  ESPN: Too Focused On New York, Boston Teams?
0816yanks.jpgVanity Fair contributing editor and Red Sox
obsessive Seth Mnookin (whom we interviewed in a previous
incarnation), recently spoke to about the Sox. But what caught
our eye was his take on how ESPN plays the Red Sox-Yankees
rivalry for ratings:  “ESPN does get rapped for being too Red
Sox-Yankees-centric, and people complain about how suffocating
the media is in Boston… The only reason that is happening is
because that’s what the audience wants. It’s not like the people
who are running ESPN are all huge Red Sox fans. They’re in a
business, and they want to do whatever is going to get the most
ratings, and the Red Sox and the Yankees are going to get them
the most ratings. It’s the same in Boston. If every time there
was four hours straight on WEEI about the Red Sox, they lost 50
percent of their listeners, and those listeners came back when
they were talking about the statehouse or the Bruins, then you’d
get four hours of the statehouse and the Brui