Reaction continued trickling in to ESPN’s announcement Wednesday that it will...

Reaction continued trickling in to ESPN’s announcement Wednesday that it will fold ESPN 3D by year-end for lack of viewer interest (CED June 13 p1). “Not much to say,” CEA President Gary Shapiro told us by email late Wednesday. “I am certain they will do better with ultra4K!” Three years ago, Shapiro greeted as “a turning point for 3D” ESPN’s 2010 CES announcement that it would launch ESPN 3D that June for World Cup soccer coverage. More recently, Shapiro castigated 3D TV as “a little overhyped” and surmised that 3D TV one day would go down as a “case history” for mistakes that Hollywood and the CE industry “have collectively made” (CED April 2 p1). In pulling the plug on ESPN 3D, ESPN said that as a “technology leader,” it would continue to “experiment” with Ultra HD “production tools” for use on the “current ESPN family of HD channels.” ESPN executives last fall pooh-poohed any likelihood their network would launch a native-4K live-sports channel (CED Oct 25 p1). As for any negative ripple effect that ESPN 3D’s demise might have on other 3D TV programming services, a 3net representative declined to speculate. “3net is a 3D joint venture channel from Discovery, Sony and Imax, and the channel is not affiliated with Disney or ESPN in any manner,” spokeswoman Kristien Brada-Thompson said in a statement. “Although we don’t comment on the activities of other companies, their decision has no impact on our business.”