ESPN
ESPN (formerly an
initialism for the
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an
American cable television network dedicated to
broadcasting sports-related programming 24 hours a day. It was founded by
Scott Rasmussen and his father
Bill Rasmussen, and launched on
September 7 1979 under the direction of
Chet Simmons, who was the network's first President and CEO. The current president, since
November 19,
1998, of ESPN is
George Bodenheimer. Bodenheimer is also the current head of
ABC Sports, having been named to that position on
March 3,
2003. Its signature telecast,
SportsCenter, debuted with the network and aired its 25,000th episode on
August 25 2002. ESPN broadcasts primarily out of its studios in
Bristol, Connecticut; it also operates offices out of
Charlotte and
San Francisco, including its newest network
ESPNU. ESPN is available in over 90 million homes in the United States and over 147 countries and territories via ESPN International. The name of the sport company was lengthened to "ESPN Inc." in
February 1985.
ESPN started as an alternative to standard television news broadcasts and the information found in "Sports" sections of newspapers. It began as a fairly small operation and often had to broadcast unorthodox sporting events, such as the
World's Strongest Man Competition; international sports relatively unknown in the U.S., such as
Australian rules football, as well as the short-lived
United States Football League (USFL), to attract viewers. In
1987, ESPN landed a contract to show
National Football League games on Sunday evenings, an event which marked as a turning point in its development from a smaller cable TV network to a marketing empire, a cornerstone to the enthusiastic "sports culture" it largely helped to create.
From the early
1980s through the early
1990s, ESPN aired weekly
professional wrestling programs from the
Pro Wrestling USA,
American Wrestling Association,
Global Wrestling Federation, and
World Class Championship Wrestling promotions. The most infamous of these airings were several episodes of the American Wrestling Association's
Team Challenge Series. More recently, ESPN was rumored to be considering picking up the rights to
Total Nonstop Action's weekly show,
TNA iMPACT! from
FSN, but this was picked up by
Spike TV. ESPN's
Canadian subsidiary,
TSN, owned the Canadian rights to
WWE RAW and aired the program four times a week, until it moved to
The Score. ESPN also once did a "This is SportsCenter" ad during the 1990's with numerous WWF/
WWE stars at the time, including
the Undertaker,
Shawn Michaels, and
Diesel.
ESPN was originally owned by a joint venture between
Getty Oil Company (which was purchased by
Texaco) and
Nabisco. Since
1984, the entire family of ESPN networks and franchises have been owned by ABC (the
American Broadcasting Company) (80%) (which became part of
The Walt Disney Company in
1996) and the
Hearst Corporation (20%).
In
2004, ESPN opened its
High Definition center in
Bristol, Connecticut. Many shows, including
Sportscenter,
Baseball Tonight,
NFL Live,
College Gameday and others are broadcast in HD. Also, many of the games that ESPN televises are broadcast in HD. The first program ever broadcast in HD on ESPN was an
NCAA basketball game in 2002, at the
University of Dayton Arena. The first broadcast from the Digital Center was the 11pm ET edition of
SportsCenter with
Linda Cohn and
Rece Davis on
June 7, 2004.
In 2006, ESPN won the first broadband
Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Content Produced for a Non-Traditional Delivery Platform for the online animated series "Off-Mikes" which features
Mike Golic and
Mike Greenberg of
Mike and Mike in the Morning, a popular
ESPN Radio program. The animation is produced by
Animax Entertainment.
ESPN was long considered to be the standard in American sports broadcasting, but it has been criticized for unimaginative programming and purposely hiring polarizing, "loudmouth" personalities who are pitted against each other in the "talking heads" format that has plagued cable television news channels. It is currently seeing public backlash similar to that experienced by
MTV and increasingly viewed as a running parody of itself, earning monikers such as "BSPN". [
1]
National Football League *1987-1989 (Exclusive Cable; Sunday Night; 2nd Half of Season Only)
*1990-1997 (2nd Half of Season Only; Sunday Night;
TNT carries early season)
*1998-2005 (Exclusive Cable; Sunday Night)
*2006-2013 (
Monday Night Football)
Major League Baseball on ESPN*1990-2013
Major League Soccer*1996-2014
National Basketball Association*1982-1984
*2002-2008
PGA Tour *1980(?)-2006 (Contracts with invididual tournaments)
NASCAR *1980(?)-2000 (Contracts with invididual races)
*2007-2012 (Contract with NASCAR)
National Hockey League *1985-1988 (National television deal, agreements with individual clubs as early as 1979)
*1992-2004
College Football*
Bowl Games: 1982- (Contracts with individual bowl games)
* Regular Season: 1984- (Contracts with individual conferences)
College Basketball *
NCAA Tournament: 1980-1990 (Contract with
NCAA)
* Regular Season: 1980- (Contracts with individual conferences)
FIFA*
FIFA World Cup: 1998,2002,2006,2010,2014
ESPN has had its own theme music for quite a few years, but early on it used source music. An early theme for its flagship "SportsCenter" program was "Pulstar", an energetic electronic instrumental piece by
Vangelis from his
1976 album
Albedo 0.39. It would play while computer animation of baseballs, footballs, soccer balls, etc., would fly out from the center of the TV screen in all directions.
ESPN.com is the website for ESPN, featuring real-time game scores, polls, contests, statistics and news for every sport, the weekly E-Ticket,
Page2 (and formerly
Page3 until 2005) and probably its most famous branch,
SportsNation, which has, from 9:00 to 4:00 or 5:00, "The Show". This is also where most of the polls are, and quizzes, along with a branch that showcases what is coming up soon on
ESPNEWS. ESPN.com also offers a full range of Fantasy Games. There is also a broadband segment to ESPN.com known as
ESPN360. This broadband channel also offers a set of video games known as
ESPN Online Games.
ESPN has become a part of popular culture since its inception. The name is constantly referenced throughout the media in movies and television. While the announcers may be actual personalities, in many films where there is a sporting event, the coverage is by ESPN. People who do not even watch sports are familiar with ESPN. Often times this comes in the form of a lampoon of the number of channels ESPN operates. A few examples:
*In the movie
Zathura, Walter is watching Sportcenter on ESPN while Danny is pestering him, and the TV ends up being destroyed during the first spin of the game by a meteor.
*In the movie
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, a major dodgeball tournament is broadcast by
ESPN 8 ("The Ocho"): "If it's almost a sport, we've got it!" (There currently is no ESPN 8).
*In the movie "
The Waterboy", main character Bobby Boucher is featured on SportsCenter, and some of the SCLSU games are aired by ESPN.
*In the
Adam Sandler remake of "
The Longest Yard",
ESPN 2 broadcasts the football game between the criminals and the guards.
*In the DVD special features in the movie
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, there is a skit that contains the "interview" of fictional anchorman Ron Burgundy (
Will Ferrell) to work at ESPN in 1979; he stated that the idea of a twenty-four-hour sports network would be ludicrous. This first appeared on
ESPN.com.
*In one episode of
King of the Hill, Hank mentions that the Gay Rodeo is a sport that he has seen on ESPN 3.
*ESPN is referenced in a Simpson's cartoon episode; Homer flips through various channels and stops on a channel which clearly lampoons ESPN, except the network's initials are PENS (an anagram of ESPN).
*In the film
Mean Girls, a
dumb blonde claims to have ESPN, when she intended to say
ESP. (That joke has been used in many different shows and movies.)
*There are at least three children named after the network.
