ESPN (originally an
abbreviation for the Entertainment and
Sports Programming
Network) is an American
cable television network dedicated to broadcasting and producing
sports-related programming 24 hours a day.
Founded by
Scott Rasmussen and his
father Bill it launched on September 7, 1979 under the direction of
Chet Simmons, the network's first President and CEO (and later the
United States Football
League's first commissioner).
Getty Oil
Company provided the funding to begin the new venture.
George Bodenheimer is ESPN's current
president, a position he has held since November 19, 1998; since
March 3, 2003, he has also headed ABC Sports, a separate legal
entity now branded as
ESPN on ABC.
ESPN's signature telecast,
SportsCenter, debuted with the network and
aired its 30,000th episode on February 11, 2007.
ESPN broadcasts
primarily out of its studios in Bristol, Connecticut
; it also operates offices out of New York City
; Seattle
, WA;
Charlotte
, NC and Los Angeles
. The Los Angeles office, from which the
late-night edition of SportsCenter is now broadcast,
opened at L.A.
Live in early
2009. The name of the sport company was lengthened to "ESPN
Inc." in February 1985.
ESPN markets itself as "The Worldwide Leader in Sports," a slogan
that appears on nearly all company media but whose origin is
unknown.
Most programming on ESPN and its affiliated networks consists of
live or tape-delayed sets of events and sports-related news
programming (such as
SportsCenter). The remainder includes
sports-related talk shows (such as
Around the Horn,
Jim Rome is Burning,
Outside the Lines, and
PTI) and sports-related
documentaries and films.
History
Early months
ESPN was
originally conceived by Bill Rasmussen, a television sports reporter for WWLP
, the
NBC affiliate in Springfield,
Massachusetts
. In the mid-1970s, Rasmussen worked for the
World Hockey Association's
New England Whalers, selling
commercial time for their broadcasts. His son Scott, a former high
school goaltender, was the team's
public-address announcer. Both were
fired in 1977 and Rasmussen sought a new business venture.
His
original idea was a cable
television network (then a fairly new medium) that focused on
covering sports events in the state of Connecticut
(for example, the Hartford Whalers, Bristol Red Sox, and the
Connecticut Huskies).
When Rasmussen was told that buying a continuous 24-hour satellite
feed was less expensive than buying several blocks of only a few
hours a night, he expanded to a 24-hour nationwide network. The
channel's original name was ESP, for Entertainment and Sports
Programming, but it was changed prior to launch.
ESPN started with the debut of
SportsCenter hosted by
Lee Leonard and
George
Grande on September 7, 1979. Afterwards was a pro slow pitch
softball game.
The first score on SportsCenter was
from women's tennis on the final weekend of
the US
Open
.
To help fill 24 hours a day of air time, ESPN aired a wide variety
of sports events that broadcast networks did not show on weekends,
including
Australian rules
football,
Davis Cup tennis,
professional wrestling,
boxing, and additional
college football and
basketball games. The U.S. Olympic
Festival, the now-defunct competition that was organized as a
training tool by the
United States Olympic
Committee, was also an ESPN staple during this time. ESPN also
aired business shows and exercise videos.
ESPN recruited Steve Powell, formerly Head of Sports Programming at
HBO, to be its first head chief of Programming. Powell had been the
youngest VP at HBO and its parent company (Time, Inc.), but left to
attend Harvard Business School and worked for ESPN while completing
the MBA Program.
Professional sports arrive
ESPN (along with the
USA Network) was
among the earliest cable-based broadcast partners for the
National Basketball
Association (NBA). Lasting from 1982–84, the network's
relationship with the association marked its initial foray into the
American professional sports sector. After an eighteen-year hiatus,
ESPN (by then, under the auspices of the
ABC network), secured a $2.4
billion/six-year broadcast contract with the NBA, thereby
revitalizing its historic compact with U.S.
professional basketball.
In 1983, The
United States
Football League (USFL) made its debut on ESPN and ABC. The
league (which lasted for three seasons) enjoyed ephemeral success,
some portion of which was a byproduct of the exposure afforded
through ESPN's coverage.
On July 26, 1985, ESPN started airing the ESPN Sports Update (later
known as 28/58), which was a condensed run-down of scores and news
that aired at :28 and :58 portions of the hour, when SportsCenter
was not airing. This was changed to 18/58 on May 30, 2005.
