ESPN debuted Around the Horn on November 4, 2002. At the time, Tom Brady had only a single Super Bowl championship under his belt, and the price of gas was $1.36 per gallon. Times have changed, we’ve all grown up, and the final episode of Around the Horn is set to air after 4,953 episodes.
When ESPN announced that the network had decided to cancel Around the Horn back in March, the news was received with mixed reviews. There was love and adoration from those who work in sports media, understanding the importance of a show like Around the Horn, giving a platform to journalists from around the country to debate the hot topics of the day. Others said the program had run its course and hadn’t been the destination it once was, for a litany of reasons.
The show was not cinema. The program was not a Picasso, but it was never meant to be. It’s not that Around the Horn wasn’t a good program—it just wasn’t good enough to keep around for today.
I’ve always considered Around the Horn to be The Sports Reporters with a scoring system that never made sense. When you turn a program featuring journalists into a corny game show, you immediately lose the journalism part of the program. Whose take is better or worse than the other, earning all sorts of ranges of points with the good and negative with the bad, with the ability to mute a panelist with no true reason behind it. Sounds like a madhouse of fun that’s easy to follow.
Plus, isn’t journalism all about speaking or presenting news in the first place without the ability to be ‘muted?’
A New Coat Of Paint On An Old Model Of Debate
The Sports Reporters had no scoring system, no mute button, no game show aspect to it. It was a great program to watch, digest and learn from. It was journalism at it’s best airing for nearly three decades, from 1988 to 2017. The program featured journalists and columnists from around the country debating the sports topics of the week. It aired on Sunday mornings, much like many of its news contemporaries such as Meet the Press or Face the Nation. There was a respect to the time slot, the content, and the personalities of the program.
Around the Horn was a carbon copy of The Sports Reporters on steroids, with a goofy scoring system, all sorts of buttons and sounds with no real format. The added elements turned a sports debate show into a showcase showdown or morning zoo, creating content that was very forgettable and lacked connection with the audience.
The single commonality between Around the Horn and The Sports Reporters is that both programs lasted longer than they probably should have.
What shows like Around the Horn and The Sports Reporters did well was give platforms to many different voices from around the country—using the power of ESPN to showcase people to a new audience and using the program as a recruiting tool to identify the future talent of the ESPN brand. There’s a massive list of talent that ESPN eventually invested in and helped build careers.
While the faces changed and new voices came and went, the reason why Around the Horn was ultimately cut is the same reason why many other programs are removed including The Sports Reporters: they never evolve.
ESPN Has Changed, Around The Horn Hasn’t
2002 was a long time ago. Newspapers, sports radio, and television are no longer the destinations they once were, giving way to blogs, apps, YouTube, and independent creators for news and information. The dawn of podcasting and social media built platforms for so many other voices that Around the Horn would never have considered including on their panels. The consumer shifted away from what was traditionally the destination, forcing the destination to evolve to keep the consumer.
Need an example?
The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network that used to promote sports news and information with journalistic integrity is now licensing out programming on its main channel that causes more headlines for controversy than anything that once fit the ESPN mold. Why? That’s where the consumer is now. Meet the audience where they are—that’s business.
Around the Horn never did that. It played in the same sandbox for nearly a quarter century, and ESPN decided it was time for a change. That’s not harsh or cruel—it’s just a sign of the times.
Shouldn’t it say something to you that Tony Reali found out about the cancellation without any meeting or warning? He said he read about it in the New York Post, then made calls to people “he loved” at ESPN, as he told Dan Patrick earlier this week, only to hear denials and spin about not knowing where that report had come from.
After 25 years, that’s how it goes?
But the ratings! Since the announcement, many in sports media couldn’t make sense of why ESPN would cancel Around the Horn because they claimed it still had great ratings. I’m still waiting for one of those defenders to prove their notion that the ratings are as high as they’ve always been—show the data.
People have been searching for a reason why Around the Horn was canceled since the announcement, attempting to find any explanation from being ‘too woke’ to being ‘toxic.’ The endless banter of turning a sports program cancellation into a political deliberation has been mind-numbing.
For Tony Reali, his understanding of the “why” was not only the simplest but the most correct.
“It’s ending because everything has to end,” Reali said to Barrett Media.
All Good Things Must Come To An End
Father Time is undefeated; everything and everyone ultimately reaches the end of the road. 4,953 episodes is a number to be very proud of—for Tony Reali, ESPN, and everyone who graced the screen of Around the Horn. It launched as a new way of presenting sports debate and experienced a run that many programs on television never come close to achieving. It catapulted fresh faces into stardom and celebrated diversity of opinion, no matter the sex, creed, or color of the orator.
There should be a celebration for its finale because of the platform it created for so many in an industry that, at the time of its inception, needed change.
Its downfall was that the program itself didn’t when it needed to.
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John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
You seem to be a bit hung up on the scoring system, which they frequently mocked themselves. It was a silly gimmick, but endearing. I mean, God forbid anyone have fun with the format, right? You also lament that the show never “evolved.” Evolve from what?! It featured smart, incisive analysis from its rotating cast and usually didn’t take itself too seriously. It was frequently informative as hell. If you and the suits at ESPN think that’s out of style or that there’s no longer a place for it is kind of sad. Then again, this is the network that gave Jason Kelce a late-night talk show. If you’re forced to watch that, ask for a raise.