WEBVTT
00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:18.160
A satellite dish stands on a lot in Bristol, Connecticut, aimed at a point more than 22,000 miles above the equator.
00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:23.359
The time is 7 in the evening, September 7, 1979.
00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:29.440
In a studio beside the dish, two anchors begin reading scores to a camera.
00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:38.479
When their half hour ends, the only live event the new channel has managed to book is a slow-pitch softball doubleheader in Wisconsin.
00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:41.759
Welcome to Same Day Different Century.
00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:42.799
I'm Zach.
00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:45.280
Today is September 7th.
00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:50.399
Bill Rasmussen lost his job in the spring of 1978.
00:00:50.640 --> 00:01:02.640
He had been the communications director for the New England Whalers, a hockey team in the World Hockey Association, a rival league that spent the 1970s competing with the National Hockey League.
00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:06.079
Rasmussen was in his mid-40s with three children.
00:01:06.319 --> 00:01:14.719
He started looking into whether Connecticut Sports, mostly University of Connecticut games, could be put on cable television.
00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:19.920
Cable television in 1979 was still a small business.
00:01:20.159 --> 00:01:28.000
Fewer than a quarter of American homes had it, and most subscribers paid for it to get a clear picture where antennas did not reach.
00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:36.959
Sports on Television met ABC, CBS, and NBC, which showed games on weekend afternoons and on Monday nights in the fall.
00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:42.480
No one had built a national channel around a single subject and run it around the clock.
00:01:42.879 --> 00:01:46.799
RCA leased time on a satellite called SATCOM 1.
00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:57.840
When the Rasmussen's asked about 5 hours a day for a Connecticut channel, they learned that leasing the transponder full time cost less per hour than renting a piece of the day.
00:01:58.159 --> 00:02:04.959
Because the bigger commitment was the cheaper one, they took the whole thing, and then had to work out what to put on it.
00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:18.080
In August 1978, driving toward the New Jersey shore with his son Scott, Rasmussen sat in traffic on Interstate 84 and talked to the idea of a channel that showed nothing but sports.
00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:26.960
Seven potential investors turned Rasmussen down, and some of the people he pitched told him cable itself would be gone within a few years.
00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:31.120
Getty Oil said yes in February 1979.
00:02:31.599 --> 00:02:40.960
The company wanted holdings outside the oil business, and Stuart Evey, the executive who handled those investments, carried the pitch to Getty's board.
00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:46.319
Getty committed$10 million to start, for 85% of the venture.
00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:54.000
Rasmussen had kept the idea alive to that point, partly on a$9,000 cash advance from his credit card.
00:02:54.400 --> 00:03:03.599
The NCAA, the association that governs American college athletics, agreed in principle that same month to give the channel rights to its events.
00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:14.719
Anheuser Busch, the brewer, signed an exclusive advertising contract worth about$1.4 million, the largest advertising commitment cable television had seen.
00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:22.240
Rasmussen bought an acre of land at Bristol, a manufacturing town of about 60,000 people west of Hartford.
00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:31.919
At 7 o'clock on the evening of September 7, 1979, Lee Leonard and George Grant opened the first edition of SportsCenter.
00:03:32.319 --> 00:03:37.520
Leonard told viewers that anyone who really loves sports would think they had reached sports heaven.
00:03:37.840 --> 00:03:44.879
Grant read the first score ever announced on the network: Chris Everts win over Billie Jean King at the US Open.
00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:54.560
The program ran a half hour, most of it taped highlights, and went out over 625 cable systems to about 1.4 million homes.
00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:58.080
An estimated 30,000 people were watching.
00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:05.439
ABC, CBS, and NBC held the rights to nearly everything a sports fan wanted to see.
00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:22.720
The new network could not televise a live football game or a Major League Baseball game, so the first live event it carried was the American Professional Slow Pitch Softball World Series, the Milwaukee Schlitz against the Kentucky Bourbons, played that night in Lannon, Wisconsin.
