SportsCenter
SportsCenter is an American television sports news broadcasting show broadcast by ESPN. Originally anchored by Chris Berman, George Grande, Greg Gumbel, Lee Leonard, Bob Ley, Sal Marchiano and Lou Palmer, it premiered on September 7, 1979. Cristina Alexander, Victoria Arlen, Matt Barrie, Nicole Briscoe, John Buccigross, Linda Cohn, Kevin Connors, Shae Cornette, Elle Duncan, Michael Eaves, Jay Harris, Alyssa Lang, Steve Levy, David Lloyd, Zubin Mehenti, Kevin Negandhi, Stephen Nelson, Arda Ocal, Kelsey Riggs Cuff, Amina Smith, Ryan Smith, Hannah Storm, Gary Striewski, Scott Van Pelt and Christine Williamson currently serve as anchors. The show covers various sports teams and athletes from around the world and often shows highlights of sports from the day. Originally broadcast only once per day, SportsCenter now has up to twelve airings each day, excluding overnight repeats. The show often covers the major sports in the United States including basketball, hockey, football, and baseball. SportsCenter is also known for its recaps after sports events and its in-depth analysis.
The show has broadcast more than 60,000 episodes, more than any other program on American television; SportsCenter is broadcast from ESPN's studio facilities in Bristol, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.
Overview and format
As of March 2023, SportsCenter normally runs live at the following times:- Weekdays: 7:00–8:00 a.m., 2:00–3:00 p.m., 5:00–5:30 p.m., 6:00–7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. ET.
- Saturday: 7:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m., and 12:00 am.–2:00 a.m. ET.
- Sunday: 7:00–9:00 a.m., and 11:00 p.m.–12:30 a.m. ET.
Most editions of the show originate from a studio at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. However, the Scott Van Pelt edition of SportsCenter has been produced out of a studio in Washington, D.C., inside the ABC News bureau since 2020, in the former studio of Around the Horn. The 1 a.m. Eastern edition of SportsCenter has been produced out of ESPN's Los Angeles Production Center at L.A. Live since 2009; that edition also is repeated during the overnight hours.
ESPN also produces short 90-second capsules known as SportsCenter Right Now, which air at select points within game telecasts on the network and sister broadcast network ABC to provide updates of other ongoing and recently concluded sporting events.
In addition to providing game highlights and news from the day in sports outside of the scheduled slate of games, the program also features live reports from sites of sports events scheduled to be held or already concluded, extensive analysis of completed and upcoming sports events from sport-specific analysts and special contributors, and feature segments providing interviews with players, coaches, and franchise management in the headlines. In addition to airing simulcasts or network-exclusive editions on sister networks ESPN2 and ESPNews, the program also produces short in-game updates during sports events aired on ABC and until 2017, an interstitial play countdown segment for fellow network Disney XD.
Conditions to showing highlights
Some sports leagues and organizations, including the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and college athletic conferences that are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, allow for brief highlights to be shown while a game is in progress. From 2006 to 2013, Major League Baseball only allowed ongoing game highlights to air during SportsCenter within the Baseball Tonight Extra segments in the broadcast. The National Football League does not permit the use of highlights for games that are ongoing at all, outside of those featured within its own live game broadcasts on the league's broadcast partners.ESPN is traditionally unable to air highlights of Olympic events until after they have aired on tape-delay on NBC or its co-owned sister cable networks. ESPN began showing more Olympics highlights on-air and online beginning with the 2006 Winter Olympics, with the network obtaining these extended rights from NBC as part of the 2006 deal that saw ABC release Al Michaels from his contract, in order to join John Madden and key production personnel for the new NBC Sunday Night Football.
In addition, there are many anecdotal reports of various television networks that will not release highlights of certain sporting events to ESPN, unless the originating U.S. broadcaster's name is displayed on-screen for the entire length of the highlight.
