ESPN: Powerhouse in Sport Broadcasting

In the world of sports, there are many different frames about the same exact story, whether it is a controversy, highlight, or announcement. As more sources come up on the sports broadcasting radar, you begin to ask yourself who can you trust and who you should learn to skip over. ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) has continued to build up its reputation so that viewers that are seeking in depth, correct information, they will rely on ESPN to provide it to them. By using their Twitter and Facebook account, and their own homepage, they are able to spread their sports stories to many areas of the world. This aggressive style of reporting has led them to be the Worldwide Leader in Sports.

Retrieved from bleacherreport.com

Two weeks ago, the five starters from the 2012 Kentucky NCAA Championship team announced that they would be entering this year's NBA draft this coming June. The photo on the right has become a very popular image that was captured by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images. It has been used on many homepages, front pages of newspapers and magazines, and many other broadcasting to draw more attention to the already popular Wildcats. When these five particular players announced their decision to enter in the draft, ESPN took advantage of the moment and gave this particular segment a half hour of air time. In other sport instances, other than a game of some type, this is unheard of! When the Penn State controversy of Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulting young boys, ESPN ran segment after segment for weeks talking about the issue in depth and getting many different angles to that crisis. With so many analysts on their team, they certainly have the resources that many other broadcasters do not, therefore enabling them to spend more time covering stories such as these, as well as to draw more viewers in since they know that ESPN will be covering these issues more than your nightly news will.  

The video to the left is courtesy of  YouTube.com where there were many videos showing the results of NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell discipline for the Saints Bounty Program. The video was uploaded by ESPN to spread this very dramatic story to all social networking sites that they possibly could. This was a huge issue and was talked about amongst sport fans in the weeks to follow this outbreak of information. One of the reasons that ESPN has become such a powerhouse in sports broadcasting is because of their background knowledge, their manpower to investigate, and their diligence to check and re-check their sources, to get all the information correct, and then to report it accurately so that their viewers will have the knowledge that they may not have been able to get anywhere else.