All the ESPNEWS that fits
Here’s to you, the real men of genius at ESPN.
Ten years ago, you defied conventional wisdom and forced us all to re-evaluate our priorities by concocting an all-news sports channel - one so ingenious, you smashed ESPN into a Reeses-like marketing marriage with news to create something beyond comprehension:
ESPNEWS.
When it debuted on Nov. 1, 1996, we wondered: Who needs scores and highlights 24/7, and that was before the phrase “24/7� was even a pop culture reference. After all, we have “SportsCenter,� do we not?
Ah, there’s the rub. “SportsCenter� is the half-hour sit-com, on just on a few times a day, full of frilly “booya.� We shall want a score or highlight within eight seconds of thinking about it. And we shall have it.
In the decade of self-triumph later, ESPNEWS may seem to be on the slippery slope toward obsolete, playing against
the immediacy of the Internet and technological advancements that now enable anyone to pick up innocuous information from anywhere on the planet and beyond. But for those of us who’ve become transfixed creatures of that endless “Bottom Line� crawl that continues through the commercials, and are looking to answer the question, “What ever happened to Bill Pidto?� the channel remain on our TiVo “favorites,� although
if we ever actually recorded it on TiVo, that would be really going overboard.
From 1.5 million cable homes in ‘96 to ratcheting up to more than 50 million homes today (thanks largely to the strong-arming tactics ESPN has put on cable operators through the years) and owning up to having an audience with the youngest median age and highest median income among all ESPN channels, ESPNEWS lunges forward. It doesn’t
even boast anymore about its most important victory — that Ted Turner CNNSI thing that launched in Dec., ‘96 but finally melted down into nothing in 2002.
So here’s to you, ESPNEWS. When we venture into a sports bar, hotel lobby or a forward-thinking Jamba Juice, we see you in all your dissected-screen glory - video to the left, stats to the right, more words flipping and rolling across the bottom - and it reminds us not only that John L. Smith will be looking for a new job next
year, but John Q. Public needs a refill on that ADD medication.
Pure genius.