"SportsCenter' - the ideal sports show program for fans in the USA
ESPN has carried a daily sports telecast for 43 years
Sports shows on television are something that continues to exist, but has been depleted as content and has not enjoyed much viewership in recent years. The reason for this is the increasingly better developing social networks. However, there are enough examples of quality programs that have been on the air for a long time and continue to be famous for having quite good columns, presenters and material. One of them is ESPN's daily sports program - SportsCenter.
The show has been around since 1979 and is now in its 43rd season. Over 60,000 unique episodes have been broadcast, which is an absolute record for any program on American television. These editions feature talk, news and analysis surrounding the biggest sporting events in the US such as basketball, hockey, American football, baseball and more. In addition to the main ESPN channel, live broadcasts and replays on ESPN2 and ESPNews, from 2020 special episodes around the controversial events will also be broadcast on ABC, increasing the hours of live broadcasts on weekends to 10 a.m. on Saturdays and 5:30 p.m. minutes on Sunday.
The program is truly unique and offers a huge variety for sports fans who do not have the opportunity to follow all sports live, but want to learn something more than the result, have fun, because there are also humorous elements, and also enjoy really expert opinions.
On weekdays, SportsCenter airs from 7am to 8am, 12pm to 1pm, 6pm to 7pm and 11pm to 1am. On Saturday, the live broadcast slots are: 7am-12pm, 6pm-7pm, 11pm-3am. And on Sundays from 7 to 9 in the morning, from 10 to 12 before noon and from 11 at night to 30 minutes after midnight. If a sporting event is delayed, these times may be changed, and in cases of longer delays, the live broadcast is moved to ESPN2 or ESPNews. Some of the shows are broadcast live from Los Angeles and the others from Bristol, Connecticut. Very often on ESPN, there are also short 90-second spots that report the latest news in the most watched sports in the country.
In addition to in-studio chats, news and analysis, the show also offers live on-the-spot coverage of reporters with interesting guests including athletes, coaches, former players and other important sports figures.
The only problem with the show is related to showing a picture of the big events that have not finished yet, as well as the Olympics. ESPN does not have the rights to the biggest sporting event that takes place every four years, and that makes the content from the Games quite limited. This is the case during NBA games, Major League Baseball, and NASCAR and IndyCar races.
Particularly interesting are the segments about American football, which are given a lot of time. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the columns for this sport are the most numerous and the most curious. One of those is the "Not Top 10," which airs Friday and shows the 10 worst plays from the past round in the National Football League.
The wide variety of interesting topics, the coverage of all sports events at once and the expert analysis from familiar faces, former athletes and coaches, as well as the wonderful anchors and reporters, make SportsCenter a wonderful example of what a sports program covering the maximum should look like of the races of interest to people in a given country. TV in the US boasts similar shows that, although already losing much of their value, try to stick to the main idea. And sports will always have fans who want to watch something interesting on TV, and ESPN knows this very well.