It was 1979 when Lee Leonard spoke to all who tuned in to the newly-formed sports network, promoting a channel promising loads of football, basketball, baseball and more.
Its launch was the end product of amassing broadcast hardware, a considerable amount of money from Getty Oil and crucial negotiations with the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Heading it in-part was Bill Rasmussen, a Chicago-native who previously found himself launching his media career in the Pioneer Valley.
In 2012, he recounted to WAMC's Ian Pickus how, in a way, ESPN wasn't his first sports network - and UMass Amherst football figured prominently in his early efforts.
“We didn't have networks for all of those kinds of things, and when I went to work for a radio station back in Amherst, Mass., where the university was located, we said, ‘Let's do some football games’ and the university said ‘Sure, why not?’” Rasmussen told WAMC ahead of an event at Union College. “Because there weren't all these big rights fee things that we have today… and then I said, ‘You know, let's find out what other radio stations are around in the state of Massachusetts,’ and we ended up doing a little ten-station radio network. And, I guess you could say that, by accident, that was my first network experience.”
That was in the early 1960s. Rasmussen then moved on to television - including time at WWLP.
“I was young and eager to do sports and to branch out into television, and in a matter of a little over a year… the NBC station in Springfield - the #1 station in ratings - their sports director left and he recommended that I take his place,” he recounted. “So, I kept trying to just learn more and more about television and radio and it seemed like every day was a learning experience… and I guess I continue to do that to this day.”
After that, he was Connecticut-bound, ending up as a communications director for the before being fired in 1978.
A year later, with his son Scott Rasmussen and another early-backer, Ed Eagan, helped form and launch ESPN - a revolutionary departure from network television's style of airing only select games in rigid timeslots.
“The first reaction whenever we said something to anybody that hadn't heard of it before was ‘Who’s going to watch 24-hour sports?’ So, as soon as they said that, we knew they didn't get it because nobody's obviously going to watch 24-hour sports,” he said. “It was: ‘Sports will be available 24 hours a day’ and if you happen to get home from work at 1:30 in the morning or 2:15 in the afternoon, it doesn't make any difference - there'll be something there. You won't wait until the weekend for the one or two football games that you might see.”
Rasmussen's death was announced Tuesday by the network he co-founded. He was 93-years-old.
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Some audio for this story was provided by ESPN/ABC.
Ian Pickus, a former member and news director of WAMC: Northeast Public Radio, interviewed Bill Rasmussen ahead of him appearing at Union College in 2012.
