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.
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[edit] History
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.
If you live in any city besides Boston or New York, you will probably hear ESPN called the New York, Boston new service.
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]
[edit] Significant programming rights
- 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)
- 1990-2013
- 1996-2014
National Basketball Association
- 1982-1984
- 2002-2008
- 1980(?)-2006 (Contracts with invididual tournaments)
- 1980(?)-2000 (Contracts with invididual races)
- 2007-2012 (Contract with NASCAR)
- 1985-1988 (National television deal, agreements with individual clubs as early as 1979)
- 1992-2004
- Bowl Games: 1982- (Contracts with individual bowl games)
- Regular Season: 1984- (Contracts with individual conferences)
- NCAA Tournament: 1980-1990 (Contract with NCAA)
- Regular Season: 1980- (Contracts with individual conferences)
- FIFA World Cup: 1998,2002,2006
[edit] Music
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.
[edit] ESPN.com
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.
[edit] ESPN in popular culture
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.[2]
[edit] ESPN business ventures
ESPN maintains the ESPN forums, message boards which can be located on www.espn.com. It consists of various sports such as baseball, basketball, football, baseball, NCAA sports, etc. It also is popular for its fantasy sports forums, which allows people to converse about trade ideas and get feedback on whether or not they should pull the trigger on certain trades in their fantasy leagues. It has individual forums for each team but also contains general forums where fans of all teams can gather and speak with each other. Other ESPN ventures include:
- ESPN.com (1995–present)
- ESPN The Magazine (1998–present)
- ESPN Deportes La Revista (2005–present)
- ESPN Books (–present)
- ESPN Zone (1998–present)
- ESPY Awards (1993–present)
- Mobile ESPN (2006–present)
- ESPN Integration (2006–present)
- EXPN.com (–present)
- ESPN Online Games (2006–present)
- ESPN Broadband (2002–present)
[edit] The ESPN family of networks
- ESPN (1979–present)
- ESPN International (1989–present)
- ESPN Africa
- ESPN Australia
- ESPN Brasil
- ESPN Israel
- ESPN Latin America
- ESPN Pacific Rim
- ESPN Star Sports
- Orbit ESPN
- ESPN2 (1993–present)
- ESPNEWS (1996–present)
- ESPN Classic (1997–present)
- ESPNU (2005–present)
- ESPN Deportes (2004–present)
- ESPNHD (2003–present)
- ESPN2HD (2005–present)
- ESPN Motion (2003–present)
- ESPN 360 (2005–present)
- ESPN Plus (–present)
- ESPN PPV (–present)
- ESPN Radio (1992–present)
- ESPN Deportes Radio (2005–present)
[edit] Reference
- ESPN Mediakit (2006). [3] Retrieved Feb. 13, 2006.
[edit] See also
- List of programs broadcast by ESPN
- List of ESPN personalities
- Annual sporting events broadcast on ESPN
- MLB on ESPN
- ESPN College Basketball Broadcast Teams
- ESPN and ABC Sports College Football Broadcast Teams
- ESPN MLB Broadcast Teams
- ESPN NBA Broadcast Teams
- ESPN NFL Broadcast Teams
- ESPN MLS Broadcast Teams (World Cup Included)
- ESPN WNBA Broadcast Teams
- List of assets owned by Disney
- TSN
