WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ESPN?
The memory man strikes again: In 1979, just prior to launch, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network was reduced to plain, ole ESPN, the stand-alone letters no longer standing for anything more. At the present rate of layoffs designed to cut $5.5 billion from a bloated budget, it won’t be long before ESPN becomes WHWN or Whatever Happened to What’s-its-Name? You don’t need a long memory to recall when the once-mighty cable staple was THE only money-maker for Disney, which purchased it from Capital Cities, Inc., in 1996. (Actually, Cap Cities owned 80 per cent of ESPN, with the Hearst Corporation holding the other 20 percent as a sort of silent partner. Still does, as best as we could find out.) So what brought the first 24-hour -- by far most influential -- all-sports network to go from long green to deep red? The legion of critics who have weighed in pretty much blame management for encouraging politics to permeate the daily presentations. They also didn’t seem t...