Rising programming costs and declining subscribership is causing Disney to cut up to 350 jobs at ESPN. The MAC deal is part (although a small part) of ESPN's $68 billion commitment in long-term programming costs (this includes last year's NBA deal). And as subscribership goes down, so will ad revenue. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-20/disney-...

ESPN has themselves between a rock and a hard place too. They are currently suing Verizon for breech of contract for not including ESPN as part of a "skinny" bundle.

With that said, if ESPN tries to start their own stand alone streaming service, ala HBO Now, then that will give ammo to Verizon to defend itself wih and give opportunities for others to start excluding ESPN for certain packages, to keep costs down for their customers.

ESPN, aka. Disney if fighting a losing battle.

as the bloomberg piece states, ESPN is still making money, and would have done so even if there were no layoffs. Just not making as much as The Mouse had hoped.

The worst thing that happened to them was Fox Sports, and to a much lesser extent CBSSN and NBCSN. Competition from Fox along with the fact that live sports is something advertisers value, has really driven up rights fees.

As far as cuts are concerned, I wonder how much of this is fat vs. meat. Do they really need to be doing Sportscenter live from LA 5 nites a week? No.

And an anecdote...

Heather Cox was in Cbus for the OSU Penn St. game this past weekend. On her twitter account Friday nite, she posted a pic of the menu from Hyde Park Steakhouse, one of the most expensive in the Midwest. If The Mouse/ESPN can afford expense account meals for sideline reporters at expensive steakhouses, then they're probably not doing all that bad...

Many editors and producers will be laid off.

NFL Countdown will still have every living NFL coach ever fired and every former player who can put two syllables together trying out Chuckle Hut material each Sunday morning and cashing in seven-figure checks.

People ain't no good.