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Indeed, since buying Capital Cities/ABC and its ESPN franchise in 1996, the Walt Disney Co. has used the sports channel as a battering ram to force cable companies to accept price increases for other channels Disney owned, like ABC Family, Disney Junior and ESPNU. It also ruthlessly raised the cost of ESPN itself. Only a tiny handful of cable channels get more than $2 a month per cable subscriber; ESPN charges over $7 a month per subscriber. When you throw in the rest of the ESPN channels, that number approaches $10.

At the same time, the content providers — the professional sports leagues and college conferences — were every bit as ruthless in their dealings with ESPN. The $1.9 billion a year ESPN pays the NFL (for one game a week, and usually a lousy one at that) is twice what any other network pays to air pro football. It signed a 12-year, $7.3 billion contract for the rights to the college football playoffs. The NBA costs it $1.4 billion a year. Its new TV deal with the Big Ten will cost it $2.64 billion over six years. Its annual content costs more than $7 billion, according to SNL Kagan.

But then, starting around 2013, the model began to sputter. Over the last four years, ESPN has lost around 12 million subscribers, from over 100 million to 88 million, which cost it well over $1 billion in annual revenue. It remains immensely profitable, but it is no longer the reliable cash cow for Disney that it once was.

ESPN has responded with a series of cutbacks — goodbye Chris Berman! — of which the layoffs this week are simply the latest. In the scheme of things, though, the cost savings are chump change, and have served mainly to show ESPN’s overlords at Disney (and Disney’s overlords on Wall Street) that it is serious about righting the ship.