Jemele Hill’s ‘controversy’ expands troubles at ESPN

TV host should be fired

LOS ANGELES, Sept 14, (Agencies): Hours after the White House called for her to be fired Wednesday, Jemele Hill was in her regular seat on the 6:00 pm ET edition of ESPN’s “SportsCenter”. She made no reference to the controversy that a day earlier had compelled her own network to publicly censure her. She and co-host Michael Smith led off the show with a report on the Cleveland Indians’ 21-game winning streak.

That Hill was on the air with Smith as usual was an indicator of the line that ESPN is attempting to walk after the host took to Twitter Monday to call President Donald Trump “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists”. Right-leaning critics have become increasingly outspoken about a perceived liberal bias at the cable channel at the same time that ESPN faces significant declines in ratings and subscriber numbers. Those losses have far more to do with shifts in television viewing habits than with ESPN employees’ Twitter accounts. But the channel’s handling of the Hill controversy indicates that it is wary of alienating viewers anywhere on the cultural spectrum as it attempts to evolve.

“They’re nervous”, says Windy Dees, a sports-administration professor at the University of Miami. “They have to be. They’re hemorrhaging viewers left and right”.

Hill and Smith haven’t helped reverse those weak ratings. In February, the hosts of ESPN2’s “His and Hers” migrated to the core channel, taking over the 6:00 pm “SportsCenter” broadcast and reinventing it as a hybrid news-debate show in which the hosts argue sports opinions and the occasional non-sports opinion. Sports Media Watch reported in March that viewership three months after the launch of “SC6” — as the 6:00 pm show was rebranded — was down 4%.

“They are in a state of decline”, Dees says of ESPN. “So any situation that happens in the future, whether it’s the Jemele Hill situation or something else, is going to have its impact magnified”.

Hill and Smith have not provided ESPN the same ratings boost that colleague Scott Van Pelt has since being installed in the 12:00 am ET “SportsCenter” last year, but they have seen their profiles increase dramatically. They have become frequent targets on social media and in the conservative press of complaints (often on Twitter employing vulgar or offensive language) that ESPN has allowed a left-leaning social and political stance to creep into its programming. Being interviewed in April on WABC New York — shortly after ESPN initiated a round of job cuts that affected more than 100 employees — veteran “SportsCenter” anchor Linda Cohn was asked if the injection of non-sports issues into ESPN’s coverage had negatively affected ratings.

“That is definitely a percentage of it”, she said. “I don’t know how big a percentage. But if anyone wants to ignore that fact, they’re blind”.

But in an era in which the President of the United States equates Nazis with the counter-protestors opposing Nazis, and in which athletes from Colin Kaepernick to LeBron James have brought protests of violence against African-Americans into the playing arena, ignoring politics and social issues may not be a reasonable expectation for ESPN or any other sports broadcaster.

“ESPN has been criticized since long before for being too political as a sports network”, says Dees. “Sports and politics are always going to intertwine. You’re not going to dissect politics from sports. Sports have been a part of politics since the creation of the Olympics”.

The comment by press secretary Sarah Sanders came in response to a tweet by ESPN host Jemele Hill, who this week launched a series of Twitter attacks on the president.

Sanders said the remarks by Hill were “outrageous” and “certainly something that I think is a fire-able offense by ESPN”.

In a series of tweets this week, Hill called Trump “the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime”.

Hill’s comments were the latest fallout from Trump’s mixed messages about violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of a counter-protester.

The remarks also appeared to escalate tensions between conservatives and the sports network which some have accused of being too political.

Also:

LOS ANGELES: Netflix has renewed “Atypical” for Season 2, the streaming service announced Wednesday.

The series, which launched on Aug 11, is described as coming of age story that follows Sam (Keir Gilchrist), an 18-yearold on the autistic spectrum as he searches for love and independence. Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Sam’s mother, Elsa.

Michael Rapaport plays Sam’s father, Doug. Brigette Lundy-Paine plays Sam’s scrappy sister, Casey, and Amy Okuda plays his therapist, Julia. Season 1 was eight episodes, while Season 2 will be 10.

The series was created, written and executive produced by Robia Rashid.

Seth Gordon also executives produces and directed two episodes in the first season.

Mary Rohlich also executive produces alongside Rashid and Gordon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh serves as a producer. Michelle

Dean, who received her PhD from UCLA and worked at the UCLA Center for Autism and Research and Treatment before joining the faculty of CSU Channel Island, was also brought into the production to help guide an accurate depiction of autism spectrum disorder. The series is produced by Sony Pictures Television for Netflix.