HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Happy 40th Birthday to Bristol Clown College - ESPN

[Fenway]

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[Fenway]

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[Chief Nine]

F them and the horse they rode in on

 

[Centrum Hockey]

 

[BMC]

I enjoyed ESPN for a long time but in the past 10-12 years they've gone way downhill.

 

[Chief Nine]

I enjoyed ESPN for a long time but in the past 10-12 years they've gone way downhill.

To be fair, they were groundbreaking when they started and have produced some great talent (in spite of uber clown Chris Berman). But the act is so old, I gave up on them a long time ago when they started editorializing everything along with the rest of the so-called media

 

[TrashPanda]

Apparently prior to ESPN the only content you could get regarding sports was box scores and standings.

 

[McGarnagle]

The ESPN of the 90s was great. Stu Scott, Rich Eisen, Olbermann before he became a chooch, Bob Ley, etc. Sportscenter was the best place to be caught up on all the scores and highlights. Their secondary programming was usually pretty entertaining too, like the beach roller hockey on ESPN2.

They just became a victim of the expansion of media, since that format just isn't enough anymore. Now you can track scores instantly online, even watch highlights of out of town games from your phone, and there's 12 other channels on your cable package trying to do the same thing. So ESPN has had to try to put Colin Cowherd and Stephen A. Smith on TV to tell and say stupid things to get attention, and it sucks.

 

[Fenway]

 

[Bruinaura]

This cracks me up every time I watch it. His laugh is hilarious



I liked Sportscenter in the 90s for a while. Although that was back in the days when you had no idea when or if they were going to show highlights from the game you were interested in, or only the score. So... Not much has changed

 

[Aussie Bruin]

I have no comment to make on the quality of their shows and analysis, but ESPN is important for us here in Australia. It's our primary source for coverage of the 4 big American sports, and it does a reasonable job with all of them, although football and basketball get the most air time.

Of course these days you can get streaming subscriptions for each of the individual leagues, so I've got a NHL TV one, but if you've only got a casual interest in any of the sports and aren't overly bothered as to which games you can watch then it's good to have.

I suspect what's happened with ESPN in recent times is that increasingly a lot of their money is now made from selling the transmission rights to overseas suppliers and the associated advertising revenue, be it in our small Aussie market or the much bigger ones in Asia and Europe. The commentary, analysis, news and opinion stuff doesn't matter so much in those markets, where it's mainly just about delivering the actual sports product, so it's probably been neglected as no longer important to their business model and bottom line.

 

[Fenway]

I have no comment to make on the quality of their shows and analysis, but ESPN is important for us here in Australia. It's our primary source for coverage of the 4 big American sports, and it does a reasonable job with all of them, although football and basketball get the most air time.

Of course these days you can get streaming subscriptions for each of the individual leagues, so I've got a NHL TV one, but if you've only got a casual interest in any of the sports and aren't overly bothered as to which games you can watch then it's good to have.

I suspect what's happened with ESPN in recent times is that increasingly a lot of their money is now made from selling the transmission rights to overseas suppliers and the associated advertising revenue, be it in our small Aussie market or the much bigger ones in Asia and Europe. The commentary, analysis, news and opinion stuff doesn't matter so much in those markets, where it's mainly just about delivering the actual sports product, so it's probably been neglected as no longer important to their business model and bottom line.

What people forget is that for its first 10 years ESPN Sportscenter was an afterthought as the primary sports show at 11 PM was on CNN.



When the Gulf War began in 1991 (Operation Desert Storm) the sports show vanished from CNN and ESPN became the only game in town.

In Boston, NECN had an extremely popular sports show at 11 PM in the early 90's