In
1987, ESPN gained partial rights
to the
National Football
League. The league agreed to the deal as long as ESPN agreed to
simulcast the games on local
television stations in the participating
markets.
ESPN Sunday Night Football
would last for 19 years and spur ESPN's rise to legitimacy. In the
2006 NFL season, ESPN began airing
Monday Night Football, formerly
seen on its sister network ABC. (
NBC took over
the Sunday night game, which replaced the Monday night contest as
the league's weekly centerpiece game.) Former Commissioner
Paul Tagliabue credits ESPN for
revolutionizing the NFL, "ESPN was able to take the draft, the
pregame and highlight shows, and other NFL programming to a new
level."
In 1990, ESPN added
Major League
Baseball to its lineup with a $400 million contract; the
contract has been renewed and will continue through at least 2011.
Jon Miller and
Joe
Morgan are the longtime voices of the network's centerpiece
Sunday Night Baseball.
Steve
Phillips joined the package in 2009, but Phillips was later
dismissed by the network in October 2009.
ESPN broadcast each of the four
major professional sports leagues in North America from 2002
until 2004, when it cut ties with the
National Hockey League; the network
had aired NHL games from 1983-86 and again since 1993. ESPN has
been broadcasting
Major League
Soccer games about once a week on ESPN2 since that league's
inception in 1996. In most years, the annual
All-Star Game and
MLS Cup championship game, and in some years the
Opening Night game, are shown on ABC broadcast stations.
With the
increasing costs of live sports entertainment, such as the U.S.$8.8
billion costs for NFL football broadcasts rights for eight years,
"scripted entertainment has become a luxury item for ESPN," said
David Carter, director of the Sports Business Institute at the
University
of Southern California
.
ESPN broadcasts 65 sports, 24 hours a day in 15 languages in more
than 150 countries.
Expansion
ESPN set itself apart from its competition by using the top
reporters for each of their respective sports by the early 1990s.
Some examples included:
Peter Gammons
(baseball),
Chris Mortensen
(football),
Al Morganti (hockey),
David Aldridge (basketball), and
Mel Kiper, Jr. (NFL Draft). Other
well-known reporters include
Andrea
Kremer,
Ed Werder,
Mark Schwartz, and
Greg
Garber.
The 1990s and early 2000s saw considerable growth within the
company. ESPN Radio launched on New Years Day, 1992.
ESPN2 was founded in 1993, launched by
Keith Olbermann and
Suzy Kolber with SportsNite.
Three years later ESPNews was
born, with
Mike Tirico as the first
anchor. In 1997, ESPN purchased Classic
Sports Network and renamed it
ESPN
Classic. The youngest ESPN network in the U.S.,
ESPNU, began broadcasting on March 4, 2005.
ESPN International was started in
the early 1990s to take advantage of the growing satellite markets
in
Asia,
Africa, and
Latin America.
In Canada
, ESPN, Inc.
purchased a minority share of TSN
and RDS (the corporate logos
of both networks were redesigned to match the look of ESPN's
logo). In 2004, ESPN entered the
European market by launching a version of
ESPN Classic. Then in December 2006 it
agreed to purchase
North
American Sports Network, and on February 1, 2009 NASN was
re-branded as ESPN America.
SportsCenter's primary three
broadcasts on ESPN America each day are at 1am
ET (which re-airs usually
until 9am ET), 6pm ET, and 11pm ET.
In 1994, ESPN launched the
The ESPN
Sports Poll, created by Dr.
Richard
Luker. The Sports Poll was the first ongoing national daily
study of sports fan activities and interests in the United States.
Sporting News acknowledged the accomplishments of The ESPN
Sports Poll and Dr. Luker in 1996.
From 1996 onward ESPN was closely integrated with
ABC Sports. That year
Steve Bornstein, president of ESPN since
1990, was made president of ABC Sports as well. This integration
culminated in the 2006 decision to merge ABC Sports' operations
with ESPN. As a result, all of ABC's sports programming now uses
ESPN on ABC. However, ABC Sports is
still legally separate from ESPN due to ESPN's joint ownership
arrangement with Disney and Hearst.
