ESPN (an acronym 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 ESPN on ABC, 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, San Francisco, and Los Angeles which will open in 2009. 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 unofficially refers to itself as "The Worldwide Leader in Sports"; the slogan appears on nearly all company media, though its origin is unknown. As a joke, the slogan is often shortened to "The Worldwide Leader" by ESPN employees.
History
Early years
The roots of ESPN can be traced to William Rasmussen, a television sales executive in Hartford, Connecticut. In the mid-1970s, Rasmussen worked for the World Hockey Association's New England Whalers, selling commercial time for their broadcasts. His son Scott 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 Whalers 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.
The first show was a slow-pitch softball game that aired on September 7, 1979. A few hours later came the first SportsCenter, which had no highlights and audio difficulties during an attempted interview with University of Colorado head football coach Chuck Fairbanks.
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, bowling, 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.
Even before ESPN began telecasts, it convinced the NCAA to grant it rights to show early round games of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. The game broadcasts were extensive and helped college basketball gain a larger audience.
Big-time sports arrive
In 1987, ESPN stunned the sports world by gaining 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, which continues today. ESPN Sunday Night Football would last for 19 years and symbolize ESPN's rise from novelty network to TV institution. Then came the switch to ESPN Monday Night Football in 2006 (NBC took over the Sunday Night Football game).
In 1990, ESPN added Major League Baseball to its lineup. MLB games are still on ESPN today and are scheduled to continue through 2011. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan were named as the broadcasters, and that team also continues to this day.
Expansion
The 1990s and early 2000s saw considerable growth within the company. In 1993, ESPN2 was founded, with Keith Olbermann and Suzy Kolber launching the network with SportsNite. Three years later, ESPNEWS was born, with Mike Tirico as the first anchor. (Today, Tirico is play-by-play announcer on Monday Night Football.) In 1997, ESPN purchased Classic Sports Network and renamed it ESPN Classic. The latest ESPN network in the U.S., ESPNU, began on March 4, 2005.
ESPN International began 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 (in fact, the current corporate logo of TSN looks similar to ESPN's). In 2004, ESPN finally entered the European market by launching a version of ESPN Classic, and in 2006, it purchased North American Sports Network.
Corporate History
As mentioned, William Rasmussen founded the network. Just before ESPN launched, Getty Oil Company (later purchased by Texaco, now ChevronTexaco) agreed to buy a majority stake in the network. Nabisco and Anheuser-Busch also bought minority stakes.
In 1984, ABC Video Enterprises, a division of the American Broadcasting Company, bought 80% of the network, and the Hearst Corporation bought the other 20%. That basic arrangement has continued, although ABC is now owned by the Walt Disney Company.
In 2006, ESPN took over all of ABC Sports' broadcast operations and programming, now known as "ESPN on ABC."
High Definition Telecasts
In 2004, ESPN opened its High Definition center in Bristol, Connecticut. Many shows, including Sportscenter, Baseball Tonight, NFL Live 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.
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.
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