00:04:23.279 --> 00:04:38.399
Programmers in Bristol filled the remaining hours with whatever they could license, including Australian Rules Football, Davis Cup tennis, professional bowling, professional wrestling, college soccer, and repeat showings of games already aired.
00:04:38.879 --> 00:04:47.839
In March 1980, the network carried early rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, games the broadcast networks passed over.
00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:53.759
That April, it televised the NFL draft, which no one had put on television before.
00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:56.319
Both became annual fixtures.
00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:01.920
In September 1980, the channel went to a full 24-hour schedule.
00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:04.560
Rasmussen was soon pushed aside.
00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:11.439
Getty's executives cut his salary and his responsibilities, and by the end of 1980 he was gone.
00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:25.920
When ABC bought ESPN in 1984, the Rasmussen family's 15% was cashed out for a few million dollars, split among relatives and early backers, and Bill Rasmussen kept only a slice of that.
00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:28.800
ESPN lost money for years.
00:05:29.120 --> 00:05:35.519
Getty added capital and then hired the consulting firm Mackenzie to judge whether the channel had a future.
00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:42.560
Roger Werner, the consultant who led that study, joined ESPN and changed where its money came from.
00:05:42.959 --> 00:05:46.720
Cable operators had been receiving the programming at no cost.
00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:56.879
Werner's plan charged them a monthly fee for every subscriber they passed it to six cents at first, a dime by the mid-80s, and climbing from there.
00:05:57.279 --> 00:06:07.279
Operators objected to the fee and paid it, and the combination of advertising and a per subscriber charge became the standard structure for American cable channels.
00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:11.199
ESPN turned its first profit in 1985.
00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:19.839
In 1984, Texaco bought Getty Oil, and ABC paid about$200 million for control of ESPN.
00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:28.879
Capital Cities agreed to buy ABC the following year, and Disney bought Capital Cities and ABC together a decade after that.
00:06:29.680 --> 00:06:39.040
The NFL sold ESPN a package of eight Sunday night games in May 1987, a three-year agreement worth$153 million.
00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:46.000
The first of those games aired on November 8th, when the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots.
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:56.319
They were the first regular season NFL games carried on cable, and outside the two teams' home markets, watching meant paying for a package that included ESPN.
00:06:56.560 --> 00:07:06.720
Paul Tagliabu, the league's commissioner from 1989 to 2006, credited the network with stretching an autumn Sunday into an all-day television event.
00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:16.319
In Bristol, the Anchors reading those highlights turned SportsCenter into the network's signature program, running several editions a day and repeating overnight.
00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:18.879
Chris Berman handed out nicknames.
00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:29.600
Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman drew a following in the early 1990s, and Stuart Scott, who joined in 1993, brought hip hop phrasing onto the air.
00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:35.759
ESPN Radio began in 1992 and ESPN 2 in 1993.
00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:44.399
The network created the Extreme Games in 1995, later renamed the X Games, an event ESPN owned outright.
00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:50.560
Its website went up that same year, and ESPN The magazine followed in 1998.
00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:59.120
Part of the interruption arrived in 2001 and built weekday afternoons around argument about sports rather than sports themselves.
00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:03.680
The documentary series 30 for 30 began in 2009.
00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:14.560
The NFL moved Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN in 2006, and ESPN paid about$1.1 billion a year for it.
00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:24.319
The price went to$1.9 billion in a 2011 extension and to about$2.7 billion a year under an agreement signed in 2021.
00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:35.919
Under an 11-year NBA contract that began with the 2025-2026 season, ESPN pays roughly$2.6 billion a year for basketball.
00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:42.240
Athletic directors and conference commissioners rearranged their calendars around ESPN's schedule.
00:08:42.559 --> 00:08:48.799
Teams began playing conference basketball on weeknights because that was when the network had airtime to fill.
00:08:49.120 --> 00:09:01.039
ESPN later built channels around single conferences, the SEC Network in 2014 and the ACC network in 2019, paying the conferences and sharing the proceeds.
00:09:01.279 --> 00:09:05.120
Schools left leagues to reach the larger television payouts.