In 1998, ESPN began using "
Skycam" for their
broadcasts of the NHL. The system was later put to use in baseball,
basketball, and football games.
In April
2009, ESPN opened a broadcast production facility in downtown
Los
Angeles as a part of the L.A.
Live complex across from Staples Center
. The five-story facility houses an
ESPN Zone restaurant on the first two floors and
two television production studios with digital control rooms on the
upper floors. One of the studios hosts late-night editions of
SportsCenter.
In 2007, ESPN signed an agreement with the
Arena Football League to broadcast at
least one game every weekend, usually on Monday nights.
In January 2008, ESPN signed a multi-million dollar contract with
professional gaming circuit,
Major
League Gaming .
On 3
August 2009, ESPN began
broadcasting in the United Kingdom
and Ireland
for the first time, having been awarded the
domestic rights to 46 Barclays English
Premier League matches for the forthcoming season, and 23
matches each for the following three seasons, due to the
cancellation of the Premier League's contract with Setanta Sports over a missed payment.
The deal only affected television rights within the U.K.;
international rights (held in the U.S. by
Fox Soccer Channel and
Setanta Sports North America)
were not affected. Also in the US, ESPN now has rights to at least
one Premier League and one
La Liga game a
week.
Controversy
Ownership history
As mentioned, William Rasmussen founded the channel. Just before
ESPN launched,
Getty Oil Company (later
purchased by
Texaco, which in turn was
acquired by
Chevron) agreed to
buy a majority stake in the network.
In 1984,
ABC made a
deal with Getty Oil to acquire ESPN. ABC retained an 80% share, and
sold 20% to
Nabisco. The Nabisco shares were
later sold to
Hearst Corporation,
which still holds a 20% stake today. In 1986, ABC was purchased for
$3.5 billion by
Capital
Cities Communications. In 1995,
The Walt Disney Company purchased
Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion and picked up an 80% stake in
ESPN at that time. According to an analysis published by
Barron's magazine in
February 2008, ESPN "is probably worth more than 40% of Disney's
entire value... based on prevailing cash-flow multiples in the
industry."
Although ESPN has been operated as a Disney subsidiary since 1996,
it is still technically a
joint
venture between Disney and Hearst.ESPN will take a relation
with Disney's new channel, Disney XD, which is replacing Toon
Disney.
ESPNHD
ESPNHD, launched March 30, 2003, is a
720p high-definition simulcast of ESPN. ESPNHD (along with sister
networks
ESPN2 HD,
ESPNU HD,
ABC HD,
Disney Channel HD,
ABC
Family HD, and
Disney XD HD) uses the
720p HD line standard because the
ABC executives proposed a
progressive 'p' signal resolves
fluid and high speed motion in sports better, particularly during
slow motion replays.
All
Bristol and LA
Live
studio shows, along with most live events on ESPN,
are produced in high definition. ESPN is one of the few
networks with an all-digital infrastructure.
Shows that are
recorded elsewhere − such as Jim
Rome Is Burning (Los Angeles
); Pardon the
Interruption and Around the
Horn (Washington, D.C.
) are presented in a standard definition, 4:3 format
with stylized
pillarboxes. ESPN, however, maintains a policy that any
video that originates in
high
definition must remain in HD when aired on ESPNHD.
More recently, the network has come under considerable scrutiny
from industry technicians and early adopters of HD due to a
perceived degradation in picture quality, specifically during live
events.
In
Latin America, the
720p high-definition version of ESPN
was launched as "ESPN HD" on
December 1,
2009.
Executives
- Tucker Wrenn Creator
- George Bodenheimer:
President, ESPN, Inc.
- Sean Bratches: Executive Vice President, Sales and
Marketing
- Christine Driessen: Executive Vice President and Chief
Financial Officer
- Sean Fleming: Executive Vice President, Administration
- Clark West: Executive Vice President and Chief Technology
Officer
- Reno Mahe: Executive Vice President, Content
- Norby Williamson: Executive
Vice President, Studio and Remote Production
- Russell Wolff: Executive Vice President and Managing Director,
ESPN International
Advertising on ESPN
Advertising on ESPN is sold out for months in advance.
Major advertisers
such as Apple
Inc.
, FedEx, and United
Parcel Service
are continually buying advertisements to reach the
15-35 year old male audience. ESPN's ad revenue averages
$441.8 million with an ad rate of $9,446 per 30 second slot.
