ESPN's Ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, got a lot of email during her first week on the job. Most of it was in regards to ESPN Radio's "talent," Colin Cowherd, attacking competitor TheBigLead.com over FCC owned and controlled airwaves. And so Le Anne has responded.
Some of the politer terms my correspondents used to describe Cowherd's behavior were immature, irresponsible, arrogant, malicious, destructive and dumb. I agree.
The official response from ESPN's communication department was: "Our airwaves should not be used for this purpose. We apologize." It is the kind of bland public statement that does little to assuage the anger and distrust of ESPN's audience over an episode like this. I could not tell from that statement how seriously ESPN regarded the offense, so I contacted Traug Keller, senior vice president, ESPN Radio, to get a clearer idea of ESPN's reaction.
Keller responded immediately to my request for an on-the-record statement. "We talked to Colin Cowherd, and we talked to all our radio talent, making it clear that you cannot do this," Keller said Friday. "Our airwaves are a trust, and not to be used to hurt anyone's business. Such attacks are off limits. Zero tolerance. I can't say it any stronger."
That's all good and well. This is a nice par effort for someone on the first week on the job. But it's certainly not the end. At least it shouldn't be. Traug Keller should fire Cowherd. He acted as an agent of ESPN (and Disney) in an illegal action against another company. The dollar figures involved in this episode may be relatively small to ESPN, but not to TheBigLead.com. No matter the dollar figures, this was still an act of corporate sabotage.
Next, the FCC should look into ESPN Radio. It's their airwaves. They should get a full understanding of how and why ESPN Radio decided to abuse the privilege of broadcasting over those airwaves to help destroy a competitive business.
ESPN may not have had a policy about this sort of behavior before, and will likely hide behind that fact as a reason for not giving Cowherd the boot right now. But they probably don't have a policy in writing against "talent" going berserk and burning down the entire city of Pittsburgh in some egomaniacal fit either, and that would probably get one of their guy fired.
Then again, maybe the guys at ESPN have already anticipated such a scenario.
By Trey April 9, 2007 - 9:38 am
Come on, guy. You need to stop with this story. It was funny and light hearted. He even said he had no animosity to the owners of the site, he just wanted to see how far his influence would go.
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By domer.mq April 9, 2007 - 9:59 am
Trey,
It wasn’t funny or light hearted. What’s your business? I’ll see if I can find a way to make it completely impossible to run your business. You know, just for some fun.
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By Bad Kermit April 9, 2007 - 10:52 am
Even your post makes Cowherd a prick, Trey. Even if you think it’s “funny and lighthearted” (“malicious and asinine” is far more accurate), you’re saying he basically just wants his massive ego stroked by showing how many listeners he has. I hope Cowherd is off the air for this.
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By rays15 April 9, 2007 - 11:42 am
Ironically, The Big Lead has probably doubled or tripled its leadership as a result of way more people becoming aware of it. I guess that’s not what Cowherd intended. He was in the wrong, but comparing it to burning down the city of Pittsburgh is pretty extreme, IMO.
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By Trey April 9, 2007 - 11:57 am
What I don’t understand is how you think this is Cowherd trying to eliminate competition. I’d never even heard about this website till Colin mentioned it. If you listen to the broadcast, he says his intention was to see what he could make his listeners do. He even mentioned that the purpose of flooding the site would give the site more viewers and allow them to sell more site ads and increase hit counts. If anything, he INCREASED the business of the site.
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By Bad Kermit April 9, 2007 - 12:20 pm
But the point is, if TBL was those guys’ sole source of income, Coward CUT OFF THAT SOURCE for 2 straight days. Not to mention the fact that what Coward did is ILLEGAL. Maybe it’s just because I have my own blog, but I can’t believe you can’t see this as completely wrong.
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By sleepydad April 9, 2007 - 1:00 pm
Update: Cowherd this morning, at the tail end of his show a few minutes ago, said something to this effect: “Last week I made some remarks about a particular website. Shouldn’t have said it; ill-conceived and I didn’t mean anything against the guys who run the site.”
He didn’t mention the site…
All I got to wonder is.. how many other bloggers would LOVE to get a mention on ESPN?
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By domer.mq April 9, 2007 - 1:17 pm
If HLS got mentioned on ESPN, we’d probably think it was cool. If HLS got hit with a DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK because of some idiot at ESPN, we’d think it very uncool.
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By Trey April 9, 2007 - 2:27 pm
Yeah, but if you were selling ads on this site, you could cash in on traffic numbers because of it.
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By domer.mq April 9, 2007 - 3:23 pm
Trey,
That’s just the point – No. You can’t. If your site goes down b/c of the DNS Attack, you don’t get any revenue from ads that nobody can see. If Cowherd just wanted to bring up a site’s name to drive traffic there, he should have not had them all hit the server at once (to take it down). Any decent server could handle a name drop.
Besides that, The Big Lead was hosted on shared servers. Those servers actually went down and took other sites with them – sites that garner zero publicity because of this attack.
The internet isn’t a bunch of tubes in a truck, Trey.
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By sleepydad April 10, 2007 - 8:42 am
Listen… I didn’t hear Cowherd’s original comments.. I know he can be pretty harsh at times.. but…
based on your definition of DNoS, any mention of a website, intended as publicity or otherwise, that causes a bunch of people to go to that site and which, ultimately, brings that site down temporarily, could be considered DNoS.
Ever heard of the Digg effect?
Are you saying those guys need to get some lawyers? Because their site is responsible for bringing different sites down on a daily basis.
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By domer.mq April 10, 2007 - 10:01 am
Sleepydad,
It’s all about intent. Go and either listen to Cowherd’s instructions or read the various transcriptions of the incident. His intent was to take TheBigLead down.
Cowherd’s already appologized for it. ESPN has already made a policy against such acts. I don’t understand why you and Trey continue to try to rationalize something that the offenders have already admitted was wrong.
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By the Biscuit April 10, 2007 - 9:12 pm
Listen, its the spirit of the thing that has sports bloggers (and many other small sites) up in arms about this. It was a huge company taking out a small one, maliciously and just to show how big it is. Ok Cowherd, not the company.
And yes, in the long run The Big Lead gets lots of press, more traffic, etc. But only bc 1. These guys have the means (financially and otherwise) and 2. Bc people like us get riled up and tell the world about it. So yes, they are better off in the end. But what if they couldn’t come back online (as others could not, I would bet)?
And, if I rob somebody of 100 bucks and their insurance accidentally pays them more, does that make my action ok? No. And especially not if I am working for the huge national “crime company” and I mean to destroy a poor old lady on the corner (even if just meant to do so temporarily).
So its wrong. And I am rambling, and a bit drunk. Now, go visit the big lead.
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By Trey April 11, 2007 - 4:56 pm
I was gonna not post on this again because I dont want to keep riling everyone up, but Biscuit, I think your analogy is a bit off. I would liken what happened more to a cop playing with street lights. He has the means to control the lights and one day decides to mess with the population and messes with the switches that makes one of the lights always red and the other always green. It messes up traffic for a few hours and screws up peoples plans, but they find ways around it, and in the end, no one is really hurt.
Anyway, I love you guys’ blog. Keep up the good work.
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By domer.mq April 11, 2007 - 11:15 pm
Trey, who made ESPN the cops of the media/internet world?
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By The Biscuit April 12, 2007 - 2:52 pm
I am going to ignore the debate at this point and just say to Trey that I agree with him on his final point: we are great.
Thanks Trey!
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