ESPN News Channel
Founded: November, 1996
Parent Company: ESPN, Inc. & Disney Corp.
Tagline: The Worldwide Leader in Sports
Website: watchespn.com
It's 2002 and 10PM at night... you get home and have no idea what happened in the big game. SportsCenter is winding down and you desperately need to catch the highlights. Other than tracking down the latest blurbs on news web sites, your best bet was almost always tuning to ESPNews. Launched in '96 in response to the the need for 24-hour sports scores, highlights and post-game interviews, it was an immediate success. By 2010, however, news and highlights were readily available just about everywhere online... and close to real-time. So, ESPNews shifted strategy and ramped down the 24-hour news and instead featured live radio simulcasts, re-runs of TV studio shows, overflow live events and more. It's still useful enough for most sports fans, so expect it to stick around for the foreseeable future.
Throughout the last decade, they've played around with a variety of original programming, to varying success. The biggest draw these days are the radio simulcasts which are pretty cool to watch, especially if you've used to just the radio feeds. They also get pretty interactive with fan interaction and showing fan shout-outs above the ESPNews Bottom Line ticker. With regard to DISH and DIRECTV, they're available in all packages except for the Entertainment plan with DIRECTV. See further below for plan details...
ESPN News Programming & Shows
Original Series: not much lately
Reruns: SportsCenter, Keyshawn, JWill and Max, NBA games, NFL games, etc.