LeBron James: Will Jason Whitlock’s exit from Fox Sports end hot takes?

Jason Whitlock’s former employer Fox Corporation had other personalities take shots at LeBron James! 

Officially Jason Whitlock’s last day was June 1st, 2020. It marks an important landmark in the media business profession.

• It marks the end of the second major ratings period (May) of the television year. The others are February, July and November. 

To Jason Whitlock’s credit, there was no way that his show could command any ratings considering that we are sitting in the middle of a sports purgatory of which no one has seen in our lifetimes. ESPN was struggling as well until the “The Last Dance” stimulus package came a few months early to keep the network afloat.

Most conversations would include LeBron James considering that he is the biggest athlete on the planet today. Jason Whitlock would turn the most trivial thing as LeBron spending time with his son at an AAU game and go overboard. As you can see it two things stood out here.

• Jason Whitlock used LeBron’s mother Gloria as a part of his argument. Using an incident where LeBron told his mother to sit down.
• He compared LeBron’s addiction to fame to cocaine. 

Any media outlet bases its success around numbers. But there are four months out of the year that TV pays particular attention to their broadcasts. Those months are February, November July and yes you guessed it, May. It would be interesting to see how low the numbers were to use inflammatory words like this example here. They are “Hot Takes”.

Laura Ingraham tried the same tactic a couple of years back with the infamous phrase, “Shut up and Dribble”. Max Kellerman breaks down why the message is used at times as “Hot Takes” in the grand set up of the parent company.

Jason Whitlock was used as a conservative brand ambassador for Fox Sports 1 as he made a series of appearances on other broadcasts across the media umbrella such as the Fox Business Network, and Fox News.

The model may have to change at Fox as a whole. Fox Sports 1 may have to abandon a dominating debate element blueprint that hasn’t approached ESPN’s success

The ratings on “Speak For Yourself’’ speaks volumes.

But this is not all of Fox Sports. LeBron James is not the only Lakers superstar he tried to bully.