Bill Rasmussen and ESPN: Changing Sports Viewing Forever

Sports shown on television twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That was the dream of Bill Rasmussen, the creator of the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN). As one might imagine, when it first started, people thought Rasmussen was crazy and that all the money he and his confidants spent to secure a television deal was just going to go to waste. From the beginning, Mr. Rasmussen was willing to cover any sport that would let them. Since the network was not a large company at the time and did not have the funding to bid on major leagues such as the NFL or NBA, they covered events such as international ping pong and racquetball. They have now become such a power, that they have been able to save some leagues such as the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and the Women’s Basketball Association by the amount of money they dole out to cover their league’s games on television when those unpopular leagues are unable to sell their product to other channels. In addition to being a helping force in professional sports, they have grown into a national power that has some bloggers referring to them as the “evil four letter network.” They have exclusive rights with just about every network on television to show highlights from games that are not actually shown on one of ESPN’s nearly twenty channels. Without Bill Rasmussen’s dedication to follow his dream, sports may still be seen as they were nearly thirty years ago with games splattered across a few channels now and then. Through the examination of Bill Rasmussen’s journey to create an all-sports network, the fact that he has had a great impact on the entire sporting culture becomes evident.

Rasmussen’s love for all sports first stemmed from his love for America’s pastime: baseball, which he would listen to as much as possible as a child. His main idea was to basically take the sports segment that was at the end of everyone’s local newscast and have it run all day with all sports from all over the country. This was the first real way for fans who were for a team from another city to stay up on their team while living away from that town. In the beginning, his idea was considered, “revolutionary and patently foolish” (Freeman 5).  Rasmussen has created an empire to which many people now schedule their days around. Not only are they broadcasting live sports to the masses, they are also televising things such as poker and, at one time, the national spelling bee. The innovation that is really pertinent to keeping a channel like ESPN going are the shows that fill the gaps between live broadcasts. These shows have become so popular, and have helped the network gain so much ground that people who used to watch their nightly local news program are instead tuning into an ESPN channel to get their sports news and are essentially skipping any other type of news. Even though these types of shows have now been on the air for about thirty years, their ratings continue to grow each season (Consoli 7).

Rasmussen started the foundation of thoughts for his dream before he was even fired from the job that set him on his journey. While he was working in the World Hockey League (WHL), cable was in its infancy, and even though not many had it, he was able to realize the implications and possibilities of cable and because of that tried to get his team tied up in a long term cable deal (Freeman 98). Depending on the terms and conditions of the deal, this could have potentially been one of the best public relations strategies possible, but his boss at the time thought it was a terrible idea and Rasmussen was not allowed to follow through with it. It was this frame of mind that eventually led to him getting fired from the team, but now it looks like the league could have solidified their financial future by going along with a few of his ideas. Very soon after he left, the league had to file for bankruptcy, partly because they were unable to get anyone to broadcast their games. Had they listened to Rasmussen, perhaps they would not have had this problem.

Fortunately for Rasmussen, the balls started to roll on his project before he even knew what, exactly, he wanted to accomplish. The day after he was fired from his job with the WHL, Rasmussen received a call from Ed Eagan, a man who worked in the same building he used to, and was aware of Rasmussen’s acknowledgement about cable being a future power (McManus 25). Eagan wanted to produce a half hour cable show about sports in Connecticut, and thought Rasmussen may be able to help him get it on the air. After meeting with them, the team of about three people broke up with their assignments to go meet with various heads of athletics in the state to see if they would even allow their sports to be on cable television. This was just the start of something great to come, because, for Rasmussen, noticing that there was an audience that would tune into watch a half hour show, was enough for him to start planning his empire.

