ESPN may not truly dominate when it comes to live sports coverage, but the network is unmatched when it comes to studio and original programming.
ESPN?s most prominent and important studio property is SportsCenter, the network?s flagship show that recently aired its 30,000th episode. SportsCenter is by far the most well known sports news show on television, and essentially has no competition (The FSN Final Score has much more in common with ESPNews than with SportsCenter). With its stature, SportsCenter has the power to make and break some sports ? one need only look at the effect increased highlights has had on NASCAR, and the effect decreased highlights has had on the moribund National Hockey League.
SportsCenter aside, no network can match the sheer amount of ESPN studio shows. Overall, the network airs NFL Live, Sunday NFL Countdown, Monday Night Countdown, NFL Primetime, College Football Live, College Gameday (football), Football Friday, Baseball Tonight, NBA Shootaround, NBA Fastbreak, NBA Coast to Coast, NASCAR Now, NASCAR Countdown, College Gameday (basketball), College Gamenight and even WNBA Shootaround.
Sports news shows may dot ESPN?s primetime schedule, but sports talk is what raised the network?s profile even further in the past few years. Pardon the Interruption, which premiered in 2001, changed the sports talk landscape. The show, featuring timed debates between Washington Post writers Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, served as a template for other sports divisions. Within months of the show?s premiere, the amount of ?heated? debates on studio shows increased dramatically; ESPN itself even leeched off the show — one need only look at the Sean Salisbury/John Clayton debates in recent years. As early as January of 2002, only three months after PTI?s premiere, NBC ripped off the ?timed debate? concept with a segment on its NBA pregame show, where analysts had twenty-four seconds to talk about a topic in the league. Since the premiere of PTI, nearly all sports talk shows have featured some of the show’s stylistic touches.
While PTI has been influential in sports media, ESPN has many other debate shows that ? while not as successful ? still provide the backbone of the network?s early afternoon programming. Around the Horn, First and Ten, Jim Rome is Burning, Mike and Mike in the Morning and The Sports Reporters do not have the following of PTI, nor the television ratings. Still, they deliver much more eyeballs than the reruns of classic sports and episodes of Up Close that ESPN used to air previously.
ESPN has not been limited to news and talk shows; the network has experimented with other genres. The network?s morning show, Cold Pizza, has done fairly well on weekday mornings, maintaining a decent following even while going through several transformations.
ESPN has experimented with dramatic series and movies; the highly controversial series Playmakers offended some, both for its sexual content ? the show once featured a pre-Cold Pizza Thea Andrews playing a sports reporter in a sex scene with a player ? and its seeming implication of NFL players in undesirable off the field situations. Tilt, a show about gambling, failed rather miserably, and game shows like Beg, Borrow and Deal, I?d Do Anything and Dream Job flamed out quickly. ESPN?s movies, A Season on the Brink, Hustle, 3, Four Minutes, et al, have been decent ratings draws, but have generally drawn criticism and ridicule from the sports watching public.
ESPN even once went the CourtTV route, airing two mock trials early in this decade. The network has experimented with a comedian, Jay Mohr (Mohr Sports), a loudmouth, Stephen A. Smith (Quite Frankly), and an Entertainment Tonight style show (ESPN Hollywood). All of those projects failed, like most of ESPN?s outside-the-box initiatives.
Still, one has to give credit to a sports network that could think up such diverse ideas ? especially considering that ESPN?s competition can?t even come up with a show to rival SportsCenter.
ESPN?s outside-the-box initiatives and general excess aren?t limited to programming. The network?s personalities often overshadow the sports they broadcast, and some become lightning rods for criticism. That will be examined in Part III.