Starting in 2007 and until its final season of broadcasting in 2014, ESPN stopped displaying the actual name of the NASCAR Nationwide Series or Sprint Cup Series race during highlights of such events, unless the title sponsor of the race is paid for to the network; a similar stipulation also applied to the network's IndyCar Series coverage until 2018.
History
SportsCenter was conceived in 1979 and created by ESPN executives Chet Simmons and Scotty Connal. The program was originally anchored by Chris Berman, George Grande, Greg Gumbel, Lee Leonard, Bob Ley, Sal Marchiano and Tom Mees.1970s
Grande introduced the country to ESPN when he co-anchored the premiere episode of SportsCenter on September 7, 1979, with Leonard, a longtime New York City sports broadcaster. According to Entertainment Weekly, Leonard said in the opening of the show: "If you're a fan, what you will see in the next minutes, hours, and days to follow may convince you that you've gone to sports heaven." Grande spent ten more years with ESPN and SportsCenter until he left the network in 1989.Chris Berman joined ESPN one month after its launch and became a fixture on the program until the early 1990s, when his efforts became more focused on National Football League and Major League Baseball coverage. He does, however, still occasionally appear as a substitute anchor. Bob Ley, who also hosted Outside the Lines, regularly appeared on the Sunday morning edition of SportsCenter until his retirement in 2019.
1980s
In 1988, the program's format was changed by executive producer Walsh from focusing on individual sports or leagues to a "newspaper-style" structure, prioritizing stories by importance rather than by sport.The program's title sequence during its early years included various kinds of sports balls flying outward, set to a rapid-fire electronic music version of "Pulstar" by Vangelis. By 1989, the first of several theme songs to incorporate ESPN's trademark six-note fanfare went into use. The theme music was originally composed by John Colby, who served as ESPN's music director from 1984 to 1992, creating and producing music for various sporting events and programs seen on the network. The current version of the theme was composed in 2006 by Annie Roboff, who also co-wrote Faith Hill's 1998 hit "This Kiss".
1990s
In 1994, ESPN launched the This Is SportsCenter advertising campaign, a series of humorous, tongue-in-cheek spots featuring anchors and crew, based on the show's opening tagline. The ads ran from 1995 to 2024 when the campaign was replaced by "My Life, My Team." The team of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann—who anchored the 11:00 p.m. edition of the program—achieved great popularity during the late 1980s and the 1990s, a period interrupted by Olbermann's brief move to spin-off channel ESPN2 upon that network's launch in 1993. After Olbermann left ESPN in 1997, Kenny Mayne became Patrick's co-anchor on the late broadcast; when Patrick was moved to the 6:00 p.m. edition, Rich Eisen and Stuart Scott became the show's primary anchor team.2000s
In 2001, Toronto-based Bell Globemedia and ESPN jointly acquired The Sports Network. As part of its shift to ESPN-influenced branding, the specialty channel rebranded its existing sports news program SportsDesk and changed its name to SportsCentre, using the same introductions and theme music as the ESPN version, except with its title rendered using Canadian spelling.On September 11, 2001, ESPN interrupted regular programming at 11:05 a.m. Eastern to cover the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks through a simulcast of ABC News coverage. ESPN considered suspending that night's editions of SportsCenter, before deciding to air a half-hour edition in which they announced the cancellations of major upcoming sporting events.
On June 7, 2004, SportsCenter began broadcasting in high definition. Along with the conversion, the program introduced a new set designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, and a new graphics package titled "Revolution" that was developed by Troika Design Group. During that summer, ESPN celebrated its 25th anniversary, by counting down the top 100 moments in sports over the previous 25 years. The countdown was seen on each SportsCenter broadcast daily beginning on May 31, 2004; the countdown concluded with the #1 moment, the United States men's national ice hockey team's victory over the USSR during the 1980 Winter Olympics, airing on September 7, 2004.
During the summer of 2005, SportsCenter premiered a segment called "50 States in 50 Days", where a different SportsCenter anchor traveled to a different state each day to discover the sports, sports history, and athletes of the state.
On April 4, 2006, SportsCenter began to show highlights of Major League Baseball games in progress at the program's airtime; the rights to broadcast these highlights while games were ongoing was previously given exclusivity to fellow ESPN program, Baseball Tonight; the in-progress highlights are shown as part of the "Baseball Tonight Extra" segment. Prior to that date, video footage from MLB games was not shown on any SportsCenter broadcasts until the games completed play.
On February 11, 2007, following the NBA game between the Chicago Bulls and the Phoenix Suns, SportsCenter aired its 30,000th broadcast. The special milestone edition was anchored by Steve Levy and Stuart Scott; Bob Ley, Chris Berman and Dan Patrick made guest appearances to recap events as well as bloopers from the first 10,000 shows. ESPN also debuted the SportsCenter Minute, a one-minute SportsCenter update that is streamed exclusively on ESPN.com.
Four months later on May 6, another major change to SportsCenter was introduced on that night's 11:00 p.m. edition, with the debut of a "rundown" graphic that appears on the right-side third of the screen. This feature was originally only shown during rebroadcasts of the overnight edition on Monday through Saturday nights, and on the main Sunday night telecast; on ESPNHD, the sidebar graphic filled the right pillarbox where the ESPNHD logo would usually appear when standard definition footage was presented.
The 6:00 p.m. edition of SportsCenter moved one hour earlier to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on May 28, 2007; at that time, the early-evening edition was, for the first time, expanded to three hours. During that broadcast, ESPN aired live coverage of Roger Clemens's second start for the New York Yankees' minor league affiliate in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time edition of SportsCenter on August 7, 2007, which was anchored by John Buccigross and Cindy Brunson, showed live coverage of Barry Bonds's 756th career home run, which broke the old MLB record set by Hank Aaron. In August 2008, the former WWE employee Jonathan Coachman joined ESPN to anchor the show.
On August 11, 2008, during the opening week of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, SportsCenter began airing live from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The original plan was to start the live block three hours earlier at 6:00 a.m. Eastern; however, the network decided to scale back the length of the daytime broadcast before the expansion occurred.
That same year, Hannah Storm joined ESPN to anchor the 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. block of the program. The new format included two teams of two anchors in three-hour shifts:
- 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time: Kevin Negandhi and Hannah Storm
- 12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time: Jay Crawford and Chris McKendry
Upon that network's launch on February 13, 2009, SportsCenter began producing a countdown segment, the SportsCenter High-5, for sister channel Disney XD.
On April 6, 2009, SportsCenter debuted a new graphics package that saw the "rundown" graphic – shown during the daytime editions – being shifted to the left side of the screen. On that same date, SportsCenter began producing its 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time edition of SportsCenter live from ESPN's production facilities in the newly constructed L.A. Live complex in Los Angeles. The set is virtually identical to the setup at the main facilities in Bristol, and the late-night West Coast broadcast would be produced as simply another edition of the program. Neil Everett and Stan Verrett were appointed as the primary anchors for the Los Angeles-based editions of SportsCenter. A new BottomLine ticker was also unveiled that day on four of the five ESPN networks ; the redesigned ticker was quickly dropped, reverting to the old BottomLine design – which had been in use since April 2003 – due to an equipment failure. After technical issues with the revamped BottomLine were fixed, the new BottomLine was reinstated on July 8.
The 2009 U.S. Open Golf Championship, which was repeatedly delayed due to weather, aired on both NBC and ESPN. Portions of ESPN's broadcast, including the early parts of the Monday final round, were presented under the "SportsCenter at the U.S. Open" banner – using a similar branding as the segments-within-the-show focusing on nightly highlights and analysis of a particular event originating from the event locations. In August 2009, Robert Flores – co-anchor of the program's 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. block – was replaced on the early-afternoon broadcasts with John Buccigross.