Woody Paige joining "Around the Horn" turned into a long-lasting career, as he became a pivotal figure in the show's evolution. Credit: ‘Around the Horn’

Everyone has a take on why Around the Horn is ending after more than 20 years. As the show enters its final week on ESPN, we finally learned what all-timer panelist Woody Paige thinks.

Unlike Paige’s usual takes on the show, his feelings on the evolution of ATH over time — given in a new profile of the show at New York Magazine — are nuanced. Paige believes that the show’s cast needed to widen and grow in order to keep up with the sports conversation of the times, but he also believes those changes may have limited the show’s growth.

In the early days, Paige told NY Mag, “it was always middle-aged white guys.” That’s not to say bringing in women and people from other races was the only impetus for expanding the cast. Paige gave examples such as the analytics movement in sports as another change that old crotchety sportswriters like himself couldn’t keep up with.

So ATH brought in younger, diverse panelists like Pablo Torre, Bill Barnwell, Mina Kimes, Sarah Spain, Clinton Yates and others over the past decade. That has led some, including the disgraced former Chicago sports columnist and ATH panelist Jay Marriotti, to connect the dots and state that “going woke” killed the show.

Paige didn’t go that far, but he did tell NY Mag that he laments the show perhaps did not grow to be as prolific as its competitors because of its pursuit of a more wide-ranging sports conversation.

“We had to grow and expand not only with the people on the show but expand our talking points,” Paige explained. “I think that kept us fresh, but it also might have kept us from reaching higher heights in our ratings.”

From television to digital shows, the top content is led by magnetic individual personalities. Hosts are brands, not networks. So perhaps Paige is onto something when he notes that broadening the pool harmed the end product.

However, in the same NY Mag story, ESPN executive vice president of sports news and entertainment Dave Roberts emphasized that the show was not canceled because of lagging ratings.

“Ratings were not a factor for this decision,” Roberts said. “After 23 years, we’ve just made a determination that we have to evolve.”

Indeed, more people watch ATH today than most studio shows on the network.

Recent reports suggest ESPN is considering expanding the popular Pardon the Interruption to an hour to replace ATH. Or, the network could build a talk show around Peter Schrager, who it recently hired away from NFL Network and Fox.

The move to cancel ATH was not a huge shock, but it won’t be easy to replace the brand recognition and viewership it brought in. Still, it’s rare to hear a panelist like Woody Paige share management’s perspective on their show being canned.

About Brendon Kleen

Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.