ESPN history

He first joined ESPN in 1980 as a program coordinator.

1980: ESPN begins broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

At the end of 1980, Rasmussen was removed as company president by Getty Oil executive for ESPN, Stuart Evey, relegating him to a ceremonial role.

In August 1982, ABC television agreed to supply some programming to ESPN in exchange for an option to purchase up to 49 percent of the company.

The contract was baseball's first cable package since 1983.

ESPN began distributing sports programming outside the United States in 1983, leading to the formation of ESPN International five years later.

ESPN was the largest cable channel by the end of 1983 with 28.5 million households.

In 1984, the United States ABC television network purchased a controlling stake in the company.

In 1987, it began broadcasting National Football League (NFL) games; two years later they started to cover Major League Baseball series.

1990: The Hearst Corporation acquires a 20 percent interest in ESPN from RJR Nabisco Inc.

In 1990 it paid $400 million to Major League Baseball to broadcast 175 games annually for four years.

In 1992, ESPN Asia was launched.

In 1993 ESPN introduced a second cable network, ESPN2, which began transmission on October 1, 1993.

ESPN launched ESPN2 on October 1, 1993 at 7:30 PM. The channel at the time was targeting those age 18-34.

1993: ESPN2 begins transmission.

ESPN2 was created in 1993 to cover alternative sports events such as poker, billiards and extreme games as part of its essential programming.

ESPN had already become a booming profit center for ABC. “The channel has been our biggest growth area on a percentage basis over the past five years,” said Robert A. Iger, ABC’s president in August 1995.

In 1996, ESPN was acquired from Captial Cities/ABC Inc by Walt Disney Company, who remains ESPN’s parent company up to this day.

ABC later merged with Capital Cities Communications, and the combined company was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 1996.

Seeds of the disagreement began in 1998 when ESPN preempted three Sunday night baseball games with football broadcasts.

ESPN's combination of Sunday night football and the Major League Baseball playoffs pushed the sports network to the number one ranking in prime time among cable networks in October 1999.

Under its contract with MLB, ESPN had the right to preempt up to ten games per season for events of "significant viewer interest." At the beginning of the 1999 season, MLB announced it would terminate its six-year contract with ESPN at the end of the season.

To offset some of its costs, ESPN dropped some high-priced contracts, letting NASCAR jump to other networks in 1999 with a $2.4 billion six-year deal.

In 2001, the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society was acquired and became the basis for more than two dozen ESPN Bass tournament and fishing shows.

A large-format movie produced with Touchstone Pictures called ESPN's Ultimate X Games wasreleased in May 2002.

He also cited SportsCenter as a solid piece of programming for the network; it aired its 25,000th live edition in August 2002, more shows than any other television series.

By 2002 the company's flagship network, ESPN, reached more than 87 million households and televised all of the major professional leagues: baseball, football, hockey, and basketball.

According to the 2002 annual report of ESPN's parent company, Walt Disney, ESPN was the number one basic cable network in terms of affiliate, national, and local advertising revenue.

ESPN's fees were double those of CNN and four times those of MTV. By 2002 Business Week reported that ESPN's fees averaged $1.50 per subscriber, more than double those of CNN, with contracts calling for annual 20 percent increases.

In an interview published in Multichannel News in mid-2002, ESPN President George Bodenheimer identified three programming areas of growth outside of ESPN's major sports franchises.

In 2002, ESPN and ABC acquired television broadcasting rights for National Basketball Association (NBA) games.

Sports enthusiasts can now also enjoy a high-definition viewing experience as ESPN HD kicked off in 2003.

Lee Alan Hill, “Building a TV Sports Empire; How ESPN Created a Model for Cable Success,” Television Week, September 6, 2004.

Stuart Evey, ESPN: Creating an Empire – The No-Holds-Barred Story of Power, Ego, Money, and Vision That Transformed a Culture, Triumph Books, September 2004.

ESPN Books ESPN Books, started in 2004, is a publishing company operated by ESPN that has published about 20 books so far.

A new six-year agreement valued at $815 million extended ESPN's right to cover Major League Baseball through 2005.

But football continued to be a mother lode for ESPN. In 2005, when ESPN paid $1.1 billion for the rights to Monday Night Football, some business analysts thought the network paid a too rich a price.