Le Batard ends long run at ESPN with humor, emotion and gratitude
Miami-based ESPN personality Dan Le Batard ended his eight-year run on the network Monday, signing off for the last time on both ESPN Radio's Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz and the televised Highly Questionable.
He did so with a message spoken directly to longtime fans wondering what's next for Le Batard and his show family, fighting back emotion the longer he talked.
“We could not be more grateful for your support,” he said on the `Big Suey' segment that preceded the two-hour national radio show. “That gratitude is mountainous and real and forever. It's the primary reason we're leaving. You've given us the freedom to know we can. We know somehow you'll follow us. We know the way you care about us — giving us permission to be different, demanding it of us, and then rewarding us for it.
“We approach this scary cliff together to take quite the leap of faith. Are you ready to jump with us?” he asked fans. “If you've been paying close attention, we've been ready to take this leap for awhile. We know the strength of the army that stands at attention at our back. I promise you, we're gong to show you how much we don't take that for granted. I can't wait to take you on this fight, and this flight, with us.”
Le Batard and ESPN mutually agreed to part ways last month after eight years together.
The Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz and the familiar `Shipping Container' will continue — beginning Tuesday, the show hoped, if logistics could be worked out — as an independent enterprise available digitally via the show's podcast
as part of the Le Batard And Friends network.
“During our free agency,” as Le Batard put it.
Main producer Mike Ryan said the show hopes to continue independently “as early as tomorrow [Tuesday],” but added, “Please be patient if some latency related issues pop up in the early going” of the transition.
The show is in talks to find a permanent major hosting platform to replace ESPN but it is believed no announcement is imminent.
Monday's ending was a long time coming.
“They have slowly erased us,” Le Batard said Monday, of ESPN.
The network, under new leadership, moved to a more sports-only format at odds with Le Batard's bent toward pop culture, nonsense and, sometimes, political talk.
ESPN cut Le Batard's national radio show from three hours to two, moved it to subscription-only ESPN+, and more recently fired popular producer Chris Cote without Dan's approval, which the host referred to as a last straw. Le Batard in turn defied ESPN by hiring Cote out of his own pocket.
It was mentioned on-air Monday that a new website will be in the show's postESPN future, and that the show's popular `Mas Miami' fan events will resume when pandemic-related guidelines allow.
The final two-hour national show did not disappoint long-time fans.
It began with an extended, epic, 12-minute introduction to the usually short `Stat of the Day' segment — the very type of wild detour ESPN executive grew to dislike.
It ended, fittingly, with Tuesday co-host Greg Cote caught on the hard network out, a popular show staple.
Too bad on that, though, as a source revealed that Cote, before being cut off, was about to reveal the longawaited news on where the show would turn up next.
Stay tuned.