Even though Bill Rasmussen is no longer part of ESPN, it is safe to say that a network such as that probably still would not exist if it were not for his vision and willingness to take such a public risk. While the culture of the United States has really always cared about sports since the early twentieth century, Rasmussen’s advent of ESPN has completely changed the way people watch sports. Not only has it done that, but it has made everyone who wants to be one an expert on mainstream sports. The accomplishments of the four letter network are surprisingly not more than Rasmussen had in mind, while he did not imagine the network blossoming quite as big as it has, he did imagine the original ESPN channel catching on to large audiences quite early in the game (Raymond 34).

When the dream finally did come true for Mr. Rasmussen, he was in such awe that he could barely watch the first telecast of what would come to be known as SportsCenter. Like many entrepreneurs, Rasmussen knew he was going to have to push hard to get what he wanted and he showed that from the beginning. It seemed that in the first few months, no matter where he turned, people would be interested in his project, but not quite interested enough to throw any significant size of money at it. When he was trying to get time on a satellite for his new channel, no one was willing to give it to him, but he would not stop until he put all of his efforts into impressing Al Parinello, a salesman from RCA, who eventually got Rasmussen his satellite deal. No matter how badly they wanted it, Rasmussen was struck down when he learned there was no way he could afford, “$1,250 a night for five hours, seven days a week” (Freeman 61). Eventually, in order to get a deal done, he made an agreement with a company called Getty where in turn for them putting the money down for the programming, they would own eighty percent of Rasmussen’s company, which they had no hand in starting to that point. They also claimed that they wanted to have control over some of the programming, which Rasmussen was not willing to give them at the outset of their discussions.

At this point, if one thing was obvious, it was that Rasmussen was going to have to find someone to financially support his dream. At this, he started going around to every company or agency he could think of to find any support that would lead to any financial gain for his proposed network. During these discussions with television, sporting, and other media companies, Rasmussen would present them with a plan that laid out the purpose, concept, market, schedule, mechanics, and compensation that would go along with any financial support of ESP-TV. This plan rarely ever worked and Rasmussen eventually claimed that the reason may have been because it gave the companies too much time to find something wrong with what he was presenting. Coming with a more direct approach to digging into millionaires’ pockets, which involved presenting a broad picture and not giving them any room or reason to doubt the process, Rasmussen soon saw many “gifts” of $50,000 or more for his company (Freeman 53).

The deal eventually happened, with Eagan and his Getty Company being the only one seriously interested in putting the huge chunk of money down that was really needed for ESP-TV to get off the ground. Many strange interactions happened during that time as Rasmussen worked with so many people who loaned him money and helped him with connections during the many month long process to get the channel rolling (Raymond 35). Without this money, Rasmussen would never have been able to revolutionize the way people watch and pay attention to sports. Even as his show was just getting off the ground, Rasmussen, and those pundits who study the affects of television programming, could see that people were interested in his product. It was at that point that he realized he was not just going to have an impact on society; he was, in fact, going to shape parts of it.

Reports are that once Rasmussen found out that someone was going to let him secure a channel, he was so glad to have his dream off of the ground that when he called them, he forgot to state his name before blurting out the fact that he would take the proposed deal. When it was announced that ESP-TV, many people with 20^th Century Fox, the channel that originally agreed with Rasmussen, were so confused that they called headquarters to make sure it was not a mistake. After this deal was made, Rasmussen set out to do the unthinkable: make contracts with some of the largest sporting associations in the world to broadcast their games. Now that Rasmussen had the deal, he had to set a date for his first show on this new network to be broadcast. Perhaps because he was caught up in the excitement of the moment, Rasmussen gave a date that many felt was too soon, but he was committed to make it work. On the morning of the first show however many wondered if Rasmussen may have undershot his dream as, “ESPN was going to do its first show with the studio only three-quarters built” (Freeman 91). Although the viewer ship ratings for his first few shows were very low by today’s standards, when considering the percentage of the overall television audience that would have actually had access to the new channel, it was obvious people were intrigued.

