I feel like this is their own fault though. It sounds to me like they've got obsessed with the gossip model of journalism and turned people off. If you look at the UK, the BBC's Match of the Day is still wildly popular because the beeb doesn't really follow those annoying American trends.
Which is rapidly being replaced (to some degree) with things like twitter, instagram, snapchat, subreddits, streamable, and other social media/video streaming websites.
It takes next to no time or effort for somebody to roughly cut a highlight and post it to social media. Meanwhile ESPN sees diminishing returns polishing various replays and putting it in a half hour program that repeats 6+ times every morning. It's to the point every team/league even has their own social media accounts, and post the best highlights themselves. If I can see the major highlights directly from NFL's instagram account, why bother waiting halfway through sportcenter to (maybe) catch the right segment?