ESPN’s Much-Hyped ‘Get Up’ Debuts — And Its Ratings Are Disastrous

On Monday, ESPN finally debuted its much-hyped, but apparently not at all highly-anticipated, morning show “Get Up” to ratings that the network never could have dreamed possible. For a show whose trio of hosts is costing the network just under $15 million, the debut of the new show drew what may be the lowest ratings for any debut of any ESPN show in the last decade.

Despite being promoted by a massive roll-out campaign, riding the wave of the NCAA Tournament, and featuring a trio of high-profile hosts — Mike Greenberg, Michelle Beadle and Jalen Rose — the show’s debut was watched by an average of only 283,000 viewers:

Outkick the Coverage’s Clay Travis — who clearly wasn’t disappointed by “WokeCenter” turning out to be officially already a “ratings disaster” — notes that the hosts will be making “just shy of $15 million” combined this year, while ESPN “poured tens of millions of dollars into their brand new studio.” Travis suggests that the 283,000 average may be “the lowest debut for a new ESPN show in the 21st century.”

Sports TV Ratings provides some context for the brutal number:

Because he was clearly enjoying himself, Travis threw in a quick comparison between Get Up’s viewership and another show that went head-to-head with it at the 9 a.m. hour: Peppa the Pig. The children’s show brought in three times the number of viewers (753,000). Ouch.

As Sports Illustrated puts it, “the worst thing that could’ve happened” to the show was The Hollywood Reporter publishing the salaries of the three hosts in a big piece a few weeks ago. “According to the piece, Greenberg makes $6.5 million per year, Beadle makes $5 million per and Rose comes in at $3 million for a total of $14.5 million per year,” SI reports. “That’s a rough figure for a show if it’s going to draw fewer than 300,000 viewers.”

ESPN’s increasing embrace of politically-charged content and overtly left-wing stances on issues has driven a wedge between sports fans that have clearly impacted its numbers. The alienation of roughly half its potential audience, along with the growing cord-cutting trend, has resulted in massive revenue losses, to which the network’s responded with a series of sweeping layoffs.