00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:12.960
The network also carries the college football playoff, under an agreement paying about$1.3 billion a year.
00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:21.679
In 2011, ESPN reached about 100 million American households, close to every home with cable or satellite.
00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:33.200
It charged the operators more per subscriber than any other channel, and that charge appeared on the bill of every household in the package, including the households that never turned on a game.
00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.360
Households began canceling cable in the years that followed.
00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:53.759
ESPN cut staff in 2015, in 2017, when it ended the contracts of about 100 on-air commentators and writers, and again in 2023, in the deepest talent purge the company had run, and also again earlier this year.
00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:05.279
Estimates of its cable reach in 2026 differ, running from roughly 55 million homes to about 60 million, against a fee that has climbed toward$10 per subscriber.
00:10:05.519 --> 00:10:14.080
Highlights that once required waiting for the Late Sports Center now reach phones within seconds, posted by the leagues and teams themselves.
00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:25.360
ESPN acquired NFL Network on January 31, 2026, along with pay television distribution of the Red Zone Channel and the league's fantasy football operation.
00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:36.799
The NFL took a 10% ownership stake at ESPN in exchange, valued in Disney's filings at about$3 billion, which puts the whole company near$30 billion.
00:10:37.039 --> 00:10:40.559
Disney holds 72% and Hearst 18.
00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:49.279
Bill Rasmussen died on August 18th of this year, at 93 years old, from the effects of Parkinson's disease.
00:10:49.519 --> 00:10:53.120
He was out of the company within two years of putting it on the air.
00:10:53.440 --> 00:11:02.240
ESPN still operates from Bristol, on ground that started as the single acre he bought for a satellite dish and now runs to more than a hundred.
00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:05.759
And SportsCenter still goes out from there every day.
00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:08.639
That same day, different century.
00:11:09.039 --> 00:11:09.840
I'm Zach.
00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:12.879
We'll be back tomorrow with another date, another story.
00:11:13.039 --> 00:11:14.559
Thanks for listening.
00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:18.160
A satellite dish stands on a lot in Bristol, Connecticut, aimed at a point more than 22,000 miles above the equator.
00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:23.359
The time is 7 in the evening, September 7, 1979.
00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:29.440
In a studio beside the dish, two anchors begin reading scores to a camera.
00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:38.479
When their half hour ends, the only live event the new channel has managed to book is a slow-pitch softball doubleheader in Wisconsin.
00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:41.759
Welcome to Same Day Different Century.
00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:42.799
I'm Zach.
00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:45.280
Today is September 7th.
00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:50.399
Bill Rasmussen lost his job in the spring of 1978.
00:00:50.640 --> 00:01:02.640
He had been the communications director for the New England Whalers, a hockey team in the World Hockey Association, a rival league that spent the 1970s competing with the National Hockey League.
00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:06.079
Rasmussen was in his mid-40s with three children.
00:01:06.319 --> 00:01:14.719
He started looking into whether Connecticut Sports, mostly University of Connecticut games, could be put on cable television.
00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:19.920
Cable television in 1979 was still a small business.
00:01:20.159 --> 00:01:28.000
Fewer than a quarter of American homes had it, and most subscribers paid for it to get a clear picture where antennas did not reach.
00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:36.959
Sports on Television met ABC, CBS, and NBC, which showed games on weekend afternoons and on Monday nights in the fall.
00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:42.480
No one had built a national channel around a single subject and run it around the clock.
00:01:42.879 --> 00:01:46.799
RCA leased time on a satellite called SATCOM 1.
00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:57.840
When the Rasmussen's asked about 5 hours a day for a Connecticut channel, they learned that leasing the transponder full time cost less per hour than renting a piece of the day.
00:01:58.159 --> 00:02:04.959
Because the bigger commitment was the cheaper one, they took the whole thing, and then had to work out what to put on it.
00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:18.080
In August 1978, driving toward the New Jersey shore with his son Scott, Rasmussen sat in traffic on Interstate 84 and talked to the idea of a channel that showed nothing but sports.
