February 04, 2004
ESPN Blinks
It didn't take long before the NFL began publicly expressing its displeasure over the storylines in Playmakers, the weekly television drama on ESPN that told the story of a fictional professional football team. Today, after taking the heat for a couple of months, ESPN gave in to the inevitable and cancelled the popular series:
"Many considerations went into this decision, not the least of which was the reaction from a longtime and valued partner," ESPN VP of programming and production Mark Shapiro said.
"Playmakers" garnered critical praise and was watched by an average of 2 million people each week, five times the ratings the network drew for that time slot the previous year.
But as much money as ESPN will lose by having to fill the void left by Playmakers, it's a pittance compared to the billions that would have been at risk had the cable network continued to thumb its nose at the NFL.
While I watched Playmakers every week, and the show was obviously superior to most of what passes for television drama these days, I'm not feeling any great sense of loss -- certainly not the way I felt when ABC cancelled Sports Night. But in the wake of this weekend's halftime debacle, it's easy to see that if the NFL has an image problem, Playmakers should have been the least of its worries.
UPDATE: ESPN.com has posted a piece by Darren Rovell, one that quotes Ray Lewis expressing his pleasure that the show was cancelled, yet neglecting to mention that one of the show's storylines concerned a player who helped a friend avoid a murder rap -- a plot line uncomfortably close to Lewis' real life troubles at the Super Bowl a couple of years back.
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05:12 PM