Over the last several years ESPN has injected politics into its sports coverage, alienating its hard core fans, and pretty much turning off the casual viewer. Some of their on air talent were busy tweeting about politics, rather than sticking to sports. With cord cutting happening at an alarming rate, ESPN is trying to save face. 

 Enter Jimmy Pitaro, who was recently named ESPN’s eighth president.   

Via Variety:

“We are not a political organization. We are a sports-media company. And our focus is on serving the sports fans. There will always be intersections between sports and politics. When that news happens, we are going to cover it.

I will tell you, regarding our employees specifically, we provided them with guidelines. There is general understanding and alignment in terms of what our best path forward is within the company.… I’m a big believer in the value of social media, and we need to engage with our fans through social media in a thoughtful way, and we are doing that. We have taken and will continue to take a very open approach, and what I mean by that is we are going to make sure we are present everywhere our fans are.”

This guy seems to get it, and hopefully he can change the culture at the Mothership. ESPN needs to get back to being a total sports network. We don’t need opinions on anything  but sports, thank you very much. You got hired to cover sports, plain and simple.