The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) celebrates its 30th Anniversary today, September 7, 2009. ESPN is known as the international standard for sports news and was the first 24-hour sports programming network.
Connecticut native Bill Rasmussen, a former sportscaster and public relations director for the Hartford Whalers, began working on a new start-up venture in the late 1970s. Along with his son Scott, Rasmussen hoped to establish a statewide satellite cable sports network that would feature University of Connecticut and Whalers events. When Rasmussen learned it wouldn’t cost him any more to use the satellite transponder for national distribution, he created ESPN.
What launched with a single cable network on September 7, 1979 is now ESPN, Inc., The Worldwide Leader in Sports, a leading multinational, multimedia sports entertainment company featuring the broadest portfolio of multimedia sports assets, including six domestic networks, 45 international networks and more than 50 business entities.
Today, ESPN delivers sports programming to more than 190 countries and territories on all seven continents across a variety of platforms — television, wireless, interactive, print, radio, broadband, event management and consumer products – all with the hopes of fulfilling its original mission of serving sports fans.