00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:26.960
Seven potential investors turned Rasmussen down, and some of the people he pitched told him cable itself would be gone within a few years.
00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:31.120
Getty Oil said yes in February 1979.
00:02:31.599 --> 00:02:40.960
The company wanted holdings outside the oil business, and Stuart Evey, the executive who handled those investments, carried the pitch to Getty's board.
00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:46.319
Getty committed$10 million to start, for 85% of the venture.
00:02:46.560 --> 00:02:54.000
Rasmussen had kept the idea alive to that point, partly on a$9,000 cash advance from his credit card.
00:02:54.400 --> 00:03:03.599
The NCAA, the association that governs American college athletics, agreed in principle that same month to give the channel rights to its events.
00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:14.719
Anheuser Busch, the brewer, signed an exclusive advertising contract worth about$1.4 million, the largest advertising commitment cable television had seen.
00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:22.240
Rasmussen bought an acre of land at Bristol, a manufacturing town of about 60,000 people west of Hartford.
00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:31.919
At 7 o'clock on the evening of September 7, 1979, Lee Leonard and George Grant opened the first edition of SportsCenter.
00:03:32.319 --> 00:03:37.520
Leonard told viewers that anyone who really loves sports would think they had reached sports heaven.
00:03:37.840 --> 00:03:44.879
Grant read the first score ever announced on the network: Chris Everts win over Billie Jean King at the US Open.
00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:54.560
The program ran a half hour, most of it taped highlights, and went out over 625 cable systems to about 1.4 million homes.
00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:58.080
An estimated 30,000 people were watching.
00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:05.439
ABC, CBS, and NBC held the rights to nearly everything a sports fan wanted to see.
00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:22.720
The new network could not televise a live football game or a Major League Baseball game, so the first live event it carried was the American Professional Slow Pitch Softball World Series, the Milwaukee Schlitz against the Kentucky Bourbons, played that night in Lannon, Wisconsin.
00:04:23.279 --> 00:04:38.399
Programmers in Bristol filled the remaining hours with whatever they could license, including Australian Rules Football, Davis Cup tennis, professional bowling, professional wrestling, college soccer, and repeat showings of games already aired.
00:04:38.879 --> 00:04:47.839
In March 1980, the network carried early rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, games the broadcast networks passed over.
00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:53.759
That April, it televised the NFL draft, which no one had put on television before.
00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:56.319
Both became annual fixtures.
00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:01.920
In September 1980, the channel went to a full 24-hour schedule.
00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:04.560
Rasmussen was soon pushed aside.
00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:11.439
Getty's executives cut his salary and his responsibilities, and by the end of 1980 he was gone.
00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:25.920
When ABC bought ESPN in 1984, the Rasmussen family's 15% was cashed out for a few million dollars, split among relatives and early backers, and Bill Rasmussen kept only a slice of that.
00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:28.800
ESPN lost money for years.
00:05:29.120 --> 00:05:35.519
Getty added capital and then hired the consulting firm Mackenzie to judge whether the channel had a future.
00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:42.560
Roger Werner, the consultant who led that study, joined ESPN and changed where its money came from.
00:05:42.959 --> 00:05:46.720
Cable operators had been receiving the programming at no cost.
00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:56.879
Werner's plan charged them a monthly fee for every subscriber they passed it to six cents at first, a dime by the mid-80s, and climbing from there.
00:05:57.279 --> 00:06:07.279
Operators objected to the fee and paid it, and the combination of advertising and a per subscriber charge became the standard structure for American cable channels.
00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:11.199
ESPN turned its first profit in 1985.
00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:19.839
In 1984, Texaco bought Getty Oil, and ABC paid about$200 million for control of ESPN.
00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:28.879
Capital Cities agreed to buy ABC the following year, and Disney bought Capital Cities and ABC together a decade after that.
00:06:29.680 --> 00:06:39.040
The NFL sold ESPN a package of eight Sunday night games in May 1987, a three-year agreement worth$153 million.
00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:46.000
The first of those games aired on November 8th, when the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots.
