Institutionalizing and Industrializing Sport History in the Contemporary Sports Television Documentary
Journal of sport history, Vol.41(2), pp.195-204
2014
: 10.5406/jsporthistory.41.2.195
Documentaries compose a key way that ESPN has cultivated its self-named status as “The Worldwide Leader in Sports.” SportsCentury (1999), a multimedia project for which ESPN commissioned a forty-eight-member expert panel to rank the twentieth-century's top 100 North American athletes was the media outlet's first major foray into the genre. This essay outlines how SportsCentury aided ESPN's efforts to build its brand identity; enhance and diversify its now dominant market share in sports media; broaden its demographic reach; and support, promote, and expand its other programming. It then briefly considers how SportsCentury established a popular model for producing sports documentary series that other cable sports television outlets have since adopted.
- Institutionalizing and Industrializing Sport History in the Contemporary Sports Television Documentary
- Travis Vogan
- Journal article
- Journal of sport history, Vol.41(2), pp.195-204
- University of Illinois Press
- 10.5406/jsporthistory.41.2.195
- 0094-1700
- 2155-8450
- English
- 2014
- School of Journalism and Mass Communication; American Studies
- 9984271557502771
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