“The Evolution of Television in Sport, the Evolutionary Changes in ESPN”

Sports have played a big role throughout the history of television. Without the television, sport fans would not be able to tune into NFL games on Sunday and Monday nights. They wouldn’t be able to sit at home and watch every basketball game played during March Madness.  The television has given everybody around the world a chance to watch some of the biggest and best sporting events that have ever taken place. However, for a long amount of time there was no television show that was dedicated towards just sports. One would be able to find everything they wanted to know about sport statistics in magazines and newspapers but the public could sit down on their couch and visually recap all of the major events that took place the last evening. ESPN changed how sports were portrayed on television forever.

In 1979, ESPN debuted to 1.4 million homes and from this point television and sports history was made, the network gave all sport fans a chance to view all week long for a 24-hour sports channel leader of broadcasts. ESPN is the most popular American sports and some of the biggest games, including Sunday night NFL football.  Television news is one of the best ways for people to know what is going on in the world today. With the momentum of the World Wide Web has gained, many television news station have also added a website to their media coverage. ESPN is no different, the Sports Center where all the viewers can keep up with their favorite sport and ESPN also has a website where viewers can get the same or even more information than in the television broadcast. The ESPN channel gives the viewer exactly what they expect, a quick overview of what happened in the sports world today. The announcers joke around to make the viewer feel like there is a human interaction that is taking place, the announcers also makes it feel like more of an entertainment program then a news program.

In today’s society “reality television” and competitions that involve high risk behavior are extremely popular. In particular, the X Games are a great example of an extreme competition that attracts viewers from every age, race and sex. Its popularity can be directly contributed to the fact that it involves high risk behavior and competition. ESPN, realizing this was a prime viewing audience, brought together several extreme sports and created another commercialized sporting spectacle. While these commercialized adventure and extreme sporting events have had some obvious growing pains, which attract thousands of spectators and viewers while offering fame.