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:56.319
They were the first regular season NFL games carried on cable, and outside the two teams' home markets, watching meant paying for a package that included ESPN.
00:06:56.560 --> 00:07:06.720
Paul Tagliabu, the league's commissioner from 1989 to 2006, credited the network with stretching an autumn Sunday into an all-day television event.
00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:16.319
In Bristol, the Anchors reading those highlights turned SportsCenter into the network's signature program, running several editions a day and repeating overnight.
00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:18.879
Chris Berman handed out nicknames.
00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:29.600
Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman drew a following in the early 1990s, and Stuart Scott, who joined in 1993, brought hip hop phrasing onto the air.
00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:35.759
ESPN Radio began in 1992 and ESPN 2 in 1993.
00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:44.399
The network created the Extreme Games in 1995, later renamed the X Games, an event ESPN owned outright.
00:07:44.639 --> 00:07:50.560
Its website went up that same year, and ESPN The magazine followed in 1998.
00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:59.120
Part of the interruption arrived in 2001 and built weekday afternoons around argument about sports rather than sports themselves.
00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:03.680
The documentary series 30 for 30 began in 2009.
00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:14.560
The NFL moved Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN in 2006, and ESPN paid about$1.1 billion a year for it.
00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:24.319
The price went to$1.9 billion in a 2011 extension and to about$2.7 billion a year under an agreement signed in 2021.
00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:35.919
Under an 11-year NBA contract that began with the 2025-2026 season, ESPN pays roughly$2.6 billion a year for basketball.
00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:42.240
Athletic directors and conference commissioners rearranged their calendars around ESPN's schedule.
00:08:42.559 --> 00:08:48.799
Teams began playing conference basketball on weeknights because that was when the network had airtime to fill.
00:08:49.120 --> 00:09:01.039
ESPN later built channels around single conferences, the SEC Network in 2014 and the ACC network in 2019, paying the conferences and sharing the proceeds.
00:09:01.279 --> 00:09:05.120
Schools left leagues to reach the larger television payouts.
00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:12.960
The network also carries the college football playoff, under an agreement paying about$1.3 billion a year.
00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:21.679
In 2011, ESPN reached about 100 million American households, close to every home with cable or satellite.
00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:33.200
It charged the operators more per subscriber than any other channel, and that charge appeared on the bill of every household in the package, including the households that never turned on a game.
00:09:33.600 --> 00:09:37.360
Households began canceling cable in the years that followed.
00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:53.759
ESPN cut staff in 2015, in 2017, when it ended the contracts of about 100 on-air commentators and writers, and again in 2023, in the deepest talent purge the company had run, and also again earlier this year.
00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:05.279
Estimates of its cable reach in 2026 differ, running from roughly 55 million homes to about 60 million, against a fee that has climbed toward$10 per subscriber.
00:10:05.519 --> 00:10:14.080
Highlights that once required waiting for the Late Sports Center now reach phones within seconds, posted by the leagues and teams themselves.
00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:25.360
ESPN acquired NFL Network on January 31, 2026, along with pay television distribution of the Red Zone Channel and the league's fantasy football operation.
00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:36.799
The NFL took a 10% ownership stake at ESPN in exchange, valued in Disney's filings at about$3 billion, which puts the whole company near$30 billion.
00:10:37.039 --> 00:10:40.559
Disney holds 72% and Hearst 18.
00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:49.279
Bill Rasmussen died on August 18th of this year, at 93 years old, from the effects of Parkinson's disease.
00:10:49.519 --> 00:10:53.120
He was out of the company within two years of putting it on the air.
00:10:53.440 --> 00:11:02.240
ESPN still operates from Bristol, on ground that started as the single acre he bought for a satellite dish and now runs to more than a hundred.
00:11:02.399 --> 00:11:05.759
And SportsCenter still goes out from there every day.
00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:08.639
That same day, different century.
00:11:09.039 --> 00:11:09.840
I'm Zach.
00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:12.879
We'll be back tomorrow with another date, another story.
00:11:13.039 --> 00:11:14.559
Thanks for listening.