ESPN significant programming rights
ESPN and its family of networks (
ESPN on
ABC,
ESPN2,
ESPNU,
ESPN Plus and to a lesser extent
ESPN Classic) have rights to the following
sports and events (note: this list doesn't represent
ESPN America since that division of ESPN
broadcasts out side of the USA):
The NFL on ESPN
- 1987–1989 (Sunday
Night; exclusive cable; second half of season only)
- 1990–1997 (Sunday
Night; second half of season only; TNT carried first half)
- 1998–2005 (Sunday
Night; exclusive cable; entire season, selected Thursday &
Saturday night games)
- 1988–1994, 2003–2005, 2010 (Pro Bowl,
acquired rights from ABC)
- 2006–2013 (Monday Night
Football)
ESPN College Football
- Bowl Games: 1982–present (contracts
with individual bowl games; the first live college football game
telecast on ESPN was the 1982 Independence Bowl, Kansas St. vs.
Wisconsin)
- Bowl Championship
Series: January 2011–2014
- ACC: 1998–2010
- Big Ten Conference: 1979–2013
(originally tape delayed)
- Select Big 12 home games: 2007– (Games
are purchased from Fox Sports Net on
a game-by-game basis)
- Big East: 1991–2013
- C-USA: 1995–2010
- MAC: 2003–2010
- Select Pac 10 Home games: 2007– (Part of
the contract with ABC)
- SEC: 1984-until at least
2023
- Sun Belt: (?)–2007
- WAC: until at least
2017
- NCAA Division I FCS (formerly Division
I-AA), Division II, and Division III playoffs (selected games) and
championship games.
ESPN Major League Soccer
FIFA
- FIFA World Cup: 1982, 1986, 1990,
1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014
- FIFA U-17 World Cup:
2007
- FIFA U-20 World Cup:
2007
- FIFA Women's World Cup:
1999, 2003, 2007, 2011
- FIFA U-20 Women's World
Cup: 2008
ESPN Major League
Baseball
Little League World
Series
The
NBA on ESPN
WNBA on ESPN (Originally "The WNBA on
ESPN2")
ESPN College Basketball
- NCAA
Tournament: 1980–1990 (Contract with NCAA)
- ACC (some telecasts,
including games in the conference tournament, are blacked out in
ACC markets):
- Big Ten Conference:
1979–2017
- Big 12: 2008–2016, ESPN Plus
(ESPN Plus has exclusive rights to some games in Big 12 markets to
protect stations purchasing its syndicated package)
- Big East: 1979–2013, ESPN
Plus
Tennis Grand Slams: As of 2009
ESPN co-owns the cable rights to all four of tennis' grand slams
with
The Tennis Channel. ESPN
also televises other tennis events.
Golf on ESPN
- 1980(?)–2006 (Contracts with individual PGA
tournaments)
ESPN
continues to broadcast early round coverage from The
Masters
, U.S.
Open, and
Ryder Cup. Starting in 2010, ESPN will broadcast
all four rounds of the
Open
Championship, marking the first time that a golf major is an
all-cable event.
PBA Tour
NASCAR on ESPN
- 1981–2000 (Contracts with individual races)
- 2007–2014 (Contract with NASCAR)
NHRA
- 1980(?)–2000 (Contracts with individual races)
- 2001–2013 (Contract with NHRA)
Indy Racing League
- 1996–2008 (full season)
- 2009-
(Indianapolis
500
and four other races, all shown on ABC)
La Liga
English Premier League Soccer
Australian Football
League
ESPN also broadcasts a range of
horse
racing. It may sometimes acquire the rights to programming in
other sports which airs only on
ESPN 360,
usually because another broadcaster holds the TV rights.
