Posted on 08/11/2006 9:17:01 AM PDT by RayChuang88
ABC Sports, which once defined sports television and was the home of Roone Arledge, Jim McKay, “Wide World of Sports,” Howard Cosell, 10 Olympics and Mexican cliff diving, died yesterday after one final big gulp by ESPN.
Skip to next paragraph The sports division that was nurtured to prominence through Arledge’s production vision and deal-making savvy had been in fading health and recently lost the rights to “Monday Night Football.”
ABC Sports was only 45.
“My heart just weeps for Roone’s legacy,” said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports, whose career started as an Olympic researcher at ABC Sports before he became Arledge’s executive assistant.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Unless you're over 30, the phrase The Worldwide Leader in Sports is far more associated with ESPN than with ABC.
It was only a matter of time when MNF moved over to ESPN and NBC picked up the Sunday Night Football telecasts which had aired on ESPN.
I just loved the Mexican cliff diving. The barrel jumping was way up there too.
I miss the "agony of defeat" ski-jumper who crashes and burns...
I'm not really sure Roone Arledge would be sad. In a lot of ways the dominance of ESPN in the cable world is proof that Roone was right. He's the guy who figured you could build an audience for any sport so just find something interesting and put it on, he's the guy who thought there was a prime time weekday sports audience. He also knew that networks had to change to survive (he did a lot more than invent sports programs). Yeah it kind of sucks that the mighty banner of ABC Sports is about to disappear, but in many ways Roone started it, even though he didn't directly make ESPN it probably wouldn't have been created without his prior influence.
The '72 Olympics...
Monday Night Football was one of the top rated shows in the country, and its going to cable.... that'll cut its ratings by at least half...
Certainly, ABC will still have sports programming but I can see the economic need to consolidate. Why have an ESPN bureaucracy and a separate ABC Sports bureaucracy? The dinosaur media is having to cut budgets in all sorts of ways. This actually makes sense if you think about it.
I wish NBC sports would die. They are the WORST!
Yes, but most of the advertisers probably don't care about the kind of people who are still watching TV with rabbit ears. ;)
Wide World of Sports made Saturday afternoons the real "Must See TV".
It doesn't really matter. They'd become one in the same, with each cross-pollinating the other. Pretty much unwatchable unless you're in the coveted 18-39 yo demographic. It's just sound bites and highlight clips, 'round the clock if an actual game isn't being broadcast.
Here is a test if you don't believe that. Turn on ESPN. Now change channels and as quickly as the image appears for the changed-to channel, change back to ESPN. 99.99% of the time the image that was initially on ESPN is gone as they've moved on to another image bite. Try it and you'll see!
But Sunday Night Football is moving from cable to broadcast. Basically all they really did was swap the concepts of SNF and MNF, MNF used to be the feature game of the week and SNF was there to make sure all teams played in prime time, now SNF is the feature game and MNF is the other prime time. This makes it easier to cherry pick games late in the season for the feature game, it's easier to move a game a couple of hours than a day.
I guess this is the Agony of Defeat.
The agony of defeat ski-jumper guy...
I don't think he would be either, but for a different reason.
Personally, I think he would be working for ESPN right now, they would have gotten him already.
I don't care who covers the sports...just so long as poker isn't considered a "sport"
I think the guys name was Chris Economaci or something like that. There is a show on ESPN called the Cheap Seats. They show old epsiodes of WWoS and make fun of it. Its pretty funny. A rip off of MST3K but still good.
So does this mean there will be no sports regularly telecast on ABC?
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