ESPN BECOMING THE “ROCKIN’ OLDIES!” OF SPORTS MEDIA: ADVERTISING AGE’s Larry Dobrow writes this week about ESPN’s aging, meandering “SportsCenter” flagship. In a calm, well-reasoned deconstruction, Dobrow notes that because the sports fan’s once-goto show “no longer bothers to show me the day’s top plays” and even fails to report “who won and who lost, and how“, advertising dollars spent on Sportscenter are dubious at best.

Everyone outside 60-year-old female TV ad buyers esconced in shiny, glass buildings somewhere in San Francisco knows that if you want a score, you check the internet or your cell phone. And if you want highlights, pertinent statistics and analysis, you go to ESPN News.Thanks to ever-advancing technology, ESPN is now clearly losing the younger demographic. The net’s lineup of tired, one-trick ponies doing the SAME schtick every year (Vitale, Corso, Berman, etc.) is causing the WWL to loser younger viewers in droves. Nothing emanating from Bristol is fresh and funny anymore.

ESPN reminds us of the music once heard on your favorite rock n’ roll station, which suddenly ends up on your cheesy, hometown “rockin’ oldies!” radio station. That’s the station you take off your preset and scan over to about once a month (when no one is in the car).

ESPN has always prided itself on innovation, and it did reinvent the sports media business, but Bristol has been bloodied by the advent of the internet - which hath wrought *gasp* the savvy sports media purveyor. It’s time for the network to hire some people who actually understand what the young viewer and internet user want, and implement radical changes. And even then, the battle for the next generation of sports media consumer may already be lost.