Former Programs
LPGA Tour on ESPN
- 1979–2009
- Selected majors through deals with their respective sanctioning
bodies
Champ Car World Series on
ESPN
- 1992-2001
- 2007 (series merged with IRL, beginning with the 2008
season)
ESPN National Hockey
Night
- 1985–1988 (National television deal, agreements with individual
clubs as early as 1979)
- 1992–2004
Major Indoor Soccer League
- 1985–1987
- 2005–2006 (championship games only)
UEFA Champions League
The Arena Football
League on ESPN
- 1989–2002
- 2007–2011 (the league has suspended operations since the 2009
season)
ESPN in popular culture
ESPN has become a part of popular culture since its inception. Many
movies with a general sports theme will include ESPN announcers and
programming into their storylines (such as in
Dodgeball: A True Underdog
Story, which gently lampoons the channel's multiple
outlets by referencing the as-yet-nonexistent ESPN8, "The Ocho," a
reference to a nickname sometimes used for ESPN2, "the Deuce"). In
the film "Waterboy," Adam Sandler's character Bobby Boucher has his
college football accomplishments tracked through several fictional
"SportsCenter" newscasts including the "Bourbon Bowl." Also,
ESPN.com Page 2 columnist
Bill Simmons
often jokes that he is looking forward to running a future network;
SportsCenter anchors appeared as themselves in
music videos by Brad Paisley ("
I'm Gonna Miss Her ")
and
Hootie and the Blowfish
("Only Wanna Be With You"); and the short-lived 1998 TV series
Sports Night (by
West Wing creator
Aaron Sorkin) was based around an
ESPN-style network and its titular,
SportsCenter-analogue
flagship sports results program.
Many jokes have been made by comedians about fake obscure sports
that are shown on ESPN before the network was able to land major
sports programming packages.
Dennis
Miller mentioned watching "
sumo rodeo," while
George
Carlin stated that ESPN showed "Australian
dick wrestling." One of
several
Saturday Night
Live sketches poking fun at the network features ESPN2
airing a show called
Scottish Soccer Hooligan Weekly,
which includes a fake advertisement for "Senior Women's Beach
Lacrosse." In the early years of ESPN, "The Late Show with David
Letterman" even featured a "Top Ten List" poking fun at some the
obscure sports seen on ESPN at the time. One of the more memorable
sports on the list was "Amish Rake Fighting."
There are at least 22 children named after the network.
ESPN business ventures
Current
The ESPN family of networks
Television
ESPN Now
ESPN Now was a former rolling
digital cable barker
channel which aired from 2001-2004 and featured a scoring
ticker, along with ESPN and
Go.com
promotional advertising. It mainly was used to promote ESPN's
college sports
pay per view packages to
viewers. The channel was eventually discontinued with the rise of
video on demand.
Internet
Radio
Network-wide preemption
Several times ESPN programming has been drastically altered because
of coverage of world events.
Both ESPN and ESPN2 carried
ABC News
coverage of the
September 11,
2001 attacks. The only original program produced after the
preemption was a shortened 6pm edition of
SportsCenter
which focused on covering the cancellations of sporting events in
reaction to the terror attacks.
ESPN carried most of the first round of the
2003 NCAA Men's
Basketball Tournament due to
CBS's coverage
of the
Invasion of Iraq. The games
were still produced by CBS and distributed to the correct markets
through cable companies. The only identifiers of ESPN was the
bottomline graphic which ran throughout the entire telecast.
See also
Notes
- ESPN: An Uncensored History, by Michael Freeman.
Published in 2000
-
http://www.espnmediazone.com/press_kits/ESPN30/ESPN30_Production_FirstsA.html
- ESPN: The Uncensored History
- ESPN, Encyclopedia Britannica,
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002482/ESPN
- "ESPN calls time out on scripted fare", Variety, vol. 407, No.
1, May 21-27, 2007, p. 22
- ESPN, Encyclopedia Britannica,
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002482/ESPN
-
http://www.espnmediazone.com/press_kits/ESPN30/ESPN30_Fact_Sheet.html
-
http://www.espnmediazone.com/press_kits/ESPN30/ESPN30_Production_FirstsA.html
- Greg Johnson, ESPN is on schedule to land in L.A. in 2009,
Los Angeles Times, December 18, 2007.
- ESPN snaps up Premier League TV packages,
ESPN.com, 22 June 2009
- chosen_direction_covers.qxd
- What's Up With ESPN HD?
-
http://ombudscable.blogspot.com/2009/10/espn-hd-en-latinoamerica-partir-1-de.html
- ESPN, Encyclopedia Britannica,
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002482/ESPN
- ESPN2 broadcasts started
in 1997.
- NBC Sports, http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/15168029/, retrieved
4-8-2008
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