ESPN began out of a small studio in Bristol, Connecticut, covering obscure and extraneous professional sports, such as American Legion baseball and the Royal International Horse Show. Since the network’s arrival in 1979, the network has grown into eight cable channel networks, not including several separate live sports and original shows that can be purchased for a separate fee.
From a small flagship network in 1979 to what is now known as “The Worldwide Leader in Sports,” ESPN has gotten a serious facelift since its days covering the Slo-Pitch Softball World Series. Yet, as the network continues to grow, there is a lack of a single cable television show across all of ESPN’s networks that debates, recaps or analyzes women’s professional or collegiate sports.
As of 2019, there are currently 17 news and analysis shows on ESPN. The most popular of ESPN’s analysis shows is the daily sports highlight show “SportsCenter.” “SportsCenter” spends its airtime featuring highlights and updates, reviewing scores from the day’s or the night before’s sporting events.
In a most recent study, “SportsCenter” and the other 16 shows used 74.5 percent of their airtime to cover men’s basketball, football and baseball while using another 25 percent for the other men’s sports and leaving a mere .5 percent of the exposure all of women’s sports. “SportsCenter” is on television for approximately 18 hours a day, meaning among those 1,080 minutes of sports coverage, women sports are recapped and highlighted for 54 minutes.
The percentage of coverage for women’s sports on ESPN has remained the same since 2014 and does not look to be improving anytime soon, with only the coverage growing for men’s sports. Having just launched in late March and beginning expansion in April is ESPN’s Formula 1 men’s autoracing coverage. ESPN will introduce Sky Sports’ “Welcome to the Weekend” and “Pit Lane Live” programs to air every race.
Alongside the 17 news and analysis shows on ESPN are a separate seven talk and debate shows. These shows deliberate and discuss the significant headlines in sports and upcoming matchups in the popular men’s leagues, such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. In all of these shows lineups, they very rarely include topics in women’s sports, and none of the shows focus specifically on women. ESPN refuses to create a half-hour program recapping women’s sports within the 1,344 hours of cable coverage it does a week.
With the lack of a single program devoted to women’s sports, and the already miniscule amount of time women’s sports receive on news shows, it is time to show women’s basketball some love. The lone bright spot in the lack of women’s sports coverage on ESPN was the recent coverage of the NCAA women’s college basketball final four, which has grown in viewership by .7 million in the last three seasons.
ESPN defends its mass coverage of men’s sports behind the idea that women’s sports are simply not viewed and drive ratings down. This claim is made, despite only airing women’s sports approximately 54 minutes a day. For ESPN, the network has grown so large and successful that the excuses of lacking time or being worried about ratings have become obsolete. It is time to give women their fair share of airtime on ESPN, even if it begins with a mere 30-minute debate show.
By John Pullano, Opinion Editor
pullanjj18@bonaventure.edu