In fact, the industry that Rasmussen created has produced a situation, for good or bad, where athletes have to be aware of what they are doing or saying at all times because it is always possible for them to be filmed and end up on one of the most loyally viewed networks on television. The network of channels has also made some of the minutest names in sports, household names. Not only did he create a situation in which fans would be able to see small parts of every game that was televised across the country, but he also wanted to “pick up the little guy.” Rasmussen wanted to tell the sports stories happening around the world that were not going to usually garner front page headlines. This meant that marathoners running with disabilities to raise awareness or money for their cause or high school coaches who stayed on the sideline despite going through chemotherapy, the stories that normal-every day people can relate to, would be on television. ESPN even started trying sitcoms, but decided to shut perhaps their most successful effort down, “After it didn’t sit well with the major partner that is the NFL” (Grossman 26). This goes to show that even though ESPN has attempted to branch out to other realms than the real world of sports, it has always found its core success to be in Rasmussen’s original dream.

Not only did Rasmussen single handedly make the channel more popular, through making people start to care more and more about the national sports scene as they gained more knowledge about it, they helped the sports ratings on almost every other channel that carried the grow. His influence over society with the invention and entrepreneurship of ESPN is enormous. Simply considering the fact that the network is one of the biggest employers, from the people actually seen on television to those in the research room, in the television business, can illustrate how much impact they have truly had on society. This is a company that now not only has seventeen television channels, but they also have a magazine, a website, and radio stations across the United States. It has also recently hooked up with other types of media that are almost unbelievable to conquer, “ESPN360.com as a home just for live events while also thinking outside the proverbial Xbox and iTunes deals” (Miller 28). With this revolutionary idea, ESPN has put the sports that will not fit on their network of channels, such as small conference football games, on the internet so that no one ever misses a down of their favorite team.

As their audience of loyal listeners and watchers continues to grow, Rasmussen’s invention just keeps finding out more ways to keep people surrounded by the sporting world. Perhaps famed political and baseball writer George F. Will said it best when he wrote about his wife getting him a new television with, “500 channels are about 499 more than this viewer needs. Were someone to render my television set incapable of receiving anything but ESPN, it would be weeks—months maybe—before I noticed” (365). As the American public knows all too well, Will is not alone.

Bill Rasmussen not only revolutionized the way that people watch sports, he created an empire that was unlike any other. Eventually, Rasmussen’s relationships with the others who he had hired to run ESPN dissolved and he decided to leave the company, perhaps because he realized he wanted too much control over the everyday operations. He would negotiate a deal to buy out his stock with the company when he became “bored” of his job with ESPN so that he would no longer have any financial connections to the conglomerate television network he had created.  He claimed later that he would, “go back to sometimes visit friends,” but further stated that he does not need to be there in person to be reminded of what he accomplished (Freeman 99). No one else in the history of television, or entrepreneurship for that matter, has had such a hand in altering the ways people live their lives, especially in the realm of television entertainment. The thoughts of Mr. Rasmussen not only created a source of entertainment, they have also created a source of livelihood for many workers. At this point, the number of people who owe their success to Rasmussen has become too many to count.

Works Cited

Consoli, John. “NBA Playoffs Bounce ESPN, TNT, ABC Ratings.” MediaWeek 18.22 (2008) 6-8.

Freeman, Michael. ESPN: The Uncensored History. Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing Company, 2000.

Grossman, Ben. “ESPN to Go Deeper Into Late Night.” Broadcasting & Cable. 138.25 (2008) 26.

McManus, John. “ESPN, Turner Gear Up for New Cable Era.” Advertising Age 61.43 (1990) 25.

Miller, Stuart. “John Lasker: He’s Inventing ESPN’s Digital World.” Broadcasting & Cable 138.23 (2008) 28.

Raymond, Snoddy. “ESPN’s European Frontier.” Television 45.6 (2008): 34-35.

Will, George F. The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America’s Fabric. New York, New York: Scribner, 1997.

This writer can be reached by e-mail at [e-mail].