Although shows like “SportsCenter” and “Pardon the Interruption” are claiming an ever-larger portion of mainstream attention for ESPN, it all started with a bunch of sailboat racing fans who stayed up really, really late.

George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports, held an informal discussion about the cable sports industry with about 50 students. He was joined by Bob Miron, chairman and CEO of Advance/Newhouse Communications and Fred Dressler, executive vice president for programming at Time Warner Cable. Bud Carey, a television, radio and film professor and moderator of the discussion, heaped praise upon the men, all of whom have been in the cable industry since its inception.

“You don’t get any higher in the house than these three gentlemen,” Carey said.

Although most of the students in the room could not remember a time without ESPN, Bodenheimer recalled the network’s early days when it developed a following among the fans of non-traditional sports such as sailing. The 1983 America’s Cup races, which were held in Australian waters, created a buzz that propelled ESPN to success, even though the races were broadcasted at 2 a.m. in the United States, Bodenheimer said.

“In the early days, we’d televise whatever we could get our hands on,” Bodenheimer said.

Cable sports coverage has come a long way since those days. The three men gave their opinions on how the industry will weather current and future challenges, including soaring prices for basic cable and the introduction of program recording technology such as TiVo. Bodenheimer said that in the age of $5 cups of coffee, cable TV remains one of the best values on the market.

“America has voted with their checkbook,” he said. “They like cable, it’s one of the greatest values ever invented. There will be some changes, but I don’t think we’re going to throw out the baby with the bath water.”

The panel ran into disagreement over the issue of synergy, or cooperation between the various units of a corporation, and its importance to large media conglomerates such as AOL-Time Warner and Disney, which owns both ABC and ESPN. Bodenheimer and Dressler both felt that the proper use of synergy holds great benefits for media companies. Many of the problems with synergy come when parent companies try to force it upon their divisions and subsidiaries, Dressler said.

Even as the students listened to the panels prediction’s, their questions and comments provided the three men with valuable intelligence on what consumers and future producers of cable sports would like to see out of networks like ESPN, Bodenheimer said. Both he and Miron agreed that input from viewers and fans has been important in shaping cable TV.

“Good ideas come from the bottom up,” Miron said.

Despite this grassroots influence, Chris Powers, a graduate media management student who attended the talk, didn’t feel like he or anybody else could have much success in predicting the future of cable.

“If I could answer that question, I’d probably be sitting in one of their seats,” he said.

Published on April 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm