ESPN On-Air Founder Tribute Leaves Viewers Disenchanted

By
Gregory McMullen
-

Well, this is awkward.

Bill Rasmussen, the man who helped create ESPN from an idea that plenty of people thought was crazy, died Tuesday at the age of 93. So naturally, the network he founded wanted to honor him.

There was just one problem.

ESPN couldn’t get through the tribute before ESPN interrupted ESPN.


During Tuesday’s edition of “First Take,” a photograph of Rasmussen appeared on screen as the program attempted to recognize the man responsible for launching what eventually became the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.”

And then, suddenly, there was Pat McAfee.

“Hello, beautiful people,” McAfee announced as his show began.

That was it. Tribute over. Programming marches onward.

Now, stay with me, because McAfee does not appear to be the villain here. There’s no indication he knew he was interrupting anything. He apparently started his program when he was supposed to start his program, greeted the audience in typical McAfee fashion and carried on.

But somewhere behind the scenes, somebody missed something.

And on live television, “somebody missed something” is how you end up cutting off a memorial to the guy who founded your network.

There’s an irony here that is almost too perfect.


ESPN has spent decades producing complicated live broadcasts. Games, studio shows, breaking news, remote interviews — you name it. Television control rooms operate around the clock. Producers watch clocks. Directors call transitions. Segments are timed down to the second.

Yet on the day ESPN was remembering Bill Rasmussen, the network couldn’t successfully navigate the transition between “First Take” and McAfee without stepping on its own tribute.

That matters because Rasmussen wasn’t some obscure executive who occupied a corner office for a few years. Without him, ESPN as we know it might never have existed.

According to ESPN’s own account, Rasmussen died at his Florida home from the effects of Parkinson’s disease.

His story is a remarkable one.

Rasmussen had been fired from his job as communications director for the New England Whalers in the late 1970s when he and his son Scott started developing an idea for a sports network. Initially, the concept was focused on Connecticut.

Then the idea got bigger.

Much bigger.

They envisioned a national sports network broadcasting 24 hours a day.

Today that sounds completely normal. In the late 1970s? Not so much. An around-the-clock cable channel devoted entirely to sports was an enormous gamble.

Rasmussen took the gamble anyway.

ESPN recounts that he maxed out his credit card and used a $9,000 advance to secure valuable space on a communications satellite.

Think about that for a moment. Long before gigantic rights contracts, celebrity debate shows and wall-to-wall coverage of the biggest events in American sports, there was a recently fired communications director betting borrowed money that people would watch sports television all day and all night.

Turns out they would.

ESPN launched in 1979 and grew into a sports-media powerhouse. Whatever anyone thinks of the network’s programming today, Rasmussen’s original idea fundamentally changed how Americans consumed sports.

And ESPN itself has certainly changed.

The network has faced years of criticism from viewers who believe it wandered too deeply into political and cultural debates instead of sticking primarily to sports. Shows including “First Take” increasingly became vehicles for arguments extending well beyond scores, trades and championships.

That makes Tuesday’s production failure an especially unfortunate visual for ESPN’s critics.

Here was the network attempting to remember the man who built the place — and before the tribute could properly breathe, the next show came crashing through the door.

Again, McAfee apparently just happened to be the person walking through that door. Blaming him personally without evidence would miss the point.

The real question is how a network with ESPN’s resources and decades of live-broadcast experience allowed the moment to happen at all.

Bill Rasmussen took a tremendous risk when almost nobody knew whether a 24-hour sports network could work. He helped turn that risk into one of the most recognizable brands in television.

On the day of his death, ESPN had one fairly simple job: Give its founder a proper on-air tribute.

Instead, viewers got a picture of Rasmussen followed abruptly by:

“Hello, beautiful people.”

Live television, folks. Sometimes you couldn’t script the timing if you tried.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR