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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, 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.

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.

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. Currently, ESPN's Canadian subsidary, TSN, owns the Canadian rights to WWE RAW and airs the program four times a week. ESPN also once did a "This is SportsCenter" ad during the 1990's with numerous WWF/WWE stars at the time, including the Undertaker.

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 recently 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]

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.

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.

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:

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:

The ESPN Family of Networks

Reference

See also

External links

The Walt Disney Company

Annual Revenue: Employees: 129,000 | Stock Symbol: NYSE: DIS | Website: disney.go.com

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