Whether you love Caitlyn Jenner or hate Caitlyn Jenner, or lack a strong opinion, most people will agree that she’s been extremely over-exposed. Jenner has certainly reached Kardashian levels of over-promotion. Perhaps the only individual more currently force fed to the American public is Amy Schumer.
It’s hard to remember anybody being as obnoxiously over-promoted as Schumer is. It’s also challenging to recall a film that’s been as annoyingly over-promoted as “Trainwreck.” Caitlyn Jenner, her ESPY award, and her upcoming reality show aren’t far behind Schumer/Trainwreck when it comes to pervasive publicity. Turns out there’s a specific reason for that.
According to the Daily Mail:
Representatives of Caitlyn Jenner reportedly negotiated her ESPYs award in exchange for PR plugs in her upcoming TV series and threatened to pull out of her 20/20 interview.
Reports have emerged that Jenner’s team approached ESPN with the idea that she win the Arthur Ashe Courage Award just as details were being finalized for her 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC.
ABC and ESPN are both owned by Disney, and ABC aired Wednesday’s awards ceremony.
Of course, the Mail has been wrong plenty of times before, so if this claim gets discredited, it wouldn’t be extremely shocking.
But on the other hand, this makes perfect sense. 2015 was the first year that ABC televised the ESPYs instead of ESPN, so you know that the network was under tremendous pressure to deliver huge ratings numbers. You also know that the ESPYs is something ESPN created in order to fill time on the slowest sports news day of the year. July is the slowest month by far for sports, and by this time of year, football, hockey, college sports and basketball fans are all weary of this annual drought. Right now, FOX Sports has actually made some progress towards competing with ESPN; especially this month.
The self-ascribed “World Wide Leader” airs the exceedingly self-indulgent and overly self-absorbed program on the one day each calendar year that no sports are scheduled. With no competition, the ESPYs essentially gets to set its own rules and invent fake controversies. Also, media access to this year’s ESPYs was a lot more restrictive than in years past. Hence coverage of the awards show was much more controlled than usual. Don’t forget the timing of the Jenner award announcement either. ESPN sent out the press release announcing the Caitlyn Jenner ESPY within hours of Vanity Fair publishing their cover story online.
Bristol’s attention grabbing tactics were obvious to any Media Studies 101 student.
‘It was a brilliant move because the executives at ESPN loved the idea, and immediately began making sure it got done,’ a source familiar with the negotiations told RadarOnline.
So when Bob Costas described the Caitlyn Jenner ESPY award as “a crass exploitation play” back on June 10th, it wasn’t just a strong opinion. The award was literally and exactly that.
Here’s what Costas said on the Dan Patrick show:
“It strikes me that awarding the Arthur Ashe Award to Caitlyn Jenner is just a crass exploitation play – it’s a tabloid play. In the broad world of sports, I’m pretty sure they could’ve found someone – and this is not anything against Caitlyn Jenner – who was much closer actively involved in sports, who would’ve been deserving of what that award represents. That’s not to say it doesn’t take some measure of personal courage to do what Caitlyn Jenner has done.”
This revelation that ESPN/ABC and Caitlyn Jenner are Machiavellian when it comes to attracting publicity shouldn’t really surprise anyone. What would you expect an amoral multinational media corporation to do once they joined forces with a reality TV star?
Why do you think they refer to what hits your airwaves as “programming?” Well, at least Caitlyn turned the head of the ol’ gunslinger Brett Favre that evening, as you’ll see here.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is part of the FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous talk radio stations all across the country.
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