Contents
ESPN
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Launched September 7, 1979
Owned by The Walt Disney Company (80%)
Hearst Corporation (20%)
Picture format 480i (SDTV)
720p (HDTV)
3DTV (June 2010)
Slogan The Worldwide Leader in Sports
Country United States
Language English
Headquarters Bristol, Connecticut
Formerly called Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (never used on air)
Sister channel(s) ESPN2
ESPNU
ESPN America
ESPN Brasil
ESPN Classic
ESPN Deportes
ESPNews
ESPN Plus
ESPN on ABC
ESPN (UK)
TSN
ESPN360
Website ESPN.com
Availability
Satellite
DirecTV 73 HD only (MPEG-2)
206 (SD/HD) (MPEG-4)
210 Alternate feed
Dish Network 140 (SD/HD)
145 147 148 Alternate feeds
Cable
Available on most cable systems Check local listings for channels
Verizon Fios 70 (SD)
570 (HD)
IPTV
AT&T U-Verse 602 (SD)
1602 (HD)
Internet television
ESPN360 ESPN360.com
ESPN 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.[citation needed]
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, "SportsNation", and PTI), sports-related documentaries, films (such as "3: The Dale Earnhardt Story"), and original series (such as "The Bronx Is Burning").
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.[1]
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 Director of Sports Programming at HBO, to be its first head of Programming. Powell had been the youngest VP at HBO and its parent company (Time, Inc.), but left to attend Harvard Business School. He worked for ESPN while completing the MBA Program at Harvard.
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.[2] 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."[3]
In 1990, ESPN added Major League Baseball to its lineup with a $400 million contract;[4] 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;[5] 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.[6]
ESPN broadcasts 65 sports, 24 hours a day in 15 languages in more than 150 countries.[7]
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.[8] 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 USA, 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.[9]