The Story Behind the Beloved ESPN

The Entertainment and Sports Programing Network or what most people know it by, the ESPN channel was founded by a guy named Bill Rasmussen, along with his son Scott Rasmussen, and an Aetna Insurance agent, Ed Eagan.  Bill, who was one of those guys who absolutely loved sports and always tried to be around them, was fired from his position as the communications manager for the Hartford Whalers in 1978. This was where Bill ended meeting Eagan who displayed an interest in building a career in television. Eagan shortly approached Bill with the idea of creating a monthly cable show covering Connecticut sports and was curious to see if the Whalers Company would be interested in being the main feature on the show. After being jobless for a few months Bill came up with the idea to start a cable network that would cover the whole state of Connecticut. With both of them having very little cable television knowledge, they knew it was going to be a difficult challenge to get this idea to actually work. It also would become very difficult because of low percentage of families receiving cable at there home. The rate was only at 20% for families who had a cable TV in their living room.

In the summer of 1978, Bill, Ed and his associate Bob Beyus, who owned a video production company, began to look for support from other cable operators and potential investors for the sports channel which they had come to name ESP(Entertainment and Sports Programming Network). They began to pitch their idea on June 26. They ended up inviting 12 representatives from local cable operators, only 5 accepted the offer. In spite of these initial difficulties, the ESP Network was incorporated on July 14, 1978 for a fee around $91. Eventually more and more cable companies would become highly interested in the ESP Network and end up signing them to a TV contract. Even though they would not be hitting the air for about 6 months, in 1979 when the NCAA basketball tournament kicked off there was an audience of about 24.1 million people watching from there living rooms due to a match up between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson the tournament is regarded as having an instrumental part in ESPN's eventual success due to the fact many viewers called their cable operators complaining they wanted "that channel that has all the basketball".

Over time there have been thousands and thousands like when the Connecticut mens and womens basketball teams both won the NCAA titles for basketball. Still to this date, they are the only school to run the table and win both titles. Now ESPN can be seen in HD where you can see and hear almost everything that happens during any kind of sporting event. March 20, 2001 was the first time when ESPN introduced the idea of everything being in HD for almost every sporting event that occurred on that day. Then on January 5 in 2010 they introduced the idea of sporting events in 3D. Not exactly something I would want to watch in 3D but to some people its the best thing that has happened to sports.