After watching the Youtube ESPN with Phelps I was wondering about ESPN and the Olympic sports. Like it or not, ESPN drives sports interest in this country. They can make or break a sport - and if they don't have enough sports to show, they go and create one - like the X-Games.
But they will never promote the big Olympic sports like track, swimming and gymnastics - because NBC has the biggest prize in those sports - the Olympics. ESPN is not going to promote swimming for 3 years and then let NBC get extra ratings. On the flipside, NBC does not have a real sports network to show these sports - they can only afford to show the Olympics and maybe the trials.
What if ABC / ESPN would have had the Olympics for the last 20 years ?
Would we see the major meets in non-olympic years on ESPN 2 ? Would they not have sports center highlights of the US Nationals in track ? They could have their own women's channel and just show gymnastics and figure skating.
Not sure how much longer NBC has the Olympics locked up, but I think the IOC and USOC would be well served to give ABC and ESPN a run at this.
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Former Member
If I'm not mistaken, NBC just created a channel with WCSN called Universal Sports to start taking care of this between the Olympic years.
While Universal Sports will have stuff online, I believe they already are on cable in LA and NYC. That will only grow, just like all of NBC's other channels.
The channel will probably be where the FINA World Champs are aired on TV in the States, along with the World Cup.
WNBC, the local NBC station in New York, has been carrying Universal Sports on one of it's digital broadcast subchannels for about two months -- in other words it's a free over the air channel for people with a digital TV (soon to be all of us), as well as a cable channel. (Digital TV allows each station to transmit several channels simultaneously.) They've been carrying lots of swimming and they had a whole night of water polo last night. :groovy:
I haven't heard any announcement from WNBC about whether this is permanent or just part of the build up to the Olympics.
If I'm not mistaken, NBC just created a channel with WCSN called Universal Sports to start taking care of this between the Olympic years.
While Universal Sports will have stuff online, I believe they already are on cable in LA and NYC. That will only grow, just like all of NBC's other channels.
The channel will probably be where the FINA World Champs are aired on TV in the States, along with the World Cup.
WNBC, the local NBC station in New York, has been carrying Universal Sports on one of it's digital broadcast subchannels for about two months -- in other words it's a free over the air channel for people with a digital TV (soon to be all of us), as well as a cable channel. (Digital TV allows each station to transmit several channels simultaneously.) They've been carrying lots of swimming and they had a whole night of water polo last night. :groovy:
I haven't heard any announcement from WNBC about whether this is permanent or just part of the build up to the Olympics.
