 38,753
Mark Schlabach 20,215

MLB

Keith Law 347,264
Buster Olney 156,166
Jayson Stark 65,962
Jerry Crasnick 27,582
Tim Kurkjian 17,870

General Columnists/Hosts

Bill Simmons 1,370,424
Michelle Beadle 238,162
Stephen A Smith 134,223
Jemele Hill 40,133

ESPN Feeds/News Services

ESPN 1,116,391
SPortsNation 845,411
SportsCenter 768,369
ATH 192,033
PTI Show 186,564
ESPNews 54,921
NBA on ESPN 54,591
ESPN_Now 33,631

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Posted on April 4, 2011 at 9:50AM

 

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