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ESPN wants you to stop watching Netflix. Right now!

Technically Incorrect: A new ad campaign for ESPN Live says forget your Netflix algorithm because it can wait.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


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The contented face of someone who loves watching dull interviews on ESPN.

ESPN screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

You sad millennial, you.

You think Netflixing-and-chilling is the only way to be entertained, the only way to live?

What's wrong with you?

Please forgive me, I'm not expressing my own thoughts. I try never to do that. I'm merely channeling the feelings of ESPN.

The slightly ailing sports channel has just launched a new campaign to wean people off the streaming, binge-watching habit.

ESPN is also, according to Variety, trying to get you away from Amazon, Twitter and Facebook.

Still, the first ad the company has released shows a woman at home settling in to watch a movie about a diamond heist. Her streaming algorithm has told her she will like it.

Silly, silly algorithm. What do algorithms know?

Wouldn't you rather watch ESPN's Doris Burke conduct a really dull interview instead?

Watch as our heroine is moved by the sheer depth of Burke's questioning. Listen to how she realizes that watching live interviews on ESPN is simply the best thing she's ever done in her life.

How could she have neglected this? How could she have been so cruel and so myopic?

"If you're not with us," ESPN's senior vice president of brand and marketing solutions Sean Hanrahan told Variety, "you may be missing the big moment, or the breaking news you need to know."

Yes, that would be the big moment of a Doris Burke interview. The breaking news would be the very thing your Twitter feed will bring to you as you're watching your diamond heist movie.

Once upon a time, ESPN was must-see TV. Things are a little more complicated now.

I blame technology.