For over 30 years, Linda Cohn was an anchor on ESPN’s flagship show, SportsCenter. So there are very few other people out there who could provide more insight on how the company operates. And how Linda Cohn views the company’s recent layoffs of several longtime network personalities is very clear: she calls it “buffoonery.”
“The ESPN layoffs were awful. You hate to see anybody lose their job,” Linda Cohn said on her show on YouTube. “It’s all bad. When you’re laid off, when you’re fired, when your salary is cut, when you have to think, ‘What do I do now?’
“Well, the ESPN layoffs, that was awful. What made it even worse, if that could be possible, was the way ESPN PR handled it, or mishandled it, because they treated everyone on this latest firing list with zero respect. Zero. Beginning with Ryan Clark.”
“That whole PR nightmare could have been avoided if Ryan Clark was alerted, how about the night before? And how about before he took the set for NFL Live?
“If you knew there were media outlets going to break the news and you were concerned about Ryan finding out by looking at his phone during the show, then why didn’t you just tell him before the show? That is bumbling and fumbling. That buffoonery electrified this story in a negative way even more.”
Another former ESPN ‘SportsCenter’ anchor was also upset
Another longtime ESPN SportsCenter anchor, Dan Patrick, also took issue with how the company handled its recent layoffs. He was especially upset that Karl Ravech, who like Cohn, spent more than 30 years with the network, only found out he was being let go when a reporter asked him to comment about it.
“The only thing that I would say is show dignity to those people in how you let them go,” Patrick said on his show last week. “That’s all. It can’t happen that Karl Ravech is contacted by somebody wanting a comment. Thirty-three years and that’s how it ends? Show dignity. Give them that dignity.”
Patrick added, “If you get to the point where you know that you’re not going to keep them, then contact them right away. Not wait, not wait till somebody gets on set. Not somebody from a website is going to contact Karl Ravetch. Give them the dignity